Saying (and doing) Grace

I’ve been thinking a lot about grace.  Not a constant thing -- because, who has time?! -- but it has been sneaking around the back edges when I drive home from the gym, or check facebook, or consider some comments made by a friend.  You probably know that I’m not a very religious person.  Not anymore.  I’ll spare you my spiritual history, but I will tell you I was raised Southern Baptist in GA.  That bit of history is important because it informs how I think of the word “grace.” 

In a religious sense, it has a couple of meanings.  It can mean a prayer before eating, as in “Shelley, will you say grace?” (a question you really can’t answer in the negative.) It can also mean the act of God that forgives sins.  Grace is the acknowledgment of wrong and the release of responsibility for that wrong.  It is a letting go without turning away. 

I’m not sure many use “grace” as a prayer anymore.  It was that way in my grandparent’s home – on my dad’s side.  We had many family dinners, with heaping plates of casseroles and cobblers.  My grandfather had a daily prayer that served for all but the most formal events, when the floor might be given to someone more loquacious, but his version was this:

“Heavenly Father, pardon our sins.  Accept our thanks, for these and all thy many blessings.  Amen.”

Simple.  Probably some derivative of some formal prayer that, for him, ceased to be anything but part of the ceremony of dinner.  But I can tell you that it is imprinted in my and my brother’s head.  And it says a lot.  Forgive us.  And thank you.  We know you do a lot for us.  Bye. 

Strangely, this has connected in my mind with the facebook game where people tag one another and you have to list 3 or 5 things a day for 5 or 3 days.  Varies.  But the end result is you have 15 opportunities to be thankful.  I’m feeling pretty darn lucky at this point in my life, so it wasn’t hard, but the act of taking the time to be thankful – sitting down and writing the things that bring me pleasure, make me feel like this life is awesome, kick me in the pants and say “LOOK AT ME.  I’m beautiful.”—that was fantastic.  Because I am grateful.  I really enjoy being alive.  I don’t know if that’s because I had my cancer diagnosis so young and it made me a little more aware or if I’m just one of those floaty, daydreamer types that gets lost in the light in the clouds.  Doesn’t matter.  I am thankful. 

But grace is not just about being thankful.  It’s also about the wisdom of staying open.  For me, and I venture to say –for everyone—that’s harder than being thankful.  It means considering others in a way thankfulness does not.  We allow them to step away from guilt or shame or anger without recrimination.  Sometimes, I guess, they don’t step away.  The life they choose to live is one we don’t like.  And, the way I see it, we don’t have to like their life.  Their mistakes, their wrongs, their poor judgment, are theirs.  We hold them to society’s rules.  God holds them to his.  We, if we’re strong, we give them grace.  We don’t shut them out.  We don’t turn away. 

I’ve been talking about God like he’s a part of my life and he’s really not, but he is part of how I think about grace.  If there is an ultimate example of forgiveness, I think the Bible gives us that.  I think the gift of Christianity is that it is inclusive; you don’t have to be born into it.  It is a community you can join.  Just by being born, we have all been thrown into this community where we share our feelings, our pictures, our accomplishments, and – yes – what we are thankful to have.  It is a technological world and a world where human interaction is changing.  We can express ourselves in ways I never dreamed would exist when I was a freshman in college.  That time for me was eye-opening: so many different people, so many different views.  And we were all desperate to share and be heard.  This time seems like a world-wide freshman year.  (I didn’t handle freshman year all that gracefully.)

So I want to handle this time gracefully.  I have children who I want to grow up to be big-hearted and accepting.  I want them to love this world and love the people in it.  I want to model that life for them.  However, I’m a pretty judgmental girl.  I say that to be fair.  Because I’m also honest.  I struggle with stupid people and mean people and evil people.  I also have to say I think I’m pretty good at letting other people do their thing if they aren’t mean or evil.  It might have to do with how little I care about their thing, but still.  If there is a God, and he made us in his image, maybe that allowed him to see us as worth saving.  Seeing that promise in each other is a challenge. 

My son is autistic.  Very mildly.  But it makes him weird sometimes.  He has annoying behaviors.  He doesn’t get social cues.  It can irritate me.   I also love him very much.  He is a tremendous joy.  He is sweet and smart and helpful.  And he’s funny.  However, there are certain things he just can’t do.  He cannot control some of his tics – which come out like disrespectful obstinacy.  He cannot be a sunny, personable kid in the face of frustration.  He is close to my heart.  He’s my first and he’s probably the most like me.  So, maybe it is easier to give him grace.  Sometimes, on a good day, I can look at him and let it go.  I can see past his difficulties, his bad choices and I can just love him completely.  I can be thankful for everything that he is, the whole package.  That, to me, is grace. 

Someday, I hope my grace extends much, much further.  I hope that I can connect with the little bit of me that is in everyone, despite religion or political affiliation or just plain stupidity.  And that I can love them as completely as I love my son.  But, for now, I’m thankful for this.  Amen.

The Mother Life

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while.  It’s about motherhood-- but it’s not about mothers, not really, and it’s not about my memories of my mom or how I feel as a mom.  It's not even about what kind of mom I think I am or should be.  Maybe that’s why this has been percolating in my brain for a while.  This is sort of a loose association with motherhood, about how motherhood changes -- not just you -- but who the people in your life will be.  Motherhood: it’s not that you choose only to be with your children; it’s also who will choose to be with you.  

I’m going to try and describe this by telling two experiences I had soon after I had my son, Jack.  First, you might need a little background.  Shortly before I got pregnant with him, I left a job with an underwriting firm where I was a software developer.  I went back to school to get a poetry degree, an MFA.  At my previous job and in graduate school I was surrounded by interesting, bright people.  Granted, the ones in graduate school (in poetry, no less) were more intellectual and a bit more eclectic, but my working world was filled with good communicators, responsible people, and people I liked.  I was pretty happy with my circles. 

Along came baby Jack.  We moved to the suburbs, which I fought, and renovated a house.  Friends from my old job threw me a baby shower and some of my friends from my MFA program showed up, sprinkled in with friends from high school and college.   I met the neighbors, many of whom were young mothers.  I joined a mother’s group at a local church, though I was not a member of the church.  I was trying to find a place.

However, I was struggling.  I felt alone.  Gradually, I found myself more and more alone with Jack.  At the time, my husband was still working a job downtown and was gone during the day.  He would come home around 5:30 or 6:00, not late, and take Jack while he cried (he had colic) and walk him so I could get a break.  Ultimately, the weight rested on me.  I was the mother.  I was nursing every couple of hours, changing diapers, trying to institute some sort of schedule – all the things new parents do.  It is a constant thing.  Even as I got the hang of it, it was still all-consuming. 

One afternoon, I broke.  I don’t remember anything in particular setting me off, but I was tired and dirty and felt like I hadn’t thought about or been touched by or been heard by anyone in the world but a 10-week-old baby.  I couldn’t stop crying.  (Looking back, I’m pretty sure this was some post-partum depression and had been building for a while, but – well, hindsight is 20/20 and all that…)  I called my husband at work and, bless him, he recognized that this was an emergency.  I don’t think he’d ever heard me even close to that upset.  I was not myself.  So, he came home from work early.  Told me to take a shower and get out of the house.  I didn’t even know where to go, but I cleaned up best I could and went to a restaurant around the corner that looked nice.  (For those of you who live close by, it was Ritter’s.)

I walked up to the hostess stand and the hostess, tall, thin, beautiful and totally put together, looked at me and said, “Oh honey, what’s wrong?” and that was all it took.  I fell apart again, snotty-nosed, can’t-get-my-breath sobbing about inexpressible hopelessness that was my life.  This darling woman hugged me, put me in a private booth and brought me a glass of wine and talked to me like a friend.  She calmed me down, fed me, introduced me to the owner of the restaurant and made me feel normal.  She had three kids and felt much like I did after the first.  She talked about how it can be a hard transition into motherhood, but to not feel alone.  She said that people don’t always talk about it, but that many women feel this way at first.  She told me how it gets better and that my feelings and body will get better and that my baby will soon do things that engaged me in a totally new way.  She bought me dessert and wrote me a sweet note with her name and number on it.  She saved me that night.  Honestly, she was an angel.

We didn’t become friends.  I’ve never seen her again.  I kept the note for a long time, more as a reminder that there are truly kind people out there than anything.  I wrote my own note to her boss telling her how amazing that experience was for me.  Apparently, she didn’t work there for long after that night.  Not sure whether she was just moonlighting that night or what.  But that part doesn’t matter.  It was who she was for me that night that matters.  She was my first real connection with other moms.

One of the things she said (and my husband said, to be fair) was to work harder for a little “me” time, so I continued to hold onto my MFA friends and studies.  Myself and a couple of the other ladies from the program agreed to meet once a month for a workshop.  Another friend and I set up a study group to prepare for comps.  It required some wrangling of my husband, but I made it work.  He wasn’t happy to be left with the baby for so long.  All my cohorts lived downtown, about 30-40 minutes away.  So the commute, plus some study/workshop time, plus the trip back, meant that he’d have to feed the baby a couple of times, change him, and probably put him down for bed.  Jack didn’t take a bottle well, so it was hard.  I got some grief, but it was important to me to feel like I still had this, and it wasn’t that often.  We tried for every other week. 

I truly appreciated the group.  Really, it was just three of us, though sometimes another poet would show up.  We met at a restaurant or coffee house, which was a treat for me, and we’d have dinner and read each other’s poems and critique them over coffee, which was also a treat for me.  We balanced each other really well.  One was older and loved form poems, sonnets mostly.  She was a stickler for details.  The second was more of a gypsy.  She had a wonderful way with image and a sort of far-reaching spirituality in her work.  I was somewhere in between.  We met regularly for a while, or as regularly as we could.  As the semester got more stressful, it got harder to meet.  They had to grade papers or felt their time would be better used studying.

I sent them what I thought was an irreverent, cheerleader-y email telling them that I was committed to this group, that it was important to me, and I pleaded for their time and attention.  The response was not what I expected.  One woman didn’t respond, but from the response of the second women I could tell they had talked about it because she spoke for them both.  My tone was inappropriate and hurtful.  I was no longer in the group.  That was that. 

I was crushed.  One, that they – having known me for years – would excommunicate me on the basis of a poorly worded email, and two, that they would do so knowing how much that group meant to me (because I had just told them.)  It was awful.  I apologized.  I tried to defend/explain myself, which was a mistake.  It only deepened the rift.  I resented having to defend myself; she wrote back with a truly horrible reading of my original email, including the fact that I did not use a salutation, which was rude. That they were so very willing to think the worst of me still hurts.

So why are these two events in my blog about being a mother?  Neither is really specific to mothering.  They are “around” mothering.  They are the relationship products of me becoming a mother.  Granted, I could have walked into Ritter’s with some other problem and gotten a similar welcome; I could have had a falling out with my workshop over something else had  I not been desperate to keep some part of non-mother-Shelley intact.  But this is how it worked out for me.  These were people who influenced those first few months of being a mom.  One of the events showed me kindness and inclusion; one showed me the wrong kinds of sensitivity and judgment.

I’ve said it before -- being a mother is hard.  The people around you can help to make it easier, or harder.  I guess, too, they help you to be the type of mother you are.  Being kind I can do.  Being less judgmental takes work.  Mothering is a growth process, not only in your children, whom you nurture and educate and  love, but also in yourself.  These two moments crystallize for me the way women can be with one another, as a community and as individuals.  Whether we try to “lean in” or become a SAHM, or both, we share something special, as women.  We can choose to be mothers, or not.  We can choose to move to the suburbs or stay in the city.  We can choose to homeschool or choose between public and private.  However, we don’t always get to choose how we feel or what happens; some things are out of our hands.  Maybe if we choose what kind of woman we want to be and make the rest of the choices accordingly, we’ll also be surrounded by people who want that for us, too.

Disney

So, we went to Disney.  Jack is seven and Lila is four and, if we are lucky, they'll both remember it as a wonderful, magical trip -- and we'll never have to go again.

Not that it wasn't fantastic.  Disney does Disney like nobody's business.  The landscaping and service were incredible.  Before we even knew we were lost, someone would help us find our way.  Everything is clean and beautiful and very, very happy.  We had five days together without work or school, and very little phone, TV, or ipad.  We had big fun.

I also learned a few things. 

1) My children do not like being scared.  On some well-intentioned cast member's recommendation, we took them both on The Tower of Terror.  I was screaming.  The kids were freaking out.  Basically, you are on a malfunctioning elevator possessed by ghosts and you fall -- are elevated-- fall -- are elevated --at random moments, in the dark.  I thought Lila would never recover, but I underestimated her love of drama.  She was fine as soon as Josh began to interview her about her experience.  Jack... well, the damage was done.  The next scary ride, and the next, and the next, he balked.  No attempt to convince him that it was all ok could console him.  Strangely, the other ride that really got them was the Stitch ride at Magic Kingdom.  We've never really watched Stitch, but he's a funny, harmless little blue alien.  On this "ride" they strap you in, brace your shoulders and head, and turn out the lights and try to scare you with puffs of air in your hair.  The kids were crying.  I have all kinds of parent guilt, now.

2)  There are some weird people out there.  (My apologies if I describe you or someone in your family.)  I'm a little weirded out by the little girls, babies, and grown women who dress up as princesses.  A costume is fine.  A little wand?  A tiara? Sure.  A full out ensemble with hair extensions, make-up, tiara, glitter, high heels and no sleeves on a three year old when it's 45 degrees out?  Weird. 

3)  While the people at Disney were not, on the whole, overweight (which was kinda surprising to me since it is so very American) the food they give you there will make you fat.  We bought a food plan.  They give you breakfast, a snack, and dessert at lunch and dinner.  I don't think I ever ate all my dessert, but I ate a little of them all.  Ugh.  As to overweight people, my observation was that the most overweight crowd was the girls, ages 12 to 17.  Josh's observation was that there weren't many hot women.

4)  Everybody likes Disney.  I was amazed at how many older people were there.  We saw people get out of their wheelchairs to ride the Everest roller coaster and people in those little scooters everywhere.  Also saw many people without kids.  I have several friends without kids who really love Disney.  But the ones who really surprised me are the groups of adults with babies.  Would see parents, grandparents, and one or two little ones.  Really little ones.  Infants.  What's the deal there?  They can't ride anything. They won't remember anything.  You have to push and carry them everywhere.  Sounds horrible.

5)  Epcot was my favorite park.  It kinda has a mudflap personality.  The front is all educational: land, water, technology.  The back end is just hanging out, with food.  Pretty, in its way.  All good.  A close second, possibly a tie, is Animal Kingdom.  It has some of the countries, like Epcot, and it feels "natural." It has real animals who seem to be treated well.  Also has some play areas for kids.

6)  I was really proud that my kids didn't beg for stuff.  Disney has more stores than rides and they often empty out the ride into a gift shop.  My kids were probably most entranced by the pirate gear, but they never made a scene and they didn't break down when we said no.  I'm not sure if that means that we're raising them with low expectations or if I've spent too much time railing about "junk" and "commercial crap" and they're scared.

7)  It wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be.  The lines weren't bad.  We never really had to wait for anything.  We had beautiful weather and great luck with being at the right place at the right time.  We'd flow from one ride to the next without trouble.  The kids were patient and relatively well-behaved.  We didn't have to make a crazy plan for our days and nights.  And, in its way, it was beautiful.  They really are amazingly, tremendously, terrifyingly efficient at what they do. 

8)   I wanted a place where I could have all my questions answered.  Not "when is Goofy going to sign autographs?" but things about the different kinds of trees and how they recycle the water and how much the princesses get paid.  What is the hierarchy of characters?  Do you start as Alice in Wonderland and work your way up to Belle?  Why does Cinderella get her own float?  How long are the character's days and what is their rotation?  How often do they change the scripts for the cast members?  I think I need to find a Disney expose'.  I'm sure there is one -- movie or book.  I want to know about the underground city.

9) For all the rides and shows and walking, there's not much for the kids to DO. When we found one (playground at Epcot, Tom Sawyers island at MK, the bone dig at AK) the kids were super excited.  I wish there was some more of that.  Also would have liked a quiet park area, one that's not fenced off, for me.  Or a sensory deprivation tank.  I would have rented one by the minute.

10)  Finally, and most importantly, I think we learned about our little family.  Jack is the kid who will watch the fireworks and tell you which element makes the fireworks have that particular color.  He will figure out where the crank, gear, or controller is for the ride.  Lila can actually fall asleep standing up and will cry at the shows when it's a sad story.  Josh learned that he needs to wash his hands more and I learned that I really don't travel well, especially with the kids.  But, we really balance each other out pretty well.  :)

In conclusion, we had a ton of good, clean, family fun.  We were exhausted and happy every night.  We spent some great time together, had some good conversations and made some funny memories (Remember that time the kids were totally terrified at Disney?  Awesome!)   It was our first real family vacation, just the four of us.  For that reason alone, it was wonderful.  Everything else was just icing.  Sparkling, efficient, magical icing.

The Artiste

Lila is an artist.  I'm not sure what kind yet, but she is.  Since she has crawled, we have found little groupings of things around the house. One day it will be a collection of candles and corks creating a frame.  Another day, it is a pile of sparkly things: coins, jewels off plastic rings, fool's gold.  She also can't resist testing the colors of things.  Like the one time I attempted to treat myself with a fancy tube of red Chanel lipstick (I don't really wear lipstick, but somehow this felt necessary at the time) and it lasted two days before she broke it off on her face, smeared all over from nose to chin.

In the past couple of weeks, Atlanta and its suburbs have been enjoying spring.  For all of us, that translates into pollen.  Everything is yellow.  It's impossible to ignore.  It can frustrate you, or you can be Lila.  Lila painted her face with pollen.  She dyed paper with pollen.  She created paper mache with pollen and scraps of paper and made baas relief designs.

She cuts and colors and draws and paints, but she also dances and sings.  This morning we were treated to a recital that included selections entitled, among others, Angel Fly, Elephant Flume, and Frog Real.  They were interpretive dance with acrobatic elements, sometimes accompanied by singer/songwriter originals.  Really awesome.  You can imagine.  But the best part was when she asked  me to try and promptly judged "I'm better than you."  And then continued "And you know Daddy isn't any good.  He never is."  Well, we probably shouldn't have laughed, but it's hard to help it.

Our house has white walls and I'm pretty much resigned to, at some point, having them redecorated -- Lila style.  I feel sure that we have some drama lessons, dance lessons and art camp in our future.  I have no doubt that she will have a unique fashion style.  Bless her heart.

However, what I'm really looking forward to is seeing what she's going to make of this little kernel she has in there.  I'm really, honestly amazed at her vision.  She creates some great collages out of trash.  She paints with pollen.  She sees something in nothing.  It's worth a little lipstick.

The Big Conversations

It may have passed you by, but a few weeks ago was Holocaust Remembrance.  Honestly, it wasn't on my radar, but Jack got a lovely bird calendar for Christmas and there it was: April 7th, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It was a Sunday night, and I was a little late getting the kids in bed.  They've been going through this "sleepover" phase, where they want to sleep together every night, and I was giving them a trial run in Jack's room.  We're on the floor, lumped together with some sleeping bags and blankets about to read Shel Silverstein and Jack sees the Calendar.  Since he is the king of questions, he asks it: What is the Holocaust?

How do you answer this question? As is often the case, I just did the best I could.  I try to be honest and simple and see what the next question will be.  I said the holocaust was years ago when a group in Europe, but Germany especially, decided that some people were genetically inferior, so they killed them.  I could relate the whole conversation, but the parts that really stick out for me were when Lila said, "Why didn't people just go to the police?" and I had to explain that the whole government was part of the killing.  Then Jack wanted to know why the Jewish people didn't just pretend to be Christian.  I talked about denying yourself and honor and faith.  Lila wanted to know how many bad people there were, and I talked about how some normal people, who might not have been all bad, did some really unspeakable things because they were following orders, not thinking for themselves, only doing what others around them were doing.  It was a horrible, horrible night for me.

The kids, however, seemed to take it in stride.  This disturbed me as much as anything.  Lila, sweet thing, has a really big heart.  She cries when she sees a puppy on television or a princess gets hurt in a cartoon.  How that can affect her and the Holocaust doesn't is a puzzle to me.  I think it is too big and she can't see it.  Jack was just more puzzled about HOW it could have happened.  Why didn't the Jews leave as soon as they knew what was happening?  Why didn't they take the stars off?  Why couldn't kids of Jews (like him, he said) just go to France?

So, as I turned off the light and closed the door, I was wondering what kind of dreams I had given my children that night.  I wondered if I had just taught them not to trust government officials, not to tell people they are half Jewish, to always question authority.  I hope I didn't make them afraid.  I hope I didn't destroy their faith in human kindness.  I took a moment outside their room to sniff up my tears and head downstairs to warn Josh about future questions.  It seems like there are always more questions.

But this time there haven't been.  I don't know what that says about them.  Maybe we talked about it just enough that I don't have to talk about it again for a very long time.  I hope they learned enough.

First Try

I don't know who will read this, but after years of posting my kids' misadventures on Facebook, I have decided to make a more serious stab at recording their happenings and my reactions to their actions.  It's just that I feel like I need a place to put this.  I have these moments with my children-- whether it is just something funny they say, or the night when I had to explain the holocaust -- and it just feels big, like it needs to be shared.  A couple of people have consistently said I should write a book.  No.  But I might do this.  We will see.  I have a hard time sticking to things.

First off, motherhood is no joke.  Some of you may know that Jack was not exactly planned.  Josh and I had been married a couple of years and kid conversations were happening.  I went into marriage without really wanting kids -- and I made sure Josh knew I had very ambiguous feelings about motherhood.  (Still do!)  I remember one serious conversation we had outside the jewelry store, before going in to have my engagement ring re-sized.  Parking lot drama.  I really didn't want kids.  I liked quiet mornings, time to write and paint.  I liked being able to go somewhere by myself.  So, how did Jack happen?  I wasn't really trying to get pregnant.  Josh will tell you he was trying.  But he's a dude.  We were doing that calendar thing where you know which days you are fertile and you take measures to not get pregnant during that time.  (Insert disrespectful sound.)

So, lo and behold, I am with child.  Jack comes along, freaking me out.  I had a hard first year -- no question -- but Jack is a remarkable kid.  He is great company: a quiet observer, a thoughtful character, a loving person.  He's a goofball and, occasionally, a smartass.  After a couple of years of seeing what he could do, I wanted another one.  Hence, Lila.

Lila (Bean) is a whole 'nother ballgame.  This kid is anti-Jack.  She is active.  She does NOT think.  She is a do-er. She plays and plays and plays and plays.  She makes up stories and songs and dance routines.  She laughs with her entire being.  She hugs.  Alot.  She's sassy and disrespectful, headstrong and bossy.  I don't know where she gets it.

Together, we have this sort of learning community.  Jack learns to play from Lila.  Lila learns a little structure from Jack.  I learn chemistry from Jack and the joy of art from Lila.  From me... well, I'm just trying to love them the best I can. I'm hoping everything else falls into place from there.

Really, this blog is about me.  The stories might be about my kids, but the guts of this will be about how a woman learns to become a mom.  It might be 7 years too late, but here we go.  Here's to Jack and The Bean!