postmodernfamilyblog

I’ve been getting ready to host a bridal shower for my darling niece Lauren. I love Lauren, and I love parties. I love hosting parties for Lauren! Lets’ face it, I love hosting parties. Period. When my girls were small, we had birthdays with themes: Hollywood galas, scavenger hunts, murder mystery dinners. I would plan for months and months, then execute with nary a hiccup. Pomp and circumstance had nothing on me. Fluff and accouterments were on my speed dial.

I decided on a Greek-themed shower — a nod toward the island of Santorini, where Lauren and Crimson will honeymoon. Just like when the girls were little, in my heyday of party planning, I’ve been doing my homework. Only now I’ve got the added benefit (or curse) of the World Wide Web, the modern-day Arachne, where all sorts of provocative party ideas are continuously woven and spun. Pinterest and Etsy are the hostesses with the mostesses in this seductive web, shouting “Salutations!” at every click of my mouse. I have found myself mesmerized by fruit-infused waters and Mediterranean food platters, cream-centered cupcakes and burlap bridal bunting. And now that it’s just under two weeks till go time, I have found that what I thought were friendly salutations by a couple of mild-mannered Charlottes were really charlatans of the ““Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly” variety. I am wrapped tighter than a tick in a tourniquet. I am destined for a Pinterest Fail.

What was I thinking?!?! I have twin boys, for God’s sake! Toddler. Twin. Boys. The Scylla and Charybdis of party planning. You know, those two sea monsters Odysseus managed to outsmart — pretty much the only mortal to ever do so? And here I am, the good-intentioned sailor out to navigate waters I think I can handle because I’m experienced. I’ve thrown parties before. I’ve done shindigs. Hooplas. Gatherings. Should be smooth sailing. But I’ve underestimated my opponents. They’re Scylla and Charybdis, for the gods’ sake. And I’m the foolish mortal insane enough to think I can pull off a shower, a BRIDAL shower — with cocktails and place settings, menus and color schemes — amidst the tandem whirling, twirling tantrums and takedowns of Scylla and Charybdis! What was I thinking?!?!?!

Cooking is pretty much nonexistent in our household. Not because I can’t cook, but because I CAN’T cook. I can’t open the pantry door because the boys come running like a herd of hungry Hydra heads. They want chips. They want fruit. They want Oreos. They want cereal. They want bread. They want. They want. They want. We keep a lock on the pantry door. No lie. My husband has to run interference when I need to get out the ingredients for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I’ve never seen anything like it. So how do I prepare a Grecian feast, replete with olive-cucumber bruschetta, spanakopita, orzo salad and baklava (Damn you, Pinterest, and your trembling, silvery siren song!) if I can’t even open the refrigerator unless the boys are out of hearing distance?!?!?

My housekeeping is not a total loss, mind you. I’ve gotten good at diversionary tactics to gain an advantage and win small, incremental victories. Laundry gets done because the boys love to forage in the garbage can. It usually buys me the time I need to open the laundry room door and get things out of the dryer. I make sure there’s nothing too dangerous in there before I give them access to the rubbish in Pandora’s box, I promise. A few banana peels and eggshells never hurt anyone, salmonella aside. But why use a decoy for the LAUNDRY room, you wonder? Well, the brooms hang in there… and my boys will fight over the brooms for hours on end. It’s like a Clash of the Titans remix. I also have a few tried and true tricks to get things done in the bathroom. While I wash my face, they surf my vanity. It’s only three feet high and they do have young, flexible bones. And I don’t think it’s too terrible that I let them suck toothpaste out of the tube so I can have four minutes to shave my legs. I only let it happen once a week, after all. The rest of the time I’m a close cousin to a Centaur, which I think Mike is okay with… since a Centaur is a sexy beast. Of course she is.

So while I’ve carved out a few precarious routes to housekeeping and hygiene success, I am still very concerned. If I can’t open the pantry or fridge, how will I ever cook up a formal Greek spread? And if I can’t shave my legs, much less apply makeup and do my hair, how do I possibly think I can get the house decorated and presentable enough to warrant the kind of celebration my sweet niece deserves? There’s not enough garbage and toothpaste in the universe!

Did I mention the shower color scheme is cobalt blue and chalk white — I’ve been painting wine bottles white and hording Skyy vodka bottles since April. It has been my favorite activity, procuring these bottles. Only one glass of wine a night. Ok, sometimes two… And speaking of painting, while spraying some wrought iron chairs this weekend, I inadvertently painted the balls and heels of my feet a sparkling sapphire, simply by walking on the drop cloth. To borrow a friend’s comment, I looked like I’d been making Smurf wine. Tate couldn’t stop staring. And touching. Parker was slightly afraid. Two days later, they still randomly ask if my feet are “stinky” and my toe creases still have flecks of Santorini in them – and so does the floor of my tub. I’m counting on scrubbing bubbles to come to my rescue, if I can ever find three minutes and our lost tubes of toothpaste to work on it…

On Sunday, for some glorious reason, the boys were exceptionally well-behaved, so I took the opportunity to do a trial run on the cupcakes and gyros. There were merely two broomstick battles and one table dancing injury, thanks to Mike’s generous assistance. It only took me seven hours to complete the recipes. Seven hours. To make two recipes. Out of eleven. Next weekend — shower weekend — I will have no Mike. He will be at a coaches’ retreat. I think he’s quite happy he’ll miss it, my attempt to outsmart Scylla and Charybdis. But I won’t be alone. I’ll have a whole houseful of out-of-town family, including my girls, my grandbaby, my baby sister, my mom and my beloved niece. Together, we must create Santorini-in-a-shower, complete with blue domed cupcakes and a spread fit for the gods. We can do this, right? We can juggle babies and burlap, bar drinks and baking. We can avoid a Pinterest Fail and conquer the universe – or at least a picturesque Greek island in the Aegean. Right?

I think I need more wine… bottles. I need more wine bottles.

Today, I celebrate my youngest baby girl. Not such a baby anymore. As a matter of fact, she now has a baby of her own. And as I watch her mothering that darling baby boy, I know that she has found her place in the world. (But I will talk about that precious acorn in another post.) Today, I celebrate Bethany.

Bethany Hope. She used to tell me she wasn’t too fond of her name. So many times at school, teachers and other students would call her Brittany. She argued her name was too different, too weird. Why couldn’t she just be a Brittany, like everyone else? Teachers and students called her that all the time anyway… But you know what? She is, and has always been, colorful and different Just like the rest of us in our crazy, quirky, love-jangled family. She’s a spitfire. She has the energy of the sun harnessed with a generous soul and a ready smile. When she laughs, the world shimmies. She’s that charismatic. She’s that passionate. She needed to be a Bethany. (And to tell you a secret, it’s still my favorite name of all of my children’s names.)

The name Bethany means House of Figs. Or House of Dates, depending upon what source you use. That’s part of why she didn’t like it so much. A fruity home. Really? Other people had names that symbolized beautiful things: pearls or flowers or truth. But her middle name she found a little more acceptable: Hope. That meaning goes without saying. But string those names together, and magic happens. Bethany Hope symbolizes sustenance and optimism. And sustain and uplift me, she always has. She is my baby girl. What I thought would be the last of the fruit of my loins. (Boy, was I wrong on that count.) And she is irreplaceable.

She swam into this world on a four-hour tidal wave of hard and fast labor. I kid you not, as her father and I shot down the interstate toward the hospital at 2:00 AM, I felt her shouldering her way through the birth canal and I didn’t know if we would make it on time. She burst into this world a short time later with a flourish of zest and gusto, coal black curls, and wide eyes open. My little carpe diem girl.

Let me tell you, she was one cute kid. Her nickname isn’t Betty Boop for nothing. She had the sweetest little square noggin with brunette spit curls and china doll skin. That noggin was tough, though. And still is. I remember a few fits (she was a champion tantrum thrower) where she flung her head forward with the shining force of an electrical storm, and I’m pretty sure the neighborhood rained sparks when it hit the pavement. She was a pintsize powerhouse. Rounding out her fiery features were bottle green eyes that shot galvanized currents of pure sass with every blink, a tiny shadow of a nose (barely a line, really) and a plump, pouty lip that could curl up or down in a fickle jiffy. I’m telling you, she was Betty Boop in bambino form.

Now my grandmother would argue she was HER little carbon copy; her spitting image, a chip off the old block. And there’s no doubt she carries in her my grandmother’s genes for telling a great story, dancing a wicked jig, and for never meeting a stranger. Just like Grandma, she feels loves fast and hard, would scale mountains for family, and will break someone’s ankles if you do her or her kin any wrong.

As a second child, Bethany often found herself slipping into the cramped crevices of a busy life, the all too familiar curse of the second child, bless her. Life was busier once she came into the world. There were full-time jobs for both her dad and me by then. And day care and dry cleaning and Disney princesses and drive-thru dinners. (No, just kidding. I cooked — most of the time.) So life was life. And it was crazy fast. I remember one specific instance – at Christmas –when she got lost in the holiday shuffle. We were hanging ornaments and singing songs and nibbling cookies and taking pictures and humming right through the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. I felt she was still too little to hang the blown glass ornaments – my Christmas prized possessions – and so we let her big sister hang all of Bethany’s very own Betty Boop blown glass ornaments. Bethany quietly took a stocking from a box, a big, fuzzy felt one with white fur at the top, and slid it over her head. She slipped into a corner, stood dejected and demeaned, and sobbed. It broke my heart when I realized I had broken hers.

When you are little, when Christmas is the biggest, the best, the most amazing and blissful part of your life thus far… when you believe with all of your heart and soul in the spirit of Christmas and the mythical Rudolph of holiday specials … when your family roasts marshmallows over open fires and sips cocoa while icing star-shaped and sleigh-shaped and Santa-shaped cookies in brilliant reds and greens… when your mother spends weeks hunting for that oh-so-perfect ornament to give you the Friday after Thanksgiving just to usher in that most magical of seasons faster… and then your family, in particular your OCD mother with her Martha Stewart tendencies and her picture-perfect propensities, forgets what the whole fuss is about in the first place… Why celebrate a season of love and hope and life, if we are too self-absorbed and caught up in the hoopla to remember what love and hope and life means? If we are so blinded by the “beauty” of what we’re creating that we crush the toes — and hopes and dreams and passions — of the ones we’re creating it for. Again, why? So I gathered up my little pintsize powerhouse, my child of passion and sass, who feels so very deeply and loves so very hard (and bruises as a result) and I vowed I would never break her spirit again.

I’ve tried, from that day on, to not let the busyness of life overtake me. To not forget to love on all of my babies in equal measure. To not let the current craziness of twin toddler boys deflect any energy from my other beautiful offspring. And I still fail. I still find myself scooping up one or the other in my metaphorical arms (the girls both live miles and miles away from me, after all) and try to shower them with love.

So today, I celebrate my second born. My beautiful House of Figs and Hope. My baby girl, who sustains me and uplifts me in ways she will never, ever know or understand. I just hope I have shown you half of her love and energy, my shining, sparkling Bethany Hope: sparkplug of passion and sass and pizazz. She is irreplaceable.

I’ve dedicated the past week’s blog to the assemblage of ingredients and bake-ware necessary to bring my twin boys into this world, but today, I want to focus on my firstborn: the beautiful baby girl who started this whole motherhood thing off while I was barely out of swaddling clothes myself.

Caitlin Anice. Named after a childhood bestie and a beloved doctor aunt. Her destiny — as friend and physician – was sealed at birth, it would seem. As opposed to the boys, she came into this world in the old-fashioned way, a completely natural conception, easy-peasy pregnancy, and drug-free childbirth. Now that’s not saying labor was a cinch; she clung heartily to the cranky, contracting warzone of my womb for twenty-six hours before making her grand entrance. It was like she was memorizing every stage and step, in case there was a test later. I should’ve known right then and there just what this little one was made of. Simply coasting is not her style. She works hard for every single accomplishment — and accomplished she is. But I get ahead of myself…

Her hair and eyes were dark at first, like clouds at midnight, but as she acclimated to those long June days after birth, she began transforming. While nursing, her warm little body nestled up next to mine, I watched her midnight blue eyes absorb more and more light with each knew understanding. She learned sounds, then faces, then language and more. With each new skill, those eyes crackled and sparked. Out of the darkness and into the light, a child after Prometheus’ own heart. She loved to learn.

At twenty-one I was almost as much of a baby as she was — and this little girl, this little spark plug of passion and piss, taught me far more valuable lessons than I ever taught her. She taught me how to mother.  From Caitlin I first learned about the tingly descent of ants stinging my breasts during letdown; how to successfully diaper an infant, midstream; how to bandage boo boos and bolster bad attitudes; how to sing lullabies and read storybooks and rock a baby to sleep in the soft, gentle breath of dusk. She taught me patience and perseverance, strength and resolve — lessons that have gone on to serve me well with both her siblings at home and my high school seniors at school. But back to mothering my girl.

I failed quite a few times. Caitlin, though, was a master teacher from the beginning. I’ll never forget the time as a baby she soared off our front porch in her walker, ass-over-teakettle. Somehow she survived, and I never made the same mistake again. Or the time as a toddler she stood amidst a swarm of yellow jackets that branded her with a dozen stings before I could reach her. I swear she wiped my tears before I wiped away hers. Or the time she contracted the shigella bacteria as a preteen. Poor girl, sick at both ends in the most violent and non poetic of ways. But as soon as the bags of fluids and fever and lethargy had passed, her loving aunts and I composed the “Don’t Cry for me, Caitlin Hester” shigella theme song and our entire extended family serenaded her during our beach reunion. It was funny; it was creative; it was in poor taste… and she was not amused. Like I said, I failed her. Sometimes shamelessly. But the ever-patient teacher that she is, she guided me right back to the drawing board, knowing I would get it right eventually.

Patience and perseverance, strength and resolve: Caitlin has them. Right along with gumption and grace, know-how and knack, compassion and courage. Her motto is “Love All,” and she lives it heartily, scattering warmth and love in her wake, and washing everyone in its sweetness and light.

For a while, life was easy for her. She basked in the summer sun of youth. She soared through elementary and high school, winning the Principal’s Award and high school homecoming queen. In college, and even med school, she rarely stumbled, light and love pouring out of her.

Now though, as an adult, she finds herself setting her courage to the sticking place and doing battle with her fiercest of competitors: general surgery. She’s been wrestling her way out of the war-torn womb of surgical residency, a long and arduous birthing process, for three years now. It is dark there. And deep. She is battered. Her light is dim. But she’s on the cusp of fourth year. She should begin seeing the light – the light that has never stopped burning inside her. The light she absorbed in those mid-June mornings in the procreant cradle of a mother’s love. After fifth year, she’ll shine that light into the dark black night of the licensed surgeon and she will soar. She will be ready. After all, she is a child born of the clouds of midnight, infused with the early summer sunshine. She has balance and grace. She has chosen the road less travelled — and it is lovely there, but it is also dark and deep – and she still has miles to go before she sleeps. But she is a child of Prometheus. She’s got this.

My little girl who taught me so much — is still teaching me so much today. She is the model of true strength and courage, patience and resolve. And she has the most incandescent heart I have ever known. Happy Birthday, my mid-June Monkey Doodle. You have never failed me. You are my sunshine.