Snap Shot moment (a few days ago)

Yesterday, Asher and I had a moment.  One of those sweet, perfect moments where you take a mental picture (having forgot the camera) and hope that it stays there... printed forever just so... perfectly so.

The snow was falling, soft and full flakes... white and entrancing.  The first 'real' snow fall of the winter.  Isaac was taking a nap so just Asher and I left for the store to get gluten free bread so dad could have lunch.  (The boys had their lunch first and now all the bread was gone.  One of the many sacrifices of parenthood.)  We went to the BYU Creamery on 9th and with one child the shopping trip was fairly painless.   Asher pushed around a cart and mostly missed the other shoppers there, but only because I reminded him to not run into people.  It is so hard for a young person to be aware of others and realize the consequences of their actions.  If he could, I think he would just run with the cart, maybe worrying a little about the cans and food he knocked over and occasionally realizing he bumped a person or scraped a shin but maybe only if they told him.  The biggest issue for him was whether he should get a donut, a gluten free sugar cookies, or tic tacs... it changed according to what was in front of him at the time.  The tic tacs were the last thing for him to see before we went through the cashier's line so they quickly replaced the pink sugar cookie for the desired treat.  It was only after we walked passed the front door that Asher saw the donuts and realized that was what he really wanted. The large (for Asher) maple bars he loved so much were the original desire and having seen them again, he remembered what he had really wanted.  But it was too late, the food had been bought and we were heading out to the car.  Fortunately there were no tantrums.  Just a brief explanation.
"Asher, you already chose to get the tic tacs instead of the donuts.  Maybe next time you can make a different choice."
Kids don't have to say much to voice their frustration an
Ughhhh... or  Ahhhhh... said with the right tone gives it all away... but he didn't fight.  After all, he did have the tic tacs still.  Part of me felt like I cheated him because I hadn't reminded him of the donut.  I was hoping he would forget.  Part of me hoped he would learn something about getting what he really wanted instead of getting just what is in front of him in the moment... is that something a five year old will process?  After crossing the road to go back to our car Asher ran up a small hill covered in snow laughing and so proud of himself.  (This was the magical moment.)  Did I mention the snow was falling?
"Look at me mom!" as he ran, fell and slid down the hill.
I laughed, "Was that fun and scary at the same time!"
"Yeah!" he replied getting back up and running back to the top of the hill.
Soon he was running up the hill and sliding down again on his bum. (he was wearing a snow suit for playing in the snow after we brought dad his food).  Who knew that bums could be such perfect sleds.  Up and down the hill he went, his little bottom making a new track in the snow every time he came down.  I think by the end there were nine little tracks going down the hill.
Each time he would yell out, "Yahoo!" or  "Wahoo!" in his perfect four year old voice and laugh.
I just stood and watched, smiling and laughing with him, while I held the groceries... the snow wasn't going to melt the ice cream I had just bought.  Half way through our moment of fun, a young woman drove up in her car to offer a ride home and to tell us how fun it was to watch this adorable moment.
Mom's always appreciate someone appreciating their kids.
Every now and then Asher would hold his hands in a ball up to his mouth and blow on them, trying to keep his fingers warm. It reminded me of all the times my hands had been cold and my parents, or grandfather would hold my hands, rub them together and blow on them.  It only ever helped just a little, but it gave me the feeling of being loved, being kept safe.  Now Asher's poor little hands were experiencing what almost every toddler experiences, the bite of the cold snow.  We hadn't been planning on playing in it so he didn't have gloves on.  Soon the battle was lost and he came to me with tears in his eyes,
"It hurts mom, make them better."  He held up his hands to me and I held them in mine. I took his hands, as others had taken mine, and rubbed them together looking in his brown eyes full of small tears.  How I loved him.
"Is that better?"
"No, it still hurts!" at which point his tears became more sincere.
There are things that even moms can't fix, even with all the love we have in our hearts.
I got him into the car, knowing he needed warmer air and some mittens for playing out in the snow later.
I turned on the heater as warm and as high as I could... but even then it took a few minutes for his tears to stop and his hands to feel warm.  By that time he was talking excitedly about playing in the snow again... finding a sled... doing anything outside in the cold white snow.  Either the fun outweighs the pain or children or eternal optimists.

Progression of My Child

Baby

Small Bell-pepper

Moving, twisting, seedling

Butterfly kicks; cherished bonds

Salutations

Baby

Sweet Heaven

Nestling near me

Treasure embraced to my

Heart

Child

Energetic Sapling

Shedding baby lisps

Replacing them with fearless

Sentences

Child

Of Mine

Evolving, Adapting, Becoming,

Embryo of a full

Life

Love

Despite my

Slipping Apron Strings

Butterfly moments are infinitely

Ours

The first and the last cinquains are my favorites.... the others are all right. :)

Christmas Decoration Fail

Today, I woke up and didn't feel as sick as I did when I had morning sickness AND the flu.  I worked hard, played with my children, did yoga, went shopping for Christmas decorations and then came home and threw up.  Then I was grumpy and exhausted.  We had just barely recovered from the flu and a long semester of school. And now here I was attempting to orchestrate a perfect Christmas moment.  My kids were going crazy trying to decorate the Christmas tree all by themselves... with all my new fancy decorations.  I watched with horror as they did there best to shake the ornaments out of their boxes, tried to hang them on the tree without proper hangers, through them, bang them together; I felt like I was putting out five dozen fires all at once.  It was supposed to be a pleasant experience. But it wasn't.  I had been anticipating this moment 'forever'. But this was not how I pictured my beautiful Christmas tree or how I imagined this moment with my children. The golden beads were draped in knots on the lower half of the tree, strategically placed there by Asher.  He was so proud of himself.  The ornaments were haphazardly placed or strewn on the floor.  We were late getting things up because of school and illness.  So, I had been anticipating this moment 'forever'.  I wondered how my parents did it, letting the kids help decorate the tree.  We didn't have shatter proof ornaments back then just glass ones that would have knife like edges if they broke, how did she stay sane?  I don't remember my mom pulling her hair out as little kids shook the boxes of ornaments trying to dump the shiny spheres on the floor  and then grabbing as many golden, red, and green globes to place on the tree as their little hands could carry.  I don't remember chaos. (should I even mention Isaac stuffing his mouth with ham and then spitting it out on the floor and then running off.  Or how about when Asher and Isaac tried to play in the large Christmas Tree box, nearly breaking its home?)  Did I do it wrong? Should I have waited to feel better and be organized? Was it the morning sickness?  Was it the late night?  Was it because Josh was sick still with the flu on the coach while the kids ran a muck with the Christmas balls strewn around the floor and falling off tree limbs.  Despite my frustrations, my boys were so enthusiastic and so excited to finally have "Christmas" in the home.  Isaac kept exclaiming loudly, "Christmas!" as he hung the ornaments haphazardly at his own eye and hand level.  As if this, this is what Christmas is... these golden sparkling, red shiny, green and golden embossed circles are Christmas... this is it! And Asher now feels safe that Santa Claus will find us with the tree lights on.  We had some lights up earlier but I took them down, because I was tired of the boys constantly plugging and unplugging them, pulling them and tugging them to 'redecorate' or play with them.   When I took them Asher broke down into tears claiming Santa Clause would NOT be able to find us without the lights up.  I assured him, in my non-sympathetic frustration, that Santa would find us.  He stopped crying but I think he feels much better about his chances of being visited by the white bearded, cherry faced, round bellied gift giver now that we have decorations again.  It is funny how these moments are a mixture of feelings for me.  Disappointment in my reactions.  Pleasure in my children's sweetness.  Frustration that I can't control them. Desire to change and do it better.
I know I should not excuse myself with tiredness and morning sickness, but do I at least give reason to my insanity?  It is easier to be a 'good' mother when I am not feeling exhausted by it all.  I wish I could be that 'perfect' mother no matter how difficult the circumstances... isn't that part of learning?  Learning how to do what we know is right even when things are difficult/hard?  Practicing and practicing, working and working at continually improving?  I suppose it takes time and practice and learning to 'let go'... for all of life.
I think though that I have learned several valuable lessons.  1.  Use homemade ornaments or at least ornaments that don't make you cringe with fear every time the kids pick one up.  2.  Wait until you can be organized (not right after the flu and morning sickness and late night shopping).  3.  The memory you create is more important then the preservation of your things. (not that they should break them all... I think they only broke one in fact... but maybe it's how you deal with the breakage that can build or destroy the memory)  The End.  Lesson Learned. Hopefully.  P.S.  All the ornaments are on the top third of the tree... out of the reach of little hands.

more school work

I hesitate sharing my work from school because it isn't Shakespeare, Dickinson, or Keats.  It is all right, maybe good/warm, but not brilliant.  :)  Maybe presentable enough to show a few public/friendly eyes, those who glance this way, but not more than that. :)  My teacher approved of this one so I thought it wouldn't embarrass me too much if he liked it. :)

Reading with Father

calm, winter's white night

filled with warmth of bread

melting butter and honey.

Golden beauty dripping

illuminated by firelight and

strengthened by father's baritone.

children are curled on the floor

in a fortress of pillows, afghans, patchwork quilts.

his voice, creating impressions

we follow; we pursue

traveling worlds newly made

wonders envelope our minds

as father gives life to words

stark black and brilliant white.

outside, the snow falls

A memoir for my class... a really short one... around 500 wrds

 This is one of the stories that I have written this semester.  It does have grammatical errors in it.  My teacher doesn't worry about that too much.  Content in Creative writing is more important to him, for which I am grateful.  It isn't a great story and I am hesitant to share, embarrassed but I thought I would put it here anyway... just to have some evidence of life on my blog.

            “Somebody stole my man.... Somebody stole my man,”  Alta sang as she shuffled her walker forward.  It was her favorite song, tuneless, angry and heartbroken.  Most often she would sing it as she meandered on her morning constitutional.  You always knew, that on these days, Alta was feeling lonely. To me, her singing was humorously tragic.  Her lament had the soul of the perfect southern jazz song.  It made me smile.  But it also made me wish that I had time to spend freely talking to her.  But I didn't.

            There were others, like the “Relief Society President”, perfect, pure, and pristine, who came out one Sunday ready for church, looked at her panty hose and, echoing the sentiment of most women, said, “Damn panty hose, they got a run in them!” She promptly went back to her room and changed.  There was the World War II vet who would wait in his room for family to come.  They rarely did.  One day he said to me quite bitterly, “I wish I could die.  I am ready to die... But He won't take me.  Almost everyone I know is gone, but He won't take me.” Being young, I didn't know what to say.  How could I find a way to relate to someone who had suffered the horror of war,  the pain of old age, and the loss of family and friends.  I felt so inadequate.  Then there was Norma, who never said a word.  But her walls were full of pictures of her young self, smiling, waving, embracing her husband, camping... not the same shell I helped to dress and shower every morning.  She never said a word to me; just smiled or grunted in frustration.

            But, of all these I remember Alta most. 

            The first day I had heard her singing her song, I came into her room and found her sitting on her bed and she looked at me and said, “She took him away from me.  He left me for THAT women.  Left me alone. You be careful! You can never trust a man.”  Once again, my bashful tongue left me without reply.  How do you comfort an older woman who has been abandoned by her husband?  "You'll find someone better?"  "He doesn't deserve you!"  "Men are jerks!" Everything felt trite and emotionally untrue.  And for me, giving a simple hug or a pat on the back was like jumping from the high dive; completely scary.   Another time, after her slow march and song, I went into her room and she spoke differently of her husband's betrayal, “He left me, he wasn't supposed to die first.  How could he die and leave me, alone!”  Her bitterness was the same, her loss just as deep even though this time her husband hadn't run off with another mistress.  Death was the female fatal.  I wondered which story was true, but knew there wasn't a way to know.  Alta suffered from Alzheimers. 

            It wasn't long before the disease began to take its final advances.  I remember walking into her room and seeing feces on the floor; a trail leading to the bathroom with Alta inside it, moaning in pain.  That day, I learned part of the process of death, loss of bowel control.  As I cleaned up the mess from the floor, I wasn't disgusted.  There was a tranquility in the room that minimized the nature of my work.  I imagined that maybe her husband, setting the record straight had come, ready to bring her home.  The reunion would have been sweeter on the other side of the veil, if that was the case.  There wouldn't be any more blue songs for Alta to sing.  She would have her man again and know that, maybe, maybe he had never left her.

'second' mothers

The other day I drove out to Mona to go to a family reunion on my mother's side.  As I was driving and watching the green fields, orchards, farms, and mountains flow silently by, I felt a sense of peace, the feeling you have when you are going home...I watched the land morph and blend... country that I had been so familiar with... country that led me to a house I used as a refuge in my youth.  Aunt Larita's home.  She is my mom's sister, and to me so unlike my mom and yet so like her too.  To me, they have inherited (don't all my mom's sisters?) they have inherited what I imagine to be my grandma's best traits... A quiet strength, courage and composure, a tinge of sassy fiestiness with sweetness in the contours of their faces.   For me, she became like Emily, the chicken, in the Virginian, who would adopt potatoes, puppies and other farmland offspring... I was not hers, and maybe I was a little bit strange, but I felt warm and comfortable, drawn into her warmth, into her brood, and into her home. (although Emily is a comical tragedy; my Aunt is not :)  I would make her laugh at my fickleness with all my "Cecily" type romances... very one sided, but none-the-less-real and dramatic to me.  She would feed me food, food I can still remember today.  Grilled zucchini and tomatoes with basil and melted mozarella... bananas foster... my tongue still reminds me of how delicious it was.  Occasionally, she would take me horseback riding and would always push me to be brave, take control, ride tall, and have fun.  Once, the horse I was riding became so unruly that both she and I panicked a little bit.  This horse WOULD NOT do what I was asking it and was even bucking and rapidly walking backward, I think it knew it had a novice on its back.  The situation became slightly dangerous and I kept thinking, I will not give up... I will just listen to Aunt Larita and everything will be okay.  If I remember right, she was also unsure of what to do in the situation and was hoping all would turn out well, it was lucky that I didn't know if that was the case.  I can't remember how it all ended, but it did... everyone was unhurt and Aunt Larita rode that horse from then on...she needed to tell it who was boss after such an unseemly display.  Now, with my two children playing in the back of the car, I was heading back to this safe haven a harbor to turn to... a second mom and it felt oh so good to be heading home.

My Aunt Marlene was another 'second mom' to me.  When I graduated from school, my next place of education was the oh, so cold Ricks College in the frozen town of Rexburg (Iceburg).  My first semester there I was... drowned, drenched, weighed down with homesickness... It was healing to have a home and a family to go to. I still remember my first visit to her house.  It was a Sunday dinner... warm and complete... which was significant to a college student who was learning to live and cook on her own... yum, boxed noodles :).  The thing I remember most... or the feelings that still burn like an ember within me... were the feelings of... family, love and peace... not that there was a yoga zen quality... or that it was even quiet and peaceful... there was movement, noise, laughter, bantering, teasing, and fiestiness... but it was family and it was love... which made it peaceful.  My Aunt Marlene... I love her... I love all the red haired, Irish fight in her little body.  She worked at Ricks, and if there was ever a problem to resolve, who did they call?  Did they call a three hundred pound, muscle bound, tall, dark and brooding man?  No.  They called the little 4'11 Irish lady with nerves of steel and a sharp wit and tongue.  I think she could keep a pack of wolves at bay, scare terrorists into submission, and convince any soul to obey... just by her mere presence... her calm and firm reasoning and maybe a prudent tongue lashing.  And yet... she was so soft and gentle.  I remember crying with her, over some sadnesses on certain occasions.  I would talk.  She would listen.  And she would share stories, her love stories about my Uncle.  How and Why she came to America.  I would tell her about school, the things I was struggling with... and she took me in, wrapped me up in love and family.  I trusted her.  I trusted her heart and her love... she and her family were people that I absolutely loved.  She was an adopted mom.
Time and distance has changed these relationships ever so slightly.  I am not the same and neither are they.  Relationships do change.  I am not able to see either of them as much as I would have liked, and I am not good at the occasional phone call... email??? Facebook?  Is that were you go to strengthen the bonds of 'second motherhood'?  It sometimes seems that in parental relationships there is a constant ebb and flow...there are times when we cling to the lifesaver and times when we must swim alone... but still appreciate that the lifesaver is still there... home is still there, safety, love and peace are still there.  I know that if the need ever arouse that absolutely... they would be mothers I could turn to.

Homes

I know Pendleton so well. I know the dust, the farm lands parceled amongst the undulating hills, like a patch work quilt stretching until it rolls out of view. I know the blue mountains in the distance, and the surprising closeness of the stars on a dark night.   How often have I inhaled the cool smell of pine and traced, with my eyes, the outline of the trees, like black lace, against a burning red sunset.  The clouds that roll in are full and fluffy.  When it rained, I would dance on the front lawn transporting myself into a different world, swaying to Enya as the thunder cried through the mountains.  I learned to love the blueberries so round and sensuously clustered together.  I am homesick for it... My parents' home, so snug and tucked away.  it was a haven, a place of tranquility, time to escape and be healed... it will always be a home, my home, a place for my heart... but, now it is only a place to visit... I cannot stay indefinitely... getting there is hard work...and now I must work on building that same sort of home, for my children... a place of safety, love, peace and healing. ... Home can be so many places, it seems to change almost constantly and usually it is the one place you crave the most... the quiet and safety.  There have been a few places, and people that have seemed to embrace me and have become family and home for me... 'home' is always the best place to be :)


Just recently, home has become somewhere different.  We have moved from a small two bedroom apartment with asphalt out front, to a spacious medium/large, three bedroom, 100 year old house with a fenced in backyard and a 15 foot ceiling.  Even though every room is stacked with boxes; the boys seem to relish the exploration of new space.  I wonder how they will feel when everything is all put away.  I can't decide how I feel in this moment.  Anticipation, sadness, overwhelmed... I guess a part of me is a little spoiled and wants more.  Like maybe room enough for a horse (not in the house of course)... or no neighbors, somewhere up in the mountains far away... or I would even take everything put away and feeling like home... right now I just feel suspended... unable to truly breath surrounded by a pile of my belongings.  If my stuff could find a home... then maybe I would feel more at home :).  In later years, will I know this house and this place like I know Pendleton?  Will this place be the one where we welcome more children?  Graduate from school?  Learn, even more, to be poor and in love? Is Provo a place you can know?  Or is it too large to be personal... too many people too close and squished together... and none of us knowing our neighbor.  Sometimes I think that modernity has made it impossible to know each other... we have all been compartmentalized, separated in our homes, cars, cubicles etc...  This is my home now.  This is where my husband and my children are, the loves of my life.  I can plant a garden here.  I will probably sorrow here.  Experience bliss, joy, and happinesses uncountable.   In the end, this is where I will create and come to know the beauty in people, nature and life.   I will post pictures later :)