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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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Twin Mom

The Velveteen Woman: Aren’t I Real Enough Already?

I’m a Velveteen Woman on an authentic journey to become Real.( If you know the story — Oh, my gosh, it makes me cry!!! Like Ugly Cry, complete with quivering lip and all sorts of snot cry!!! — then you know what I mean. And if you don’t — go read it. Like yesterday.) Anyways… I’m a Velveteen Woman on a journey to become Real. And some days I just feel way too torn and tattered to keep going. No, let me clarify. Some WEEKS I just feel way too torn and tattered — and just plain broken– to keep going.  And this past week has been that sort of week.

I feel like I’ve been steamrolled by the planet. My bones are weary and my mind is pressed flat. Why, you ask?

Well, maybe it’s because I’m fifty. And the mother of four children — two of whom are twins… boys… who are toddlers. Add to that two girls who are twenty something and on their own authentic journeys to become Real (and I feel every knock and nick that they get along the way — maybe even more-so. Because when your baby hurts, you hurt, no matter how old they get). Then there’s the fact that I’m an English teacher drowning in essays, and that I’m a football widow in the tenth week of football season –and we’re still gunning for another six (Good Lord willing…) Oh, and don’t forget the piece de resistance — my State Health Benefit Plan decided to drop kick our boys’ coverage this week.

So this week, my journey has rubbed off a lot of my edges and stolen some of my shine. Let’s start with the fact that I’m fifty. I am nowhere near as bright and shiny as I was thirty years ago. Back then I had glossy hair and firm skin and stuffing in most of the right places. I had muscles and stamina for days. There was lightning harnessed to my giddy-up. I could run 5Ks, host block parties, create four-course dinners and chop an acre of firewood and still snap, crackle and pop at the end of the day. Now, I’m lucky to have snap, crackle and pop at the breakfast table — unless it’s a chorus from my joints and a bowl of Rice Krispies.

And being the mother of four has done some work on my lovely lady lumps. I wouldn’t go so far as the Bob Segar song and claim my “points were way up firm and high” back then, but they definitely weren’t stretched and deflated to the point of flapping in a brisk wind if they aren’t strapped in properly.  Four babies and four years of breastfeeding takes its toll on your breasteses.

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And so do three pregnancies – especially one with twins.  My skin is puckered and striped and dimpled.  I’ve been pulled and torn and redistributed.  And stitched back together. My belly bears a nice, six-inch seam where the good doctors scooped out two darling little melon balls in my first and only C-section at age forty-seven. At that age, the elastin in the skin isn’t quite what it once was. Needless to say, my stuffing has fallen and nestled into soft, comfy pooches in inconvenient and unattractive places. Add to that, my saggy hindquarters, and I’m just a soft, comfy lap of lady lumps.

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Along with my belly seam, I also bear a dog-legged scar across my right paw, which I earned, of all things, by doing laundry. Two-and-a-half-year-old twins come with not just double the laundry –because, as my friend once said, “one is one and two is ten” – but with exponentially multiplying mountains of laundry. Every day brings ground-in clay and spattered curry, skid marks and grass stains, ripped seams and snotted sleeves… Last December, while putting away the endless backlog of socks and underwear I broke my distal radius. As I stepped to the side to pull open a drawer, Tate at my side, my ankle slid out of joint – yet another weakness from my years of service on this earth – and I had to make a quick choice: sacrifice my wrist or sacrifice my youngest. Since Tate is a relatively important component of our family unit and my right hand is my dominant and most-used portion of my body, it was quite the quandary.  In the split second decision, Tate won and my wrist lost. Badly. Between fracture and surgery, it was a five-month loss. If I’d chosen Tate, I bet he would’ve bounced back in two, tops.

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So my body has often been sacrificed upon the alter of motherhood.  But it’s not been simply limited to my body. My mind has paid a tremendous price, too.  I’m not nearly as quick-witted as I once was. It’s a spongey mass of mire, sucking and slurping and slowing me down. I think the majority of decay occurred during the sixteen months of sleeplessness that Mike and I endured after the boys’ birth. Regardless, my electrodes just don’t fire as fast as they once did. Perhaps the biggest impact has been on my teaching load. I feel like I still do a decent job of instructing my students – of leading them through the mazes of symbolism and themes, interpretations and analyses. Where I’ve taken the hardest hits is the grading. Piles of essays grow even faster than my mountains of laundry. My desk looks like the Manhattan skyline. This week, alone, Hamlet and Ophelia have taken up residence in a couple of high-rise stacks already occupied by the Lady of Shallot and a serial killer named Arnold Friend. My gorged and glutted in-box creates strange bedfellows, indeed.

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But if my teacher’s inbox is a sprawling, metropolis of gangly skyscrapers, my personal email is an un-weeded garden, where things rank and gross in nature secretly sprout. It is here that the emails regarding our insurance travesty sat like poisonous mushrooms multiplying in the darkness. You see, like Hamlet, my wit’s diseased, and I don’t have good sense enough to regularly monitor my g-mail.

But then again, who would think an insurance company would just drop babies midyear for no clear reason? And send letters about their intentions to old addresses? And not email your work address, where you get all other correspondence, to let you know? And not telephone you at all to inform you you’re under the gun? Apparently, it happens. We were audited. Someone somewhere pointed a mean, nasty middle finger at our family, and BANG.

The State Health Benefit Plan gave us four months to comply with the audit’s demands (so incredibly generous, no?). Unfortunately, for the entire four months we remained blissfully ignorant, thinking we were following the rules of the universe and enjoying our life, liberties and pursuits of happiness. All the while, our insurance providers were tunneling under our best-laid precautions preparing to blow them to smithereens. Two-and-a-half year old twins with no health insurance at the very cusp of cold weather and The Creepy Crud?  FML.

Now the boys seem to have taken the news of no insurance in stride, maintaining their status quo of textbook twin toddlers, boisterously brawling and loving in equal measure. They’ve wrangled over bar stools, bloodied their kneecaps, chanted nursery rhymes, fought for control of the cayenne pepper, had meltdowns over melting ice, locked themselves in our van along with my keys, chunked dried apricots at the cat, giggled contagiously in the tub, and hugged one another to the point of unquenchable rage. And that was just yesterday.

Upon the news, Mike continued on the way that he always does, leaping tall buildings and intercepting all the wicked slings and arrows that outrageous fortune has lobbed our way — including the discovery he unearthed yesterday while working his magic and getting our boys back on an insurance policy: Mike himself has had no insurance since October 1st! Yep. Big, fat middle finger pointed our way. But the point is, my man mountain is way-beyond-textbook husband and father. He stands strong in the storm. Every time. I don’t know what I would do without him. He picks up my stuffing. He tucks it back in. He shoulders my shortcomings and he shelters my babes — all four of them. It’s fitting that he’s a Purple Hurricane coach. He knows the ins and outs of life’s storms and he weathers them with grace.

And he is the calm in the storm of my crazy because, Lord, have I been a textbook basket case this week. I’ve been falling apart at my already weakened seams – so much so that I’m shedding hair and tears and sleep and health and sanity until I’m as limp and floppy as the Velveteen Rabbit.

And according to the Skin Horse in the classic tale, “It takes a long time to become real… it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

So, I think this week finally did it. I think I’m finally Real. Maybe a long time is fifty years. I know I don’t break too easily – only one bone so far (knock on wood). Most of my hair has been loved off and my joints are definitely loose and my appearance is shabby – especially if you catch me on the weekends where I choose to never get out of my pjs unless I am absolutely forced to do so. Now my eyes haven’t dropped out yet, but they’re most definitely drooping… And I’m pretty certain this week knocked off any sharp edges I still managed to have left.

So, yeah, I feel like I should finally be Real… But I know it’s never that simple.  Because I am on an authentic journey. And it’s never over until it’s over. But as I’ve said in past blogs, I can do this hard thing.

Because what keeps me going is that I KNOW I’m truly loved. By five of the most amazing humans this world has ever cradled: Caitlin, Bethany, Parker, Tate, and Mike. I don’t deserve their love, but I am so eternally grateful for it.  And they make me FEEL Real — whether I’m actually there or not. (And I’m sure I’m not.) And I’m loved by the Creator of our Universe. I am snuggled and sheltered, and sometimes weathered and wizened — all in the name wisdom and growth. I have been blessed in so many ways and with so many wonderful experiences.  And those experiences sometimes knock me about a bit. But they just add to the love.

So all of you struggling women out there doing the hard thing and getting your edges knocked off and your stuffing pulled out. Keep on keeping on. You’re exhausted. I know. I get it. But we’re all Velveteen Women on our authentic journey to become Real. And the closer we get to Real, the harder it gets and the more knocked-about we feel. But we can do this hard thing. And we are getting there. Every nick, chip, and bruise along the way, we are getting there. We can do this hard thing.

allofus

 

4

My Man Mountain

I’m pretty sure I’ve celebrated everybody in our patchwork of a postcolonial family in my blog now except for one key and vitally important piece. Without him, we wouldn’t be postcolonial at all. Without him, our family quilt would be fairly uniform in color and personality (though far from dull because it would be all Southern and Southerners are anything but dull.  We keep a lot of crazy in our closet and we take it out and parade it around with pride on special occasions, like trips to Kroger or booster club meetings, but still…) Without him, we wouldn’t have our usually sweet and sometimes sour toddler twin dumplings. So today, I’m turning the spotlight on the one person who gives our family the diversity and exoticism of the far East and the Up North. The person who gives me, personally, the courage and the determination to keep travelling along this steep and thorny path through life and twindom: my husband, Mike. He is my inspiration, my strength, my champion, my love. He has no idea how many times his random texts, his smile and his sweet notes in my lunch bag keep me going on a daily basis.

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Mike is a giant of a man. He is what the Lilliputians would call a Man Mountain; a Colossus.  He is a mountainous, six foot, three-hundred-pound colossus of an Asian man. Now I know the juxtaposition of giant and Asian may seem like an oxymoron — face it, when you think Asian, you think smart and small, maybe with black-rimmed glasses and awesome, enviable hair. And I’m not saying Mike’s not smart (because he is – wickedly so), but he’s definitely not small (he gets that from his Italian side), he doesn’t wear glasses, and his hair is shaved off weekly until he’s totally and completely bald.  So he’s my favorite paradox — my bald, giant Asian man.  And he is a giant in so many ways beyond just his size – from his generosity to his sense of humor, from his drive and dedication, to his capacity for love.

I’ll start with Mike’s generosity – which is ginormous. He’s like a bald, slant-eyed Santa Claus. He showers me with the sweetest of surprises — little things that mean so much, like buckets of real movie theater popcorn, Reese’s Pieces, and bottles of wine because he knows they’re my favorite combos or big surprises that are just the epitome of perfect, like the flock of flamingos on my fiftieth because he knows I have an unhealthy obsession with pink plastic yard art. And the presents don’t stop with me.  The boys get little special somethings for no particular reason quite often too. Most recently, Tate got a B-I-N-G-O book (his new favorite nursery rhyme) and for Parker, a monster truck school bus (his new favorite vehicle).

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Mike’s sense of humor is boundless – and I do mean boundless.  As in, there are no boundaries.  His languages are English, sarcasm and sexual innuendo. His wit is quick and acerbic and his wordplay is bawdy. He’s a veritable Italian-Korean Chaucer – able to twist innocent statements into double entendre in seconds flat. “That’s what she said,” is still his favorite go-to phrase and he’s always willing to throw in a couple of “deez nuts” for good measure, but he’s definitely not limited to the tried and true. And he picks on anyone and everyone equally, himself included — particularly when it comes to Asian stereotypes. (Just take a look at his celebrity look-alike facebook profile) And the boys don’t escape his jokes either —  as is evidenced in THEIR celebrity look-alikes…

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Now as far as his drive and dedication, it is unmatched — whether it’s in marriage, football, or fatherhood. Mike juggles more than his fair share in all three of these roles trying to be a successful and dutiful husband, coach, and dad. And he succeeds at all three.  On any given day during the season he makes lunches, does laundry, teaches six classes, studies film, grades players, runs schemes, attends practice, washes dishes, and finally, loves on the boys and then me – even if it’s just for a few quick minutes (That’s what she said….) I am truly in awe of his drive, his dedication, and his dexterity (TWSS).

Now if I’m to paint an accurate picture here, Mike’s enormous characteristics are not necessarily limited to merely the positive. He has other larger than life traits, too, like an iron will and a stubborn streak rivaled only by my own. At times, the two of us can reach stalemates that dynamite could scarcely rattle. Usually they’re over dumb shit — like who picks dinner (we both tend to defer to the other – over and over and over) or most recently, over who actually despises Trump more. Oh, and Mike has a super sharp temper that flashes in thunderous rages. It is very rarely seen and never shown toward me or the boys. It usually involves DIY home projects. (If he’s wielding a hammer or a saw, I’m leaving before he finds his frustration threshold. He’s been known to punch walls and put holes in sheetrock.) The only other occasions (besides football) where I’ve seen his fiery temper unleashed is when someone threatens his loved ones. Then, as Mr. T used to say, “I pity the fool…

Which brings me to his enormous capacity for love. Mike is fueled by a love more intense, more protective, more genuine, more burning than any love I’ve ever known. He has taught me what love truly is and what love really means. I believe it now when I see that familiar Corinthians’ passage: love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It always protects, always, trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Because Mike is all of these things for me and for mine.  He is my three-hundred-pound Asian teddy bear. And he’s also my giant, three-hundred-pound Asian enigma — a puzzle of mammoth proportions…

Because he picked me. Me.

He never should have. I am his exact opposite. I’m an eighties girl; he’s a nineties guy. I’m laidback; he’s got OCD.  I played piano. He played football. I was a book nerd. He was a meathead. His family is quiet and reserved. Mine is loud and ballsy. But we did have one thing going for us: some lyrics from a Journey song. Ten years ago, I was just a small town girl livin’ in a lonely world and he was a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit.  And the two of us refused to stop believing.

Just yesterday, I discovered a new song with new lyrics that express exactly how I have felt about my mountainous, six foot, three-hundred-pound colossus of an Asian man from the first kiss, Christmas break ten years ago, to right now, this very second:

You still make me nervous when you walk in the room
Them butterflies they come alive when I’m next to you
Over and over the only truth
Everything comes back to you

I love you, Mike Candela.

manandwife

0

Slimes and Smells and Streptococcus

Never leave a hot dog on the stovetop to ferment in its own juices for three days. Never. The scum that accumulates on the surface of the water is nothing compared with the slime that surrounds its circumference upon extracting it. Not kidding, here. I made the mistake of taking it out of the pot with my bare hand and the slime slipped over it like a mucous-y, amorphous blob. It just kept sliding and slipping until it nearly covered my  wrist. So much slime for such a small, seemingly innocuous hot dog. Mike almost threw up. It was like something out of Ghostbusters or Nickelodeon. But it was nothing — I say nothing — compared with the slime that has sluiced from the boys’ noses this week. I wish I’d thought of bottling it up and sending it to Universal Studios to lend some authenticity to the Kids’ Choice Awards this spring.

It all began on Monday — doesn’t it always? The boys had slept terribly, if you could even call it sleep. There’d been multiple coughing fits and periodic wailing virtually all night long. There’s this feeling I get deep in my mommy marrow when I hear my babies – any of them, whether it’s my girls in their twenties or the boys in their twos — cough that raw, rattily cough. It’s a maternal, visceral reflex – like someone has taken a potato peeler to my womb and is shaving off slender curls of it while I’m simultaneously plunging from a tremendous height. That’s what it feels like — except worse. Because I would rather have someone scrape my uterus with a peeler while simultaneously freefalling than to hear that cough coming from any one of my babies’ chests. Needless to say, Monday morning, even before my alarm went off at 5:30, I decided that I was taking the day off and taking them to the doctor. I figured it would be ear infections – our old, familiar foe.

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Now taking a day as a teacher – particularly a teacher in Bartow County – is no easy feat. The first order of business is finding a sub, and finding a sub in our district is akin to unearthing the Holy Grail in the kitchens of Hell. The task has not always been so daunting… Our county used to subscribe to a computerized system that allowed teacher to post their needs online and allow open and able substitute teachers to log in and select a job at will. That was long before systematic budget cuts and various and dubious central office expenditures. Now, we must call subs ourselves – from an alphabetical sub list that also includes interspersed but clearly-marked food nutrition subs in the mix… and let’s just say, woe to the unwitting teacher who accidently calls and wakes a food nutrition individual at 5:30 in the morning for a CLASSROOM position… Now procuring a sub wouldn’t nearly be as Sisyphean a task if the subs were allowed to work more than three days a week in our county. You see, if a sub works more than three days a week, our school system would then be required to provide benefits. (Heaven forbid! and Thanks, Obama.) So the subs naturally work for other systems when they can, and only take Bartow jobs when the pickin’ is slim. And apparently the pickin’s were bountiful this past Monday morning because I called close to forty phone numbers before I found a taker – almost an hour later. But at least I had a sub – and a work comrade, who just so happens to be my best friend and department chair, willing to leap tall buildings and run copies and keep an eye on my classes. So I had that going for me…

Now chalk it up to Monday morning and being sleep deprived, or to just plain old twinility (the disease I contracted immediately upon turning fifty with twin toddlers), but when Mike asked if he should call in late and give me some help getting the boys to the doc’s I said, “Honey, they’re two-and-a-half now. Surely they will walk themselves into the doctor’s office these days. It’s no big deal. We’ll be fine.”

I should’ve just said, “I can do this hard thing…”

Because hard it was. And do it, I did — extricating screaming twin toddlers, terrified of getting yet more shots from that pesky pediatrician, out of car seats and into the office building, all the while avoiding giant SUVs and juniper hedgerows. Each boy was saddled up on a love handle, and the diaper bag and my handbag were slung across my back. I looked like a pack mule from Nepal. Parker managed to stay in place as I trudged to the entrance, but Tate slid ever-so-slowly down my thigh until I barely had him off the ground, his arms straight above him, his legs kicking wildly as he shrieked like a child sacrifice. I’m sure the white-haired octogenarian who held the door for us thanked her lucky stars right then and there that she was past childbearing days as I bore my children past…

Once we were actually in the office, the clinginess ended (for a little while, anyway) once they spied the vast row of empty waiting room chairs lining the back wall. There must’ve been fifteen of the vinyl-clad things, just waiting for some lads like them. Like American Ninja Warrior wannabes, they promptly began inch-worming up and over one chair arm and under and through the next, giggling like the healthiest, happiest toddlers alive. Nary a cough could be heard. “Can’t you at least LOOK sick while you’re cavorting?” I pleaded.

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Now I’ve known our pediatrician since Caitlin was not even a year old. He treated both my girls until they were out of high school and well into college because they refused to see anyone else. He is a longtime friend and trusted advisor, and I prayed he would remember that I’m generally a smart and intuitive mother. That I’m not the mom who brings her utterly healthy and hyperactive tots to the doc for no good reason and who, therefore, in the most ultimate of ironies, exposes them to some serious seasonal scourge. Every mother’s maternal marrow is bound to be wrong every now and then, right? I just prayed he would remember that while examining my apparently healthy and histrionic twins.

We were only in the waiting room for a few minutes before we were called back. It’s amazing how quickly a toddler twosome can go from charged electrical currents to fixed static cling. They glued themselves to my calves tighter than the compression hose I’d worn while pregnant with them.

Dr. Payne smiled his hellos as he readied his stethoscope for the first squirming, screaming son in my arms. Between the two of us, we managed to pin him to the table so he could get a good listen and look. It was at that instant that not just one, but both boys decided to make the smelliest of deposits. The sound was raucous; the stench was hellacious. It was like I’d fed them both radioactive waste — radioactive waste simmered in cesspool broth. The whole room reeked of it. I swear, I could see the stench shimmering off their shorts. Dr. Payne just laughed it off and pressed on. I did notice he didn’t do any genitalia checks, this time around…

My fears and misgivings proved warranted. My maternal marrow rang true, once again. The boys’ strep tests (which I think they now hate more than the dreaded vaccination needle) came back positive. My diagnosis had been wrong, but my instincts were on point. Their diapers (which I was able to change between the actual swabbing for strep and the final results), came back to haunt me a few days later when I unearthed them from the diaper bag where they’d been festering and fermenting, forgotten, in the back of my van.

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As I pen this post, my hair is greasy, my shirt is caked in snot smears and curry stains, and I’m in dire need of a shower. It’s been a long and exhausting week of sleepless nights, antibiotic-filled syringes, nebulizer treatments and forgotten hot dogs. But I learned two things about myself this week. Ok, maybe three. One: trust my instincts, no matter how hard my children try to prove me crazy. (I should never have doubted myself… I’ve already raised two girls who are quite skilled in coercion and diversionary tactics, after all.) And Two (and Three): hot dogs and dirty diapers do not resurrect well after three days and three nights of sitting in their own juices.

 

 

0

You Can… I Can… We Can Do This Hard Thing

This week has been a doozy – and for no particular reason. It’s just been a hard one. Maybe it’s because football is nearing mid-season. The grind is wound up and wearing on me.  Maybe it’s because we’ve now completed the first six weeks of school. The kids are wound up and wearing on me.  Maybe it’s because I’m the mother of twin two-year-old boys. The guys are wound up and wearing on me.  Or maybe it’s because sometimes some weeks are just hard.

And if a week has been hard, then generally, that means that our Friday Night under the Lights was doubly hard (well, I guess with twins everything is always doubly hard), so maybe that makes this one quadruply hard. If that’s even a word. My spellcheck doesn’t recognize it and my number skills are more like deficits. When I tried looking quadruply up, the always wise and munificent Google – eager to predict and please — tried to give me quadrupedally as an option – from the word quadruped. As in walking with four legs – which honestly doesn’t fit our night either because the boys are NEVER walking during football games. They’re either being towed in their wagon to the stadium (thank you, Jesus and Uncle Chan) or they’re being hauled by yours truly up and down the stands, straddling and sliding down my hips like I’m the banister and they are Mary Poppins. And that makes us a sextuped — which doesn’t even exist.  My spellcheck tried to change that one to sextuplet – which is some sort of computer land kernel of encouragement reminding me that things could always be worse and that I need to quit wallowing in self-pity. Which I will do… right after I finish my rant.

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The doozy of a week all began with a carefully-placed, hard, little turd in my favorite bra.  Neci, my old-lady dachshund with spiteful tendencies and great aim, was angry once again. This time it was personal, and it was directed at me. No doubt about it. The dung in the D-cup doesn’t lie. (No, that’s a lie. I’m scarcely a B-cup during PMS week, but I digress…) So, that was Sunday.

Next came Monday and my fellas fighting from the time we hit the threshold till the time I reached my threshold and broke out the iPad restrictions. They had thumped each other’s heads with backhoe blades and potty chair bowls (empty, hallelujah!) one time too many. No iPads always hurts me way more than it hurts them, though. Tablet time gives me time to myself. To do laundry or to do dishes or to do nothing (which is honestly what I really, truly need on any given Monday).

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Then came Tuesday and my own stupidity. I forgot the boys’ after school snacks. Or rather, I forgot PART of the boys’ after school snacks. I had their juice boxes (which is good because I don’t think I could’ve creatively acquired apple juice). However, I didn’t notice that we were out of goldfish snacks (I keep a case-full of them in the passenger seat of my van) until I’d picked up the boys, strapped them into their car seats, handed over their juices, reached into the goldfish case, and… THEN I noticed. No goldfish. Nada.

Denying toddlers an afternoon snack is just not something one does. Ever. Like, Never Ever.

I had two choices: listen to the shrieking of my angry, hungry howler monkeys for the eight miles and twenty minutes it takes to get home or forage on the floor of the van for the flotsam and jetsam of previous weeks’ worth of feedings.  There were plenty of remnants to be found, and I figured — while assuredly stale– they were still relatively germ-free. So foraging I went. Crawling on all fours, I became a true quadruped for that five minutes of shameless maternal scrounging. I spelunked through the cavernous undercarriage of bucket seats and hidden compartments in my Chrysler Town & Country (which comes with LOADS of them) and managed to procure enough to quarter-fill a couple of recycled baggies from my lunch sack. Annnnndddd the boys were satisfied. Mommy for the Win!!!

Until Parker dropped his juice box straw.

Nothing says toddler apocalypse like a juice box with no straw.  I had to pull off the road and locate the missing straw in order to stave off the four horsemen and the breaking of the seventh seal of my last nerve.

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If there’s one tiny tidbit of advice I can give to twin boy moms – well, any boy moms, really – never run out of snacks. Boys eat. A lot. From the very beginning. So you’d best become a walking pantry with wholesale-sized sets of snacks. But I’m also here to say that even when you’re well-supplied and they’ve been snacking the entire four quarters of a football game, they will still pick at the pulverized and granular remains of concession stand cotton candy straight off the bleacher steps — and I can guarantee you it’s not as germ-free as the aged, decaying goldfish in your minivan. But what is one to do? I’ve learned not to sweat the small stuff. I’m building their immune systems, one incipient bacterium at a time.fullsizerender

So during the game, I was dealing with a couple of lads strung out on Benadryl (for snot stoppage) and powered by lost-and-found crystallized sucrose — a combination with the mood-altering, stimulant qualities of bath salts. I had to keep them separated most of the night so they wouldn’t chew off each other’s faces. I was absolutely exhausted.

By the time I got home last night at around midnight, my brain and body felt like a hit-and-run victim. While soaking off the carnage of the night and perusing social media in the tub, I found an interview from one of my favorite authors of all time, Barbara Kingsolver. In it, she talks about her favorite phrase, “You can do this hard thing.” It became her mantra for her children as they grew and faced challenges. I really needed to see that because it reminded me that I’ve been given the challenge – let me rephrase – I’ve been gifted the challenge of raising a set of twins at fifty. And I can do this hard thing. I have already raised a set of girls (not twins, but still), and they turned out alright. Well, better than alright, if I may say so myself… so I can do this hard thing.

And speaking of my girls… Kingsolver’s article also shamed me into remembering the kind of week my girls have had.  Bethany is a first-time mom with a teething almost one-year-old. He has had strange rashes, sleepless nights and mysterious projectile vomiting. Her week has been a tornado of trials and I live too far away to be of much help.  And then there’s my oldest.  Caitlin’s week has been a real and true hard week – a week of real and true struggles in a decade of real and true struggles. She is operating in Burns during this, the third month of her fourth year of five surgical residency years. It is one of the hardest rotations in one of the hardest residencies at one of the hardest residency programs in the nation. It is a physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually demanding rotation for her. Yet that is nothing compared to the struggles of her patients in the Burn ICU. They are so sick, so very critical. They themselves are undergoing arguably THE hardest physical, mental, emotional and spiritual pain that exists on our planet. Four patients this week alone have died. Just yesterday, she lost one of her all-time favorite patients; one whom she had been gifted the challenge of working with, on and off, for four years.  The death hit her so hard. It hit their whole team so hard. They wept and wept. But it was nothing compared to the patient’s family’s sense of loss — of their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual pain.

Yet another reminder – and this time not from Google , but from God — that there is relativity in all things, and that it’s time to pull up my mom jeans and quit my bellyaching and just plain do this damn hard thing.

So for all of you moms out there (twin or first-time or any-and-all-kinds), struggling with the juggling… for all of you teachers out there, chafing from the grading … for all of you football wives out there, going under from the upheaval of the season… for all of you surgical residents out there, defeated from doing daily battle with death and disease… for ALL of you women out there, doing your utmost every day to build a stronger, kinder, gentler, healthier, smarter, better world for all of mankind: we can do this hard thing.

We. Can. Do. This. Hard. Thing.

We can and we will.

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For my Four Babies. And my Thousands More…

Motherhood is a fearsome and wondrous thing. It is a paradox of ginormous proportions, full of sacrifice and salvation, hazards and hallelujahs. It requires strictness and softness, discipline and wild abandon. It is both bright and beautiful, and dark and draining. It is savagely, insanely strong, and it is fragile and insanely frightening.

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Right now in my life, I am two kinds of mother. I am the up close and personal and the long-distance devotional. Up close and personal motherhood demands wide arms and an even wider lap. There must be snuggles, and tickle monsters, and story time chairs, the occasional cupcake for breakfast, lots of crusty snot kisses and all manner of privacy lost. Long-distance devotional motherhood brings late night phone calls, biweekly FaceTimes, and random text marathons. There are Easter, birthday and Christmas goodies to be mailed, numerous road trips to be made and blessed reunions to be had. Both types of motherhood come with daily prayers, loads of laughter and plenty of tears. But the recipe for each is unconditional love for all of eternity.

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This week, after reading several heartbreaking and anger-rousing personal narratives by my students, I have been reminded – once again for perhaps the two hundredth time or more as a teacher – that my definition of motherhood is not everyone’s definition of motherhood. And this crushes my mother’s heart to its very core.

In my sixteen years as a secondary teacher, I’ve seen battered teens, homeless teens, molested teens and drug-addicted teens. I’ve seen young adults haunted by all manner of familial demons. They’ve ridden the storms of failed marriages, felt the trauma of ripped families. They’ve suffered the stigma and shame of home evictions. They’ve borne the weight of sibling deaths and parental suicide. Some are bitter; others blame themselves. Some are searching for love in proverbial dead ends. Others are hardened to love and are angry. If they are lucky, the anger is redirected into extra-curriculars that are sanctioned by society and school. But that’s not always the case. So many young men and women have taken up the cross of rejection and dejection, denial and guilt at a very young, very impressionable age.

As a mother, I am not blameless. Not by a long shot. I flung my own two beautiful daughters into the howling, painful abyss of a failed marriage. They know all too well the agony of a home ripped to ruin and the struggle to balance a broken family. I take my job as mother quite seriously, I always have, and yet I have done irreparable harm. Even the most careful and conscientious among us does. Add into the mix all of the hardened, the jaded, the marred, the scarred, the vicious and the cruel mothers out there, and I’m amazed the world still has any goodness and grace left in it. I honestly am.

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Motherhood is tough. I know it. I own it. At times it feels impossible. So much is out of my control. Then on top of motherhood, add the calling of teacher — with so many more lives entrusted to my care, along with so many more restrictions, so many more unknowns and so many uncontrollable origins and angles and — suddenly — I’m overwhelmed, I’m terrified, and I’m inept.

This week, two former students — now mothers themselves– suffered mightily at the hands of a callous universe. One was a vibrant young mother taken way too soon, leaving behind a precious, precocious toddler. I taught this young mother. I knew her. Her life was hard. Her path was littered with difficulties, with uncertainty, with confusion. She was torn asunder in the push and pull of it all. She left Woodland’s halls and my classroom walls several years back, and I immediately lost touch. Did I do enough? Could I have helped? I’m haunted by my inadequacies. She was bright. She was talented. She had such potential. I feel that I failed her.

The second is a beautiful, strong, spiritual mother who has had to face more in her young life than any mama sixty years her senior should ever have to face. In just over a year and a half, she has lost two of her three children to an incurable and mysterious illness. Twice she has held tiny hands and kissed tiny noses while praying mammoth prayers amidst tubes and wires and ports and invasive medical procedures. And twice the prayers and the tests have accomplished naught. This week she said goodbye to her beautiful baby girl. Her wide arms and wide lap have suffered two unspeakable losses. I can’t fathom her pain. I can scarcely breathe when I even imagine her loss, her agonizing, mother’s grief. Yet her faith has never waivered. Her strength and her confidence in God and His Will is always intact. Again, I am haunted by my own inadequacies. I am a mother, and I am a teacher, but I am nowhere near the mother and teacher that this young woman is. I never had the privilege of teaching her, but she has taught me so very much about the grace and love and strength of a good mother. I am in awe of her.

Motherhood is a fierce and fragile and frightening thing. I pray every day that I am doing my absolute all to nurture and mold these four precious gifts I have been given. It is a tall order. Two are out of my nest and far from my loving arms. I can’t wrap them up in hugs and kisses anymore. Not physical ones — at least not very often. But they make me proud on a daily basis. And I worry over them on a daily basis. And while my arms and lap aren’t THAT wide, my love IS – it is deep and wide enough to travel the distance so that my girls feel it when they need it. It is always with them. I hope they never forget that.

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And then there are these boys. Whew! I’m new to boys. They challenge my patience and my perseverance every day. They keep me hopping, that’s for certain. But my arms and lap are here for the here and now, always ready for a snuggle, and a story, and to wipe away snot.

And then, there are my students. For I find teaching to be a responsibility closely akin to motherhood. So I suppose I am THREE kinds of mothers right now in my life. And my students challenge me daily, as well.  Can I ever be enough? Do enough? Care enough? to truly be a help in this, their hour of need?

To be given the opportunity to mother my babies, both born to me and gifted to me in the classroom, is a responsibility I take very seriously. I try every day to be worthy. Some days I fail. I would like to believe that on many days, I win. I pray that I have enough. Enough love to show them that they are beautiful and perfect and worth only the very best. Enough strength to offer stability in their tilting, whirling worlds in Dallas, in Knoxville, in Euharlee, and in Woodland High. Enough joy to help them find sunshine beyond their personal raging storms. Enough wisdom to teach life and not just lessons, so they might learn independence and discipline, autonomy and connectivity, outspokenness and humility. Lord, help me to have enough, to be enough, to love enough.

For all of my babies. For them all.

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An Exercise in Fertility

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Three years ago this week was a big week for us. Huge. Monumental, even. On August 3, 2013, bright and early on a Sunday morning we drove the forty some-odd miles down to the Georgia Perimeter to Georgia Reproductive Specialists because it was egg retrieval day and time for Mike to make his dutiful “deposit.” We were both nervous wrecks. It was a seminal moment – on so many levels. The other day, when reminiscing, I borrowed heavily from one of my favorite poets and penned a little “Red Wheelbarrow” parody:

so much depends

upon

a sterile dixie cup

glazed with hard

swimmers

beside the petri

dish

Because so much did depend on that day and that cup and that petri dish. And luckily, Mike’s swimmers were reliable little guys. And don’t get me started on the generous and steadfast nature of our donor and her eggs. I wish there were a way to explain to you and to her how truly indebted we are for her incredible sacrifice. I know it wasn’t easy. She endured hormone shots and blood draws, ovarian hyper-stimulation and surgical egg retrieval — which I understand was hardly, as the old song goes, “Easy Like Sunday Morning”– which was when she drove to our clinic, just after daybreak, to tender our eggs. She is my hero… and I will never know who she is.

But I know that she is strong. I know that she is selfless. I know that she went through pain and agony and tremendous risk to incubate new life for a couple she didn’t know, would never even meet. Ever. And she delivered – like the Stork; like Santa Claus; like the sunrise; like the rainbow . She delivered little bundles of promise and beauty and perfection and joy aspirated through a needle into plastic culture dishes. Science and nature. Miracles and medicine. Magic and mathematics. To God be the Glory – and talk about Amazing Grace. Our donor has it. She lived it. She is it.

We had arranged with GRS to do a shared cycle, which meant that the clinic would receive half of the eggs she produced and we would receive the other half. It was kind of a BOGO deal with a twist: Buy One, Give One — the only IVF plan we could feasibly afford on teachers’ salaries. It was a gamble that paid off beautifully, thanks to our donor and the quality of her fierce follicles. We ended up with five beautifully round and robust little embryos. And it turns out we only needed two. Our donor was THAT good. And to give credit where credit’s due, so was Mike’s baby batter.

We received our first pictures of our boys on August 8, 2013. Their bubbly little personalities shining through, even in that first portrait. Every anniversary, I’ve stacked that first photo on top of a current one, and this year is no exception. It’s amazing how two such distinct and brilliant little people can come from such microscopic origins.

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Parker Isaac and Tate Michael.

We knew we wanted names with symbolic heft. From the moment we decided to pursue IVF, we christened a boy Isaac, as a nod to the grace of God and the Old Testament story of Abraham and Sarah. If you aren’t familiar or in case you’ve forgotten, it is the tale of God’s promise to a barren couple that they would have a son, even though Sarah was ninety at the time. If not for modern medicine and miracles, I would’ve been beyond childbearing age myself (though nowhere near 90, thank you very much). So Isaac was a given from the get go. We also knew we wanted a Michael — to pay homage to Mike and his father and grandfather before him. And Tate was my grandmother’s brother and a name I have always loved, so that was an easy one, too. The fourth one, though, was a bit harder to come by. We rooted and rummaged through Nameberry, voting and vetoing as our little guys grew from the size of newts to arctic puffins before finally deciding on Parker — a tribute to Mike’s Korean heritage, where Park is a common surname. So there. We had names. Now to decide who would be whom…

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We didn’t want the firstborn to have Michael attached to his name for a very important reason. There is a tradition in many Asian cultures (and to be fair, Judeo-Christian societies as well) where the Number One son receives the birthright and the blessings and Number Two plays second fiddle (or second gayageum, I guess, if we’re talking Korean here…) Anyways, we were more than willing to part ways with such unjust, blatant favoritism. So we knew that Baby B would be Tate Michael and receive the honor of his father’s name. And Baby A would be Parker Isaac and receive the honor of biblical promise. Both boys would receive beautifully perfect namesakes.

Now apparently the boys battled it out in utero to determine who would be — not firstborn — but last. In typical “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” fashion, Tate, who had been Baby A (which simply means, the baby closest to the cervix) for more than seven months, scrambled up my ribcage like a set of monkey bars at the last available second and grabbed tight, therein winning the title of Tate Michael. Parker, who had been Baby B for almost the duration of the pregnancy saw the world a whopping one minute earlier than his brother and won the moniker, Parker Isaac.

In keeping with that Korean surname first name, Parker’s eyes are more Asian, like dark-roasted almonds. His smile is deep and wide and his skin is the color of moonstones. He is our gentle giant, giver of bear hugs, open-mouthed kisses and truck trivia. He can tell a backhoe from an excavator, a car transporter from a semi and he LOVES to share his knowledge. And he is his father’s mini me.

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Tate, on the other hand, looks like me (or at least that’s what people tell me, and I’ll take it– even if it is technically impossible). And just like me, he loves books. From the time he could clutch one, he’s had a book in his hand. And a song on his lips. He sings from sunup to sundown – or at least AT sunup and sundown because we hear it on the monitor. There is no sweeter alarm clock than hearing such classic toddler tunes as “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Wheels on the Bus” … although hearing them at 2:20 AM if he accidentally wakes up can be a wee bit spooky.

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So this week is always a huge week for us. On August 3, 2013 Mike did his fatherly duty with a few minutes of hard labor and a plastic covered remote control. Five fizzy, fertilized, egg-splitting days later, on August 8th, our beloved fertility doc, in his white coat and hair net, siphoned our embryos into the core of my being, where they immediately took up residency in my heart and soul. I became a mother again for the third and fourth time. And for the first time to boys. Mike became a father. The girls became sisters to brothers.

August 8th is legendary.

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Twinnis Elbow and other TWINges

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I have twinnis elbow — a malady common to mothers who perform heavy lifting of twin toddlers, repeatedly. The condition manifests when twin boys mature to the solid, hefty sum of thirty-two pounds and still love their mama’s arms as much as when they were newborn lightweights. It is a painful and beautiful thing. My specific ailment originated from a robust bedtime routine… one I refuse to give up, regardless of the carnage.

I am one who believes in the sanctity of routines. The girls had them — bedtime ones, bath time ones, weekend and weekday ones. And while theirs were enforced, I was a bit more flexible with them than with the boys – as was my mind and body some twenty-three years ago… Because according to twin parents everywhere (and if you’ve survived twins, you’re my go to guru; otherwise, just walk away) without routines,  I would be nuttier than our ultrasound on gender reveal day. (No, that’s not quite accurate because on gender reveal day, one of the boys’ turtles was shy and tried to disguise itself as a hamburger — ultrasound speak for boy and girl parts. Which means we thought we had both Almond Joy and Mounds babies (remember the jingle? Almond Joy’s got nuts. Mounds don’t.) for approximately two weeks. But I digress…

From 4:30 until around 6:00 there’s no real set schedule. And it almost kills me and my twinnis elbow, but there’s not much that can be done about it. There is a constant frantic flurry of me heaving boys in and out of car seats, up and down my hip from stove top to watch pots cooking, to sink side to wash hands a gazillion times –because either they love the feeling of running water on their hands like every other toddler on the planet, or they are developing their father’s OCD –and then there’s more launching into and out of high chairs. By 6:00, my elbow is a fiery fulcrum… And this is where routine comes in to both  help and to hinder… it helps my sanity and hinders my joint health.

From 6:00 until bedtime, the routine is solid and unwavering (except on Friday nights during football season…). They get their tablet time from 6-6:50. It is a welcome respite for all three of us. They love their iPads, and when I say love, I mean nothing comes between them and such youtube favorites as “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and any and all fire engine assembly videos. I mean nothing.

Like literally, I mean nothing to them when they are plugged in.

But that’s all well and good because iPad time is when I get laundry, dishes, and maybe a couple of blog paragraphs done. But it’s also the time when my elbow gets the opportunity to cool down. And you quarterbacks, pitchers and moms know it’s never good for your muscles to relax and cool down, mid-game. There’s a reason heated arm sleeves are worn on the sidelines… Raising twins is a heavy contact sport. I may need to invest in some occupational equipment…

Anyways… once the iPads are put away, the heavy lifting begins again. Carrying the boys, with arched backs and flailing legs (that’s them AND me, by the way) into the tub, out of the tub, onto the bed and into PJs as tight as sausage casings can all do a number on your humerus hinge, folks. And it’s not funny.

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The boys go to bed at 7:30 pm — without fail. Because if they don’t get a full eleven to twelve hours of sleep at night, their tantrums would register on the Richter scale. So at 7:20, after they’ve been bathed and brushed, we head to the kitchen for a rich, sweet, conventional-and-unconventional-all-at-the-same-time tradition that will be fondly remembered by all of us—including my achey joints. We cop a squat in front of: the dishwasher. Why, I have no idea. It just sort of happened once and has kept happening forever after. So now, in keeping with the sanctity of routine, it can’t be changed. Therefore, the three of us huddle on the kitchen floor, sip our warm milk and read our bedtime stories. Tate usually picks a nursery rhyme book that simply MUST be sung, and Parker picks a truck book. So we sing one, read one, and then it’s off to bed — and the closing ritual that really delivers the one-two punch that nearly puts me out of commission every night.

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Parker’s little bedtime routine is fairly simple. He gathers up all of his various and sundry fire trucks, and then it’s a quick snuggle, a goodnight kiss, and in he goes. Even Tate’s nightly ritual SEEMS innocent enough. He scoops up his books, two or three at a time, along with his Mickey Mouse. But then comes the The Holding Pattern — the single-most sustained piece of heavy lifting I do all day. Tate wants me to stand at his crib and rock him in my arms for a full four minutes and forty-seven seconds while Jewel sings Brahm’s Lullaby. It is the best of times and it is the worst of times. It is best because Tate snuggles and nuzzles and inhales deeply. (No lie. He sniffs long and he sniffs hard. He smells me. Weird, but precious.) And then he pats me on the back until the song ends. If it “ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” then the fat lady is my left radial nerve, and boy, she’s hitting a High C by the time Jewel is through.

And speaking of fat ladies, a quick side note… I added insult to my twinnis injury yesterday afternoon while dressing for football pictures. Instead of wrestling my customary twin opponents (I left them to their father), I attempted to wrestle my fat ass into a pair of Spanx. I headed into the privacy of my bathroom, praying for a little leniency from a very worthy foe. I’ve gone the distance with Spanx before and it’s never an easy battle. This time was no exception, but with my injured arm, the battle was bloodier than ever (in the oh-so-English sense of the word.) Let me tell ya, these undergarments really hit below the belt. I wriggled and pulled and kneaded and squished, my tendon screaming in anguish. The Spanx tightened and tortured, mangled and marred– and at one point, the slimming intimates very nearly snapped off a bit of my tender intimates right along with my tendon, but eventually I found myself hermetically sealed in a cruel and sadistic nylon cocoon. Success!! But at what cost? For a slimmer, but disabled, silhouette? My body is not as young and taut as it once was. Nor are its muscles and joints as supple and stretchy. So battling gravity and age with weaponry that hurts more than it helps makes zero sense. Goodbye Spanx, and good riddance. I’m saving my elbow for the heave-ho of my junior welterweights. Because if anything is going to take this body down, it’ll be the ones that I love, not the ones that I hate.

The boys and their bedtime routines create carnage on my body, that much is true. But I wouldn’t change a thing about their bedtime ritual. Not a single, solitary thing. The twins are worth all of the TWINges they bring along the way. Because we are creating memories. Sweet memories. And sweet memories become kisses from the past. These memories are worth the pain. And that makes all the sense in the world to me. So night and sleep tight, my Bug and Bear. Mommy would give her left elbow and right wrist (but that’s another story) for you. Nightly. Forever and ever.

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Rise and Grind: Challenges of a football widow

God and football, that’s what I was raised on in Texas. The only thing stronger than the lure of the lights on Friday Night was the alter call in church on Sunday morning. For me, church was always bookended with football. Coin tosses started the weekend and the Cowboys finished it. I became the devoted disciple of Roger Staubach, Tom Landry, and my next-door neighbor, a high school safety and hometown hero. For me, the two most beautiful sounds on this planet earth will always be the clash of helmets on the gridiron and a choir singing Amazing Grace.

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Now being a football fan and being a football wife are two totally and completely opposite entities. I am still a fan, but I am also now a wife. Allow me to explain how that changes things… As of 7:45 yesterday morning, summertime ended. Mike started back to school, and I start tomorrow. (Ugh.) I am officially a football widow and my little lads have become football orphans. Again.

Every weekday from here on out, Mike will leave us around 6:30 AM and he’ll make it home just in time (if we’re lucky) to give the boys their warm milk and kisses for bed. And this will go on from here until — we sincerely hope— the middle of December and a state championship. This is our goal. This is our life. This is our truth. A half a year, folks. A half a year of mothering without Daddy. Of navigating housework and tantrums, mealtime and bath time — and sometimes even bedtime — without Daddy. Of cooking with tired, hangry kids hanging off my belt loops or clinging to my ankles as I navigate from fridge to oven, to sink, to stovetop (which is good, I guess, because it cuts back on my use of the dust mop). Of juggling soapy, slippery, uncooperative boys from tub to towel all by my lonesome. Of refereeing shoving matches and toddler torture while maintaining our laundry and my sanity.

There will be days — many of them — when I will wonder if I really have what it takes to be the mother of toddler twins and the wife of a football coach. If I have enough patience and perseverance to give my boys all that they need to feel loved and cared for in the midst of an absent father. If I have enough courage and strength to support Mike — to encourage and love and cheer him on in the midst of what will feel like an endless drought here at home. If I have what it takes to bolster my daughters’ confidence and be there for them, despite the distance and the exhaustion and the feelings of my own inadequacies. If I have what it takes to be an effective English teacher with a gazillion essays to grade, along with a gazillion students to nurture. If I have what it takes to be a responsible and caring daughter who does more than just check in on her parents with a quick phone call. If I have what it takes to be a loving and generous sister and friend who supports and motivates when the need arises. And I truly don’t know if I’ll have what it takes to maintain this blog any longer. I’ll barely have time to let my dog out too pee during football season. So you see, to be anywhere near effective in any of these roles will just plain seem impossible on some, if not most, days. I know, because I’ve been here before. This ain’t my first rodeo.

But in a way, it feels brand new. This year, Mike is coaching with the Cartersville Purple Hurricanes, a winning program both on and off the field. The staff and players have made it a point to embrace not only Mike, but also the boys and me. There is tradition and there is family here. Lots of teams say that, but with the Canes, it’s not just lip service — they mean it.

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Last year, I spent a very lonely season, just me and the boys, a stroller loaded with a pantry full of snacks, and a haunting suspicion that in the whole, grand scheme of things, no one on the staff besides Mike gave a damn about whether or not we were ok. I saw on my Facebook news feed this past week a story about a rental car employee who helped a mother of twins hold one of her sons while processing her paperwork. A simple gesture — most people wouldn’t even consider it newsworthy. But that mother of twins considered it monumental. Because, you see, when you are out by yourself in public with twin babies, every single thing you try to do feels impossibly dangerous. For example, the other night I took the boys to Ingles on my own. When we came out it was raining and there were cars pulling in and out from every direction. I was trying to keep the boys dry by shrugging an umbrella between my shoulder and ear while holding their hands and trying to open the van door… and then I had to keep one boy wedged against the wet van with my knee so that I knew he wasn’t running into traffic while I strapped his brother into his seat… Like I said, the tiniest tasks for most people become monumentally, impossibly dangerous for mothers of young twins. So last season, as the boys and I hunkered down in the far corner of an end zone because we couldn’t dare navigate stadium risers on our own, as we dodged band instruments and blazing-fast receivers in search of touchdown passes, we would’ve appreciated a small, simple gesture such as the one that rental car employee made. A gesture that family members wouldn’t hesitate to make — but on that team, there was no family.

This season, though, is already so very different. This season, there are potluck dinners in the field house after Friday Night games. There is connectivity and support amongst the wives – from a welcome note in the mail the first week, to season survival baskets, to group texts for reminders and updates. Oh, and just one more small, but significant item that completely seals the deal for me and shouts that we’re home. Every home game on Friday nights, under the glow of those stadium lights, in the midst of thousands of devout fans singing along, the band plays Amazing Grace. God and football. I’ve come full circle. My faith in family has been restored.

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Because at Cartersville, they truly know and understand how the game can make or break not just the players and coaches, but wives and families, as well. You see, in football culture, there is something called The Grind. It has to do with owning and embracing the hard work and brutal sacrifice that football demands. It has to do with mental and physical toughness, with drive and desire and deep-seated commitment, with privilege and with pride. The Grind weeds out the unworthy. It leaves the weak in the dust. It is well understood that for any team to be successful, every single one of its members must embrace The Grind. Because what seems insurmountable as an individual is totally and completely attainable when you are an invested member of a team. And as wives, we signed up for The Grind too. We are fighting the good fight and we are giving our all. We surge with the highs and we batten down with the lows. We get the goose bumps, as well as the goose eggs — just like every other participant. Cartersville is the first and only program I’ve ever been a part of where the wives and families are truly acknowledged as being willing participants in The Grind. It’s more than nice to have a team acknowledge the wives as a part of it all – and not simply after it’s all been said and done at the tail end of a speech at the banquet (every football wife knows the line I’m talking about…).

So goodbye, summer and hello, fall. It’s time to Rise and Grind.

But before I sign off, I just want to make certain that all of you know how much I really, truly do still (and forevermore will) love the game — despite the hardships of the season. Because it’s the love of the game that keeps all football widows going. It’s the Friday Nights that sustain us, that feed our souls from week to week with glorious, sensuous bounty:

It’s the home crowd blazoned with team colors and spirit. It’s the flavors of fall — the boiled peanuts and corndogs, dill pickles and coffee. The blur of a perfectly passed ball from pocket to end zone. That delicious thump when the kicker hits the sweet spot and nails a 52 yard field goal. A flawless on-side kick and the ensuing chaos of the opposing team. The apple-crisp nights with the chant of the crowds in the air and a win on the books. That fluttering belly tickle I feel when I catch my guy’s wink as he heads to the coach’s box. And finally, the very best of the Friday Night feels – that proud, tight familiar swell of my heart when our own little guys storm the field with the rest of the team families after the game, running headlong into Daddy’s waiting arms. Now THAT makes this whole widow and orphan thing worth it. Time to Rise and Grind.daddysarms

 

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The Convergence of the Twain

The renowned poet Thomas Hardy once wrote a little diddy about an iceberg and an ocean liner called, “The Convergence of the Twain.” Twain is an archaic word for “two,” and since I’m an archaic mother of two, I find it an accurate description of this week’s events. Suffice it to say two tough and sturdy bodies on a collision course can leave a heck of a lot of damage and debris in their wake. Just when I was starting to feel like I might actually have a grip on this whole Twin Mom Thing, just when I had the audacity to tackle homemade baklava and the final bits of housecleaning before Lauren’s shower, someone cued the Jaws theme song and piped in “My Heart Will Go On.” I witnessed my best laid plans get laid to rest in rapid succession; they faltered, fell, and flat-lined under the sharp and steady onslaught of toddler twins.

There was no red sky of morning to make me take warning. But there were lots of torrential tears and tantrums from pretty much the moment they woke up until the moment they laid down for the past three days. No lie. No exaggeration. I swear it. I was ready for wine at noon every day, since their whine was flowing so freely. But I managed to abstain – at least until after I put them to bed, which has shown remarkable restraint on my part. Just saying.

fightingboys

There were so many fights: fights over books and dump trucks, socks and cereal, seats and sippy cups. There were even fights over whether or not “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” or “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” was the appropriate dinner music to accompany pot roast. There was hair pulling and there were shoving matches. It’s only a matter of time before there will be fistfights. I know it’s coming. And I know a lot of this territory comes with being a Boy Mom, but I also know, that a great big majority of it comes from just plain being a Twin Mom. I’ve had singletons. I know there is a tremendous difference between parenting two, three years apart and parenting two, one minute apart. And while, yes I had girls first, and yes, girls are calmer, and yes, they sit and color or sit and play with their baby dolls, and yes, they nurture more than they annihilate, and yes, they might be made of sugar and spice… I’m also here to say that, NO, that “everything nice” line is total and complete bullshit. While hair pulling is their weapon of choice, they, too, can throw a really mean punch. And they are consummate, bonafide professionals when it comes to bickering and spatting.

So I feel fairly confident that my boys are not simply being boys – because unless my girls were “just being boys,” I’ve lived through all of these stages already – just not at the same time at the same age. And that, my friends, makes all the difference in the world. Because as a wise woman once told me, “One is one and two is ten.” And she was spot on. With two to three years between kids– heck even nine months in between – someone is always older and can (possibly) be reasoned with. But there’s absolutely, positively no reasoning with them when they are at the exact same stage at the exact same instant. None whatsoever. I am completely and utterly out of my league.

I used to think I could handle twins. After all, I’m a teacher. If I am the successful teacher of ninety-some-odd squirrely seniors, roughly the same age (most of them, anyways), with roughly the same burning desire for instant gratification hardwired into their cerebral cortices, I should be able to handle twins, right? I thought I had this. And weeks like this one have shown me how wrong I truly was.

Almost every day has been the same this week, so I’ll give you a quick overview of Tuesday, the start of the maelstrom. By 11:50 AM July 19th I was still in my PJs – for the third day in a row. I’d managed to get one-half of my precious pair dressed, and that was pretty much all I’d accomplished. (By the way, I include things like changing diapers and brushing teeth on my checklist because with twins, every single success deserves a cross out. It’s a mental boost. And mental boosts are huge when you’re dealing in deficits the way I’m dealing in deficits.) So one-half of my duo was dressed – and by that I mean that each boy was HALF dressed. There’d been fierce negotiations with Parker over which motorized vehicle shirt he would wear for the day. Ex-nay on the racecar shirt, the double-decker bus shirt and the motorcycle shirt. I finally got a go-ahead on the fire truck shirt, only to be met with a roadblock on shorts. Tate then took his brother’s lead and stepped in to argue that Minion PJ pants are way better than fire truck shirts, and that unless he could wear his Minion PJ pants, he would just lie in the floor and scream, come what may. So may came. And then June. And there we were, damn near at the end of July, and we still didn’t have a general consensus. So I gave in. I felt like a terrible parent – but I hear it’s all about small victories (at least that’s what I tell myself). So Tate wore Minion PJ pants with no shirt, and Parker wore a red fire truck shirt, with no pants…

Which brings me to my next Twin Mom Fail – although this one might fit best under the more general Boy Mom Fail category. It’s the All Hands on Dick phenomenon. Sorry, I just couldn’t mince words here… You see, Parker hates shorts because they hinder his access – his veto of shorts was quite calculated. So herein lies my query to all you Boy Moms out there… please, please tell me when your sons started clutching their crotches and holding onto their wee willies like they’ll walk away. I know boys have handles and therefore they feel the need to … handle … but good grief! At age two and a quarter? And what do I do about it? Do I ignore it? Do I slap his hand? Do I duct tape his diaper? Which, by the way, wouldn’t do the trick because if he can’t gain access from above, he goes in by way of a leg hole. (Once my mom thought he was horribly chafed when she changed him. Nope. He’d just manhandled himself while eating spaghettios.) Please, please, PLEASE tell me what I should do about Parker and his… exploration. Quick. Before Tate discovers the tantalizing territory of his South Pole.

parkerpants

So, here I sit, two days later, still in my PJs. But you can’t tell me I can’t learn from my mistakes. I may still be in my PJs, but today, Thursday at 4:30 PM, so are the boys. (Parker can’t plunder his nether-regions if he’s in a zippered onesie). Mike has come and gone… on his way to his coaches’ retreat and away from storm center.  The shower will be here in two days. Boo Boo and Bentley are here. Jo Jo and GiGi arrive tonight. Cay Cay comes in tomorrow at noon. And my house and I look like a trauma scene, thanks to the Convergence of the Twain.

I was told once that I shouldn’t complain because I sound ungrateful when I do– that I am blessed beyond all measure and that I should remember that. And I do. Every, single second of every, single day. Even while I am rocking in a corner, a total and complete hot mess, trying to control a hot temper sparked by yet another tantrum – this time over which boy gets to sit in Baby Bentley’s exersaucer – which he inherited from my boys, and which they NEVER played with when it was theirs. Even then, I know and understand that my blessings are abundant. They, quite literally, are chasing me down. So I take a time out. I put myself in a corner. I count to ten, I pen a blog or two, and then I follow Dory’s lead (another woman with mental deficits), and I just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming — as I get knocked upside the noggin by the wreckage of the latest convergence of the twain. I’ve got this. I do. As surely as Parker has his zipper down and his rod in hand…

meandboys

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