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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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A Woman More Precious than Pearls

I’ve told y’all before how my grandmother saved me.  She pulled me from the belly of the whale and brought me into light and love.  Well, today I’m here to tell you that Parker and Tate’s grandmother has saved me, too.  I’m starting to think that when a woman becomes a grandmother, some sort of transformative power – some mysterious, ministering pearl — gets planted into the center of her soul and settles, multiplies. And waits.

From the instant that the boys were pulled from my ginormous belly, my mother Rosalee, (hereafter, GiGi), has been a Godsend — an absolute blessing in grandmotherly garb. (Well, not really. She hardly owns anything grandmotherly. She is quite fond of leopard prints, fast cars, and shoe sales.) But she is a Godsend. That much is true.

gigiandbabes

The one thing that all twin parents told us from the get go – and that we, as twin parents, tell all new twin parents we know – is that you can never have enough help.  (Remember my favorite proverb, one is one and two is ten?)

And my mom, without fail, has always been willing to lend a hand with our proverbial ten. She has driven one hour, one way, every single week for the last two-and-a-half years.  (Math’s not my strong suit, but that translates to a helluva lot of travel time, people.)

In the beginning, during the insane sixteen months of scant sleep and even scanter sanity, she arrived at our doorstep twice a week, often bringing food and always staying overnight.

I recall a couple of critical nights when she and my sweet Bestie came and took the night shift so that Mike and I could get a little shut-eye. Now that the boys are a little more self-reliant (and finally sound sleepers), she’s weaned it down to once a week — though she always still stays the night. And the boys and I adore her for it. Especially during football season. She brings calm and conversation and highly capable assistance to our lonely nights without Daddy. Her sacrifices do not go unnoticed.

gigileopard

So let me tell you a little about our GiGi. She has a blonde bob that she sweeps to the side, a speedy, sleek convertible for country roads, and — at last count — eleven themed Christmas trees. She’s quite the eclectic personality.

She hails from the backwoods South of cotton and coal mines, loves Broadway musicals, and interior design.  She drinks sprite mimosas (who needs champagne?) and can move massive furniture single-handed up flights of staircases where most men would require assistance.

It is from GiGi that I get my cooking skills, my temperament (easy-going, most days), and my fight (we can smolder, unchecked, for days until something sparks us and then we can burn down a whole forest).

And if I’m tossing around tree metaphors here, then she’s bound to be a bonsai – well-coiffed and quite compact. That’s one thing I don’t get from my mama…

The boys ADORE their GiGi. She makes their toast with honey, she gives great snuggles and second helpings, and, in keeping with Parker’s obsession over motorized vehicles, she has gadgets and gizmos aplenty. She’s got go karts and golf carts galore. You want automobiles? She’s got twenty (no, not really, but she does have a few in her stable). She’s our pint-sized GiGi in leopard print and convertible ride.

Sadly, during football season, we don’t make it to her place often.  The only day we have with Daddy is Saturday, so we tend to stick close to home and him.  But that doesn’t stop GiGi from coming to us.

This week she arrived for Trick or Treating – and we absolutely couldn’t have done it without her.  And that’s no lie – that’s not even an exaggeration. Daddy had football, and Mommy had a strict moral code.  You simply do not go door to door and collect candy if you don’t also hand out candy at your own front door. It’s a weird little ethical idiosyncrasy of mine. There are too many takers in this world, and a definite shortage of givers. So, as for me and mine, we will do our best to balance out the universe, one snack-size Snickers at a time.

So GiGi gave out candy, while the boys and I traipsed our street… eventually. But first we had to get the boys to wear their costumes — and we had a slight problem. Parker was supposed to be a firetruck, and Tate was supposed to be an Itsy Bitsy Spider (handpicked by them, mind you, from the Pottery Barn catalogue). But apparently it’s not just communism that only works on paper. Add costumes to that list.  Tate had a meltdown – a full-blown, chubby-cheeked, toddler Chernobyl. He wanted to wear the firetruck, too.

firetruck

Now I blame myself. I really should’ve known better. Truly. No matter what we do, Mike and I always, always, always buy two of the same thing, which doesn’t stop the boys from fighting, but still… But this time, just this once, I thought it would be different.

Which was simply stupid of me because I also should’ve known that when it comes to any sort of “different” duds the boys don’t adjust well — Tate in particular.  He has a hint of his father’s OCD in him.

For instance, during Cartersville’s Homecoming week about a month ago, the boys’ day care mapped out a fun-filled week of spirit days. Monday brought us silly sock day – so seemingly fun and harmless, yes?

“That’s a negative, ghost rider. The pattern [was too] full.”

Because, apparently in my obsessively compulsive Tate Bug’s mind, funky, mismatched, divergently-patterned socks is just way too excessive for his sensibilities. There was absolutely no way he was wearing one olive green dinosaur sock and one bright orange monster sock. Not with a sweet plaid button up and khaki shorts, thank you very much.

It took chocolate chip cookies for breakfast and a subtle sleight of feet to get them on unnoticed.  Then came Hat Day, not nearly as psychologically damaging as silly socks, but again, not well received.  And then came total anarchy with Pajama Day. It nearly did us all in – and not for the reason you’re thinking. This time, they both EMBRACED the concept. Like totally and completely. Because Minion PJs should be worn to school each and every day. Forever and Ever. Amen.

pjday

So our recent track record with strange and unusual attire has not been stellar. And to be perfectly honest, this time I don’t think it was that Tate necessarily wanted to wear the firetruck so much as he didn’t want to slip the spider’s large, dark, fuzzy cephalothorax over his head. I think he’s a wee bit claustrophobic. Convinced that fear was the problem, GiGi and I tried getting Tate to step into his costume… and it was still a no-go.

But then I got to thinking – the boys probably didn’t understand what Halloween really involves — the seemingly endless supply of sweets, as well as the sweet freedom of walking smack down the center of the street.  I mean, when does a toddler ever get that privilege?

Therefore, GiGi and I, along with the ready and willing assistance of brother Parker, modeled some serious Trick or Treating skills, complete with ringing of doorbell and distribution of suckers. It took no time at all before Tate was fully ensconced in spider finery and ready for the open road — which in all honestly, probably held greater sway than the candy treats in the whole scenario…

So that makes TWO ways the boys and I couldn’t have done Halloween without GiGi. She distributed candy to the masses – and I mean MASSES of little ghouls and goblins– AND she helped us navigate the treacherous landscape of weird wardrobe angst.

gigicostume

My little costumed adventurers only trekked to eight neighbor’s houses before we set our sights toward home. The houses are far apart on our street, and the boys had plodded purposefully to each one with confidence, only to find themselves speechless and shy at the doorway. I had managed to coax a fist-muffled “Trick or Treat” out of both boys every time, but still, eight was plenty.

As we made our way through the hordes, Parker and Tate spied GiGi distributing treats amidst a crowd of kiddos in costume. They instantly picked up speed, their plastic pumpkins practically careening off felted kneecaps and showering the street with treats.

“I found you, GiGi! I found you, GiGi!” — as if she were a long lost treasure, and they alone understood her import. But that is not true.

I, too, understand her import.  I truly, truly do. For she is far more precious than pearls. And boy does she have them — pearls of wisdom and truth and love and hope and energy and time and joy and peace… they pour out of her. She has shared those pearls with us so very generously and so very faithfully for the past two-and-a-half years. GiGi’s worth simply cannot be measured. And my humble thanks can never be payment enough. But still, I offer them up in this month of Thanksgiving.

Thank you.

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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.

nursing

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.

34weeks

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.

dogearedscar

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.

desk

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

 

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I’ve Lived Through That Hell, and I’m Not Going Back Again.

I’m just going to put this out there again.  So many of us are strong. Are resilient. Have overcome so much and will continue on in our quest for equality…

me

Frailty, thy name is NOT woman… even though I was programmed to believe so.  And so have, apparently, a whole lot of other people.

Y’all, I’m about to get political here, and please know that it is not because I want to pick fights or force my will upon any of you. I know and understand that I am passionate in my beliefs, just as you are passionate in yours. I know we all have our stories and we all have our convictions, and I know that our experiences make up what we ourselves hold to be true. Faith guides the majority of us. Faith points us in the direction of what we deem right and what we deem wrong.  Our personal histories dictate our faiths.  Often, we either reject the teachings of our childhoods or we embrace them.

Me, I believe in God — but not the God I was raised on. Not the God that was thrust down my throat and battered about my heart and head, yoking me to servitude and self-loathing. That was my reality. A God of the Old Testament. A God of Wrath and Condemnation and Plagues and Pestilence. A God I was raised to fear. A God who condones men who would proclaim me a weak, worthless and wanton woman.

I have lived through that Hell, and I’m not going back again.

I choose to believe in a loving and benevolent God. This is my reality. The God of the New Testament. A God who appreciates and cherishes me, who values my contributions and celebrates my achievements. Who does not love me less because I am Woman. A God who does not fault my mind and shame my body.

Today, I am speaking out because there was once a time, not that long ago, when I could not speak out. There was a time when I found myself and others of my gender, silenced and powerless. I’ve explained before that I was raised in a cult. It was a cult led by men who took pleasure in their ability to objectify and subjugate women. It was a cult led by men who refused to see value in womanhood beyond their ability to serve men’s needs and take care of their households. It was a cult led by men full of ego and blasphemy, self-righteousness and self-flattery. They didn’t appreciate women – although they did “delight”—I remember that word – they did delight in a good woman. And what exactly made up a good woman? Her abilities to serve, to be silent, to satisfy and to look pleasing while doing it all.

I still struggle with recovery from that early indoctrination and conditioning. Every day I remind myself that I have a mind and a voice that are vital, that are important – that I am worth listening to. It is classic battered women’s syndrome, to believe that you are unworthy. To feel fearful and weak and apologetic. And though I was never physically abused, I was emotionally abused — programed from a very young age to believe that women are nothing more than silent helpmates for their husbands, in the primordial form and fashion of the Old Testament Eve. I struggle every day to remember I am so much more than that.

I also struggle every day not to grow angry and resentful towards those who have never had to experience misogyny or prejudice, who could never understand what it feels like.  But who are ever ready to denounce the fears and concerns of those who have.  Who try to calm us, to placate us when we grow upset at old, familiar injustices we see rising once again to the surface. Or who argue our claims of injustice are unfounded or are blatant exaggerations. Who suggest that if we would just shut up and not stir the pot, things would be fine.

Well, I won’t shut up. I won’t sit and wait for the pot to boil over and burn us all. I’ve lived through that Hell, and I’m not going back again.

I’m kicking, I’m screaming —  I’m asking other women out there to do the same. We CANNOT ignore this call to action and we CANNOT fail. If we do, all hell will break loose – again. I’ve lived there. Some of you haven’t – but your mothers or their mothers or their mother’s mothers have. Because I see the Handwriting on the Wall – I’ve seen it before. And I BEG you all to take a look around you and recognize it, too.

Let me explain…

I’m terrified of the mentality that Donald Trump has toward and against women — because I have seen it before. Sadly, he spouts the same fundamentally-flawed attitudes toward our sex as the cult I was raised in, and while the language he uses is far more vulgar (it was a church, after all), the philosophies are the same. He is a man eager to insult and belittle women, a man ready to condemn all women for being the genetic dispensation of Eve. He has fat-shamed us, he has slut-shamed us, he has fluid-shamed us — yes, he even went there — publicly ridiculing a female reporter for “blood coming out of her wherever” and humiliating a lactating female attorney by calling her “disgusting.” Trump is cut from the same cloth as those church elders I left behind, that I escaped from, so many moons and so many progressions ago. Men who feel we are less than them because we have different parts than them. I refuse to go back to that dark, silent Hell.

Just as The Fellowship – for that was the pet name of the cult in which I was raised (ominously patriarchal, I know…) – refused to acknowledge that women have brains and purpose beyond that Old Testament job of helpmate to our husbands… Trump has refused as well: “You know, I don’t want to sound too much like a chauvinist, but when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I’ll go through the roof, okay?”  He also once implied on a radio interview that it is a woman’s job to care for the children and he holds disdain for any man who has ever diapered an infant because that’s the wife’s job.

Yeah, well I’ve lived through that Hell, and I’m not going back again.

When I was young and fully submerged in the confines of the cult, I knew I had no chance of becoming anything other than a wife and homemaker. College was never to be an option for me. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, an antagonist has a theory closely akin to how I was raised: “Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes. It’s hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.” An expensive university education would never have been an option for me, had it not been for my grandmother. My post-secondary destiny was apprenticeship under an elder’s wife. I would be closely tutored and monitored in the ways and wonders of domesticity. I would become an indentured servant, working for my room and board and learning to be a skillful homemaker from some of the best. These women put Martha Stewart to shame: perfectly pressed and pleated trousers for husbands, hospital corners on all of the beds, crown roasts of pork at Christmas and braised racks of lamb at Easter. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with wanting to be proficient, masterful even, at domesticity. I love a beautifully appointed table to this day, and I do value the domestic education I received before I made my escape. One of the things that makes me happiest in life is to make my family happy. My problem here is that it should be by CHOICE.  A woman should always have a choice, with regard to ANYTHING – job, husband, family, all of it.

Wait, you argue. Trump has never said women shouldn’t be allowed to work outside the home.  Ok. I give you that. At least he hasn’t said it publicly… However, he avoids discussing women’s strengths and abilities, unless they involve her sexuality.  It’s far easier to objectify women if their brains are ignored completely. If he does happen to comment on women’s minds, often it is to call them “neurotic” – one of his favorite female insults. Normally, though, he focuses on women’s physical appearances, particularly in relation to conquest: “It’s all about the hunt and once you get it, it loses some of its energy. I think competitive, successful men feel that way about women.” And with regard to female writers: “it really doesn’t matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass. But she’s got to be young and beautiful.” In other words, my words mean nothing – not only because I’m not young and beautiful, but also because it doesn’t matter what I write. According to Trump, as a woman, my words – and by reflection, I, myself – don’t matter. I mean nothing.

I’ve lived through that Hell, and I’m not going back again.

So let’s talk a little bit about the historical precedence of equating women with nothing… During the Renaissance, the Elizabethan euphemism for female genitalia was “Nothing”– seemingly apropos, I suppose, since no thing hangs between our legs, but also extremely demeaning and disparaging. Trump over and over again diminishes us to our genitalia, objectifying us – robbing us of subjectivity. Making us little more than toys for his tool.   Trump considers us powerless because we have No Thing between our legs.  For Trump to respect you, you must have Some Thing hanging between your legs. And then, only if it’s a white thing.. and even then, only if it has some wealth attached to it. Because that makes you a star. You can do anything when you’re a star “Grab ‘em by the pussy,” if you want. He sees women as objects to be demoralize, to grope, to molest, to rape, to control. Any which way you look at it, women get the shaft when Trump is in charge

Trump’s words have the power to transform women’s lives as we know it. A president’s words set the tone and the climate of our nation. His (or her) words carry weight. They are powerful and they are absorbed. They can teach a child she is worthy or they can teach a child that she is unworthy. Girls and young women maturing in our society do not need to hear their president slut-shaming and fat-shaming their sex. As women, we have come such a long way from the double standards of our father’s and fathers’ fathers’ eras. For centuries a woman’s value was tied to the tiniest sliver of a membrane and whether or not it was still intact. Men were celebrated for their sexuality. Women were shamed for theirs. That’s bullshit.

I have lived through that Hell, and I’m not going back again.

Thankfully, our potential and value is no longer intertwined with the state of our hymen or the price of our dowry. We have not yet reached the place where double standards are obsolete though (obviously – otherwise the fat-shaming and slut-shaming wouldn’t still be happening) –  but I fear that with Trump and his misogynistic attitudes we will slide backward far faster than we’ve managed to climb forward.

Women have worked hard to get where we are today… and we still aren’t where we need to be. Women still make significantly less than men in comparable jobs – statistics claim between 22% and 27%, depending. And if the job has shifted over the years to predominantly female-owned, statistics show that wages fell, in some instances, up to 57 percentage points. For whatever reason, throughout history, women have been undervalued. In Judeo-Christian society, I think it all heralds back to that despised darling, the apple-eating Eve.  We women are way too wily and wicked, and we simply cannot be trusted. So don’t you dare give us power.

Now people would argue that Trump’s words are just that – words. But words are never simply words. Take the Bible – the Word of God – for example. If you are Christian, you build your entire faith, your entire world and mindset and principles and actions, around those words. If you are not Christian, then they are simply words.  The same may be said of the Koran. Or the Bhagavad Gita. Or the Tripitaka… And if we segue away from faith into the secular, the same may be said of the United States’ Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. They are simply words. But they are so much more than that, as well. They bear weight. We have built our government, our lives, our principles and actions around those words.

The same may be said of Hitler and his government, a dictatorship built off of the power of his words -– he started slowly and gathered steam (unlike Trump, who has been ballsy from the start and will surely only get more daring), creating a mindset and manipulating millions and slowly eliminating the freedoms of the Jews and others. Trump is openly xenophobic toward several groups, Muslims in particular. He would like to see all Muslims carry religious IDs, a frightening flashback to the labeling of the Jews, initially by IDs and later by insignia. Trump has also threatened the first amendment – freedom of speech – by declaring he would shut down Saturday Night Live because of their “unfair” depictions of him. If he could shut down satiric entertainment like SNL, what might he do to print and network journalism? And like Hitler, Trump isn’t above inciting violence, He has encouraged his minions to punch protestors, proclaiming he would take care of their legal bills. His campaign suggested Hillary Clinton would likely be shot if Trump lost the election – a thinly veiled threat. And he, himself bragged that he could literally shoot someone on the streets and not lose voters– and the sad part is, he probably could. Because he is the epitome of a cult leader – and I know cult leaders. I’m a recovering member.

I have lived through that Hell, and I’m not going back again.

It is obvious that Trump’s legions are following a controlling, narcissistic bully. He convinces seemingly rational and intelligent human beings to latch onto his every whim with wild abandon. Hell, some supporters even likened him to the Biblical Samson, a sinner and womanizer, but one who, they argue, was still called by God.  I’m not kidding here. Supporters declare, “God’s hand is upon Trump and the forces of evil have been trying to stop him.”

Wait, what?  Trump?!?

It is obvious that some followers are ready to sacrifice life as they know it, to take up Trump’s cross, and to follow him blindly. Hitler is famous for saying, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”  Trump doesn’t even lie about the audacious things he would do. And people are absorbing every outlandish, sexist, racist, violent, vitriolic word of it.

This presidency terrifies me.  I know that our nation is drastically divided for a variety of reasons. I know that. I get that. We all are equally passionate about why.  I just wanted to share a few of my reasons why.

I have lived through that Hell, and I am not going back there.

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My Baby Girl: a Golden, Gleaming Mommy Goddess

This weekend, we celebrated my grandson Bentley’s first birthday. I can’t really believe it’s already been a year since I spent three days in labor and delivery helping Boop stay as calm and as comfortable as possible after eight, yes EIGHT, epidurals failed to give her an iota of relief. There is nothing that can knock a mother’s heart around her chest like a rickety roller coaster ride more than seeing her own child struggling through the frighteningly fragile, yet tenacious and powerful process of giving birth. Bethany is a true warrior, and so is her little lad, Bentley — otherwise known as Nana’s Little Acorn.  They weathered an incredibly long and arduous journey.

I got the call on a Thursday night. I was just sitting down to dinner with the boys and Mike’s parents when Boop explained that she was going to be admitted for preeclampsia and that the docs would be inducing labor in the next day or so.  As you can imagine, there were several incredible stressors within this single phone call.

#1: Boop had preeclampsia.  I had just gone through it myself the year before. I knew how very dangerous the condition can be to both mother and baby. Bethany was having extreme headaches and swelling. Her blood pressure was up and her urine was throwing protein. Bentley would need to be delivered no later than the weekend.

#2: Nana’s little acorn was to arrive nearly six weeks early. Again, I had just been through that scenario a little over a year before. Luckily, Boop and Bentley had reached the 34-week gestation marker, so we knew he likely wouldn’t need any oxygen, but he would need practice eating (preemie boys are notoriously lazy feeders) and maintain his body temp. I knew there was a probable two week stay in the NICU in store for my Bentley and an unavoidable hornet’s nest of raw, stinging emotions ready to take up residence in Boop’s chest – a chest that would already be crowded with the honeycombed sweetness of milk from her mammary glands. There was an emotional perfect storm circulating just off the horizon.

And #3: The call was on Thursday night – in football season. That meant the next night was a Friday. Friday Night Lights Frenzy.  And no mama. Shit. What would I do with the boys? Double shit. But as fortune would have it, my in-laws were here when I got the call so I had extra hands on deck. Friday night would’ve been a near-impossibility if not for his mom and for my ever-dedicated and most beauteous best friend. Of all the besties in the world, my Queenie is nonpareil.  There’s a vocab word for ya. I would say look it up, but there’s no need because I’m telling you that the definition is: Tammy Bramblett Queen, the incomparable, generous-hearted best friend of Heather Peters Candela. Between my mother-in-law and my bestie my boys were fed and nurtured and entertained on a very busy and very stressful Friday night. So that was one less thing I had to worry about.

And finally #4: Weaning the boys. Not only has it been a year since my sweet little Acorn came into this world, it has also been a year since I last breastfed the boys.  I pumped until February of this year, but it was a year ago in October that I physically nursed them for the very last time — in the English department storage closet on Friday afternoon before I headed up to Knoxville.  Mike had brought them by for that express purpose. He knew how hard it was going to be on me. I wasn’t ready, but I knew that being gone for at least three days would as good as wean them, and it would be downright cruel to start them back up again, only to wean them all over again later.  So there, surrounded by a bevy of beloved classic literature, I breastfed them one final time. One final time, I felt the tingly, pinching ants of letdown. One final time I felt the sweet pull of milk filling their bellies. One final time I felt the flush and bloom of sweat on their necks as they grew warm and content. It’s funny, but just before they emptied my breasts entirely, they began to play patty cake — something they’d never done before. They clapped and clapped, Parker’s right hand pressing Tate’s left, a nipple clenched in each of their smiles, as if applauding this passing of a milestone — this one step closer to being grown. I won’t say I didn’t cry.

Exit to Knoxville: The next three days were a wild and whirling pain-fest of Pitocin and pointless epidurals. Poor Bethany! She’s just one of those individuals whose body just doesn’t chemically interact an epidural. In eight attempts, the block was never more than patchy and poor, at best, so my poor baby girl felt a whole lot of agony (remind me to tell you a little story about Bethany and the “agony” in a bit) for a whole lot of hours. As in, thirty-two. Active labor hours. With no epidural. That’s super very much a lot, thank you very much.

Boop progressed super slowly, stalling out at 4 centimeters dilation and staying there for over 24 hours. The Pitocin pumped and pressured and prodded and her uterus clenched and cranked and contracted, but her cervix was noncompliant. The nurses and docs tried some tricks to help her along, from a foley bulb catheter to a birthing ball. Neither contraption worked. She lived in raw, primal, animal pain for well over a day. I used to boast that I was in labor with Caitlin for twenty-six hours with no epidural, but those bragging days are gone. Boop’s got me beat, let me tell ya. She is the grand champion of marathon labor. My baby girl is one tough mother.

But tough as she is, Sunday afternoon around 4:00 found Boop begging for a c section. Hell, we were all begging for a c section — her best friend Maggie, her cousin Lauren, her man Bradley, even her big sis the surgeon (who felt helpless and far-far away — 843 miles away, to be exact) — we were all begging for a c section. Boop was writhing in pain and wrung the F out. Her energy was gone. Her enthusiasm was gone. Her patience was gone. There’s only so much that ice chips, cheerleading, small talk and back rubs can do to keep you going when it’s day three and you haven’t eaten or slept and the waves of pain are smashing your body like a… like a… like a squirrel in agony.

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So now for that “agony” story I promised you… Bethany was around four and the cutest, wide-eyed, hat-wearing, little fart blossom (my Grandmother’s favorite term of endearment) on the planet.  We were a block or so away from picking up Caitlin from school when we rounded a curve and came upon a squirrel that had just been hit by a car. It was thrashing around in the throes of anguish when Bethany saw it and gasped, “Oh, no!”

“Bless its little heart,” I said. “The poor thing is in agony.”

“What’s ‘n agony?” she asked.

So I explained to my precocious girl that it was in extreme pain and suffering. As we pulled up to the pickup line at the school, I finished with…  “so that little squirrel was in agony.”

“Oh, it WAS a squirrel?” she squawked in confusion, “I thought you said it was an agony!”

Fast forward to twenty some odd years later, and I’m at Bethany’s bedside as she writhes around in an agony that I’m fairly certain was closely akin to that of the pitiful little squirrel back on Mission Road so many years ago.  I wanted her out of her misery, and I was steeling myself to do battle with her obstetrician when the charge nurse offered to do one last check…

And… a 6! She’d progressed to a 6! Finally her cervix and her uterus started working together! An hour after that, she was an 8  — and within thirty minutes after that, it was time to push.  Hallelujah and cut the cord! Well, we delivered the baby first, of course…

Somehow Boop mustered the energy to push and push hard.  I took one of her shoulders and Bradley took the other. We counted off each push – cheering her on toward that bloody, brazen end zone. The little guy came out like all babies do, covered in birth juice and clotted cream and truly, truly scrumptious.  He bore one battle wound from his epic birth journey: a tiny cut on his nose from the monitor leads.

Bentley carries that hairline scar across his nose to this day… along with all of our hearts (from mine, to his Aunt Cay Cay’s in the Big D, to his little uncles Parker and Tate, eighteen months his seniors), he carries all of our hearts wrapped tight around his little finger. Because he is the most beautifully perfect little Acorn you ever did see.  He has green glass eyes and an open, hearty smile. He’s his mama’s perfect clone. Her spittin’ image; her carbon copy.

And Bethany is the most beautiful mama I ever did see.  She was born for motherhood. She is breathlessly incandescent. She is luminous. She glows. She has always been a bright and beautiful light in this world, but now her light is softer, warmer, deeper, more soulful. She radiates maternal perfection.  I’d like to say she’s the spittin’ image of me as a mother, but that would be a lie.  She’s got me beat. She is a master of maternal prowess. My baby girl is one tough mother.

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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.

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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.

 

 

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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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Hummingbirds and Cinnamon Rolls

hummingbird

I’ve just spent the better part of an hour watching six hummingbirds dance their aerial ballet round and round our feeder. It is the most mesmerizing sight. I rank it right up there with – well, would it seem like hyperbole to say it ranks up there with watching Caitlin graduate from med school or Bethany give birth to Bentley? Does that sound just a wee bit sacrilegious? But honestly, if you’ve never seen something like it, you just don’t know. You’ll just never get it. Six of them. SIX. Pirouetting and promenading up and down the length of our deck, jostling for prime position. The boys and I have been having our hotdogs and Doritos (it’s been a long week and it’s only Tuesday, don’t judge – and besides, I also gave them yogurt – with active cultures, so that cancels out all the bad. It does). Anyways, we’ve been eating our hotdogs and Doritos – and yogurt – and laughing and giggling and smiling up a storm at all the shenanigans. It’s made for a special end to a long and otherwise quite ordinary day.

dochester     boopandbentleybirth

At first, I wanted to believe those little hummingbirds were enjoying a random Tuesday-after-work happy hour, dancing and drinking and shrugging off a long day, just like the rest of us would love to be doing if we weren’t saddled up to a couple of high chairs instead of bar stools, mixing watered-down apple juice in sippies instead of full-throttle top shelf in a shaker. But the more I watched, the more I realized it wasn’t really a party. It was more like a feathered facsimile of an Italian and Puerto Rican street fight. I could almost hear the West Side Story soundtrack as they jabbed and jibbed, zigged and zagged, beaks flourished and fierce. They were being territorial. They were being little shits.

Their behavior reminds me of some humans I know when it comes to food… myself included. Case in point: I consider it a sacrifice of the highest order if, when I am serving up my homemade cinnamon rolls (which I don’t make nearly as often as I did prior to the birth of the twins and, therefore, are all the more precious and rare), I fork over the sweet center roll, all soft and drippy with cream cheese frosting and happiness to someone else. And rest assured, it’s never just a random someone else… it’s a someone else of substance and value and absolute import. Namely my husband or one of my children – and by children, I mean my girls. The boys aren’t quite old enough to appreciate the super soft center roll with all the drippy happiness, so that would just be a waste of a really monumental sacrifice. Again, don’t judge. It’s a right of passage — they’ll grow into the privilege.

 

So thinking about these hummingbirds and their propensity to fight over food – and me and my propensity to be selfish about my own food unless it’s with those I love, or really, really like – and then only because I tell myself it’s the right thing to do and that sharing my food is what good mothers and good wives and good friends do because it’s what kind and generous-hearted people do (Is it, though? Is it kind and generous hearted if one has to coerce oneself into sharing?)– calls to mind one of my favorite lectures in AP Lit: Communion.

In literature, when characters sit down to supper, it’s rarely just to eat. If a writer takes the trouble to describe a meal, pay attention, I tell them. Writers don’t write about mealtime because it’s interesting. There’s a whole lot more riveting things to record than somebody chewing their cud. A person eating food isn’t interesting; it’s mundane (unless you’re the one doing the eating); t’s sometimes gross; oftentimes annoying (don’t get me started on smacking and slurping), but very rarely is it interesting. So in good literature, the process of consuming food symbolizes communion – not communion in terms of the religious, holy sacrament — but in terms of the unification and interaction of people on a deeper level. Think community here. If characters break bread together, they are part of a community; they are building or have built a relationship. If during the scene, characters cannot or will not partake of the meal, that’s your cue to search for deeper underlying character and relationship issues. For instance, in my little cinnamon roll anecdote, I just revealed to all of you that I am a glutton. Beyond that, you learned I am a selfish, judgmental glutton with control issues and disruptive eating patterns that can negatively impact relationships. Not really, y’all. I just really, REALLY like the soft gooey middles of the cinnamon roll pan. But still…

parkerandtateandpuffs

Communion is one of my favorite discussions in AP Lit because kids get it. They understand food. Their social lives revolve around food – from clandestine vending machine trysts, to fiestas in Spanish, to McDonald’s runs afterschool. There’s nothing they love more than an excuse to eat with their best buddies. And they’ll do almost anything humanly possibly to avoid eating with someone they don’t like – look at lunchroom alliances. The lines are drawn quickly and clearly, and rarely do they blur or shift. Just look at the movie, Mean Girls, and you’ll get it. Like tends to sit with like: geeks sit with geeks; nerds with nerds; jocks with jocks; and so on and so on and on.

A few years back, some of our more magnanimous and outgoing students at Woodland participated in a tolerance activity loosely based on musical chairs called Mix it Up. Students abandoned their customary tables and crews and sat with strangers, introducing themselves and looking for common ground. I loved the idea, applauded the concept, was completely in awe of these students and their ability to stretch outside their comfort zones because I know I would have had a crazy tough time doing what they did. I’m telling you, kids these days… they get a bad rap, but they’re truly extraordinary. Get to know some. Sadly, I don’t think Woodland has done it in a few years. Or if we have, I haven’t heard about it.

These little hummingbird hoodlums haven’t heard about Mix it Up either. It’s against nature – human or otherwise – to be too inclusive when it comes to something as exceedingly personal and fulfilling as mealtime. Grown ups are the same way – whether we’re teachers in the break room or business people in office complexes, we are just as territorial. We tend to eat only with our cliques and get our tail feathers in a tiff if somebody else intrudes.

I’ve mentioned in the past that one of my favorite traditions in our new Cartersville football community is the post-game potluck dinners. Cartersville knows how to Mix it Up. To me, these meals demonstrate communion at its best – numerous families gathered together to share a meal and make memories. On any given Friday night, you’ll find a hodgepodge of foodstuffs, from buffalo chicken dip to pot roast to Mountain Dew Cake. And as equally hodgepodge are the people gathered around the tables. Now I know the common denominator is football, but y’all, the similarities end there. Our community is truly patchwork: the coaches(husbands and dads of every age, color and political leaning); the wives (moms, teachers, nurses and activists in an equally varied number of complexions and persuasions); children (from barely walking babes to cleated, sweaty players and even beyond). The food is delicious and the folk are downright neighborly. The whole process is like a warm casserole after being out in the cold, and I am forever grateful that they have welcomed me (an outsider and a nerd) and mine (not nearly as nerdy, more in keeping with the jocks, but with a good, heaping helping of geekdom) into their fold.

I’m so grateful for my new community and their generosity of spirit that I think I could  coerce myself into sharing the soft, gooey cinnamon roll centers  with them. Well, at least the folk old enough to recognize the gesture for what it is – a real sacrifice. Those barely-walking babes won’t know what they’re missing anyways…

cinnamonroll

Now pardon me while I go put out some fresh hummingbird nectar for my feisty little friends. I know I should feel ashamed of myself, but it’s still a pleasure tantamount to — cinnamon roll centers — to watch them wage war, one against the other (…five).

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Black Eyes, Bow Ties, and Seersucker Smiles

This past week will get chalked up as one of the great ones. Some of its key features included seersucker suits, a gimpy crawl and gummy smile, a tremendous Canes’ victory, an enchanting wedding, and my girls cozied up on my couches. It was nothing short of perfection.

Trying to write about it, though, has been anything but perfection. I’ve had massive writer’s block. I think it’s because I want my words to reflect exactly what the week meant to me… a great big sensory overload of love. I don’t want to sound sappy or saccharine, but it’s hard to avoid, particularly since Lauren’s wedding was as poetically perfect as her new husband’s name: Crimson Cloud. (If that name doesn’t smack of the sublime, I don’t know what does.) The venue was dappled and drowsy, the lake was lavender and languid, the couple was breathlessly beautiful. Of course, that’s if I write it the way Monet would’ve painted it — brush strokes dabbed in pastel snapshots …

springfedlake

But look closer… get rid of the soft focus and purple prose and zoom right in to find real life: all of the crazy, chaotic crap that never fails to occur when kith and kin come together. Yes, I had my girls and my boys at home under the same roof – a rare gift, indeed. But along with all the impeccable Instagram images that I’d like to post, came the inevitable awkward and angry and downright difficult moments (tears, tantrums, spills, spankings, bruises, breakage, user errors, and free-the-nipple campaigns) that make real life paradoxically miserable and magical. Face it, without life’s hiccups and misadventures, it would be a pretty boring ride…

I’ll start with Friday night. The girls are at rehearsal dinner, the boys are in bed, Mike is in Calhoun tending to a lovely and lopsided football game… and I’m alone with my newly delivered rent-the-runway dress. It’s perhaps the most ridiculously perfect sheath dress you ever did see – all veined in copper overlay like the throat of an exotic orchid. I’ve never rented the runway. This is a gamble. If it doesn’t work out, I have nothing to wear to tomorrow’s wedding. I slip the Marchesa masterpiece over my head. It’s a tad tricky maneuvering the shoulders, but nothing I can’t handle. It fits like a glove — like an embroidered, incandescent, extraordinarily expensive glove. But I am renting it for way cheap, so I’m golden… until I get down to the business of taking it off.

Um… not happening.

I’m a wedged bear in a great tightness, to quote the illustrious Winnie-the-Pooh. So I try another approach. And another. And I jiggle and jostle. And shimmy and shake. Until I eventually get it up over my head… where I become trapped — very much like Pooh-bear in rabbit’s hole. Or an infant giraffe stuck in the birth canal. Take your pick.

“Oh, bother,” I say. (No, not really. That’s the Pooh-Bear euphemism for what I really said.)

So now what? Whatever I do, I can’t rip this sucker. If I do, I owe hundreds of dollars. But if I stay like this, I will surely suffocate. Or lose a limb. At the very least, I’ll be sporting a Pooh-style smiley face on my ass in another six hours when my family gets home if I don’t get this remedied…

pooh-rear

What happens next, I’m not entirely sure. I may have blacked out, or I’m visited by the paranormal, or I drop weight… or some such. I do know that somehow I get out. As I hang my dress back on the hanger, thoroughly defeated and dress-less for the wedding, I discover that there, cleverly stitched into the back seam and mocking me, is an invisible zipper — perfectly visible if I hadn’t been so blinded by the sheer majesty of the Marchesa.

Cut to Saturday afternoon. I’m in my rented dress with the invisible zipper, looking every inch the rent-the-runway success story in the Marchesa and a pair of strappy heels that I will hate myself for in a few short hours. I manage to get my fellas to pose for a picture, begrudgingly – but it’s a good thing I have been persistent because it turns out to be the only photo with the boys that we take before Parker scores a raspberry to the forehead and a big, black shiner to the right eye.

family-wedding-pic  girlsandme

It happens as we load the boys into Mike’s truck. We are out of breath and damp and drippy from running around gathering various and sundry supplies for two growing twin boys with appetites and attention spans that are never satisfied. One second Parker is standing in front of his car seat, fire truck in hand, while Mike adjusts the air conditioning. The next second, he’s plunging two-and-a-half feet onto the driveway, his right temple kissing the concrete and his right eye smacking the fire engine. By the time we reach him, he is bloody and bruised, his eye swollen shut.

bow-tie-and-black-eye

“Oh, bother,” Mike says. 😉

“He looks remarkably good for being hit by a fire truck,” I say.

We throw together an ice pack and hit the road. Apparently this wedding is a black eye affair.

Pulling into the venue, we’re met with the most pristine setting for nuptials I ever did see: gently sloping lawns of clover and fescue, scattered snatches of cypress and willows, rough-hewn church pews, peeling cedar pergolas, and a spring-fed lake cradling a single, red canoe. Amidst all of this grandeur, our quirky crazy family cranking it up a notch with screwball snapshots and madcap memories: the quick neuro-check in the bride’s dressing room by big sissy the surgeon; the itsy bitsy spider serenade, mid-ceremony from the second pew by my baby boy; my baby girl in her maid-of-honor dress breastfeeding my grandson during dinner (which, I must say, filled this mama with pride and some other guests with anxiety); twirly dances in the twilight between biggest big sister and smallest baby brother; diaper changes by daddy on flatbed trucks sporting “Just Married” signs; sweet dandelion bouquets for mommy; and a right serious whip and nae nae by the bride and her attendants.

caitandtate  boopandbentley

So this week was an exercise in imperfect perfection. My niece got married, my girls were in town, and my boys wore their first seersucker. There was a spring fed lake, a single red canoe, a flawless bride, and one black eye. It was as imperfectly perfect as a Griswold family Christmas tree: kinda full, lotta sap. And that’s as it should be.

May we all live sappily ever after.

kissthegirl

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