I am thankful.  
We ate.  We drank.  We laughed and talked and played games and solved world problems with our ideas.  We all scrunched up on the old couch and chatted and watched old movies, we ate each other's leftover sandwiches without caring about cooties.  Just for one weekend, no one cried, no one was sick or hungry or too tired to be kind.  We spent the holiday with each other, in peace, love and joy.  
I am thankful. 
Today, my house is a bona fide wreck, I have two sick kids, another going back off to college, no food in the house except one dried out, thrice-cooked turkey leg, a veritable mountain of laundry, and no coffee.  Though I vowed I would not shop this weekend, I will shop for coffee.  Today, the world is back to normal.  Someone even yelled "cooties" when I drank tea from the wrong cup.  So, the holiday is over.
I am thankful.

A Sunday flower just for you.  Pass it along to someone you love! 

Love, Joy, Peace.  We can do this, one friendship at a time.

If you have read Part 1 and Part 2 of this story, then you’ll know what happens next. 

Happy Gluten Free Thanksgiving!

“NO!”  My brain wanted to shout.

It was, indeed.  A Thanksgiving Traditionalist nightmare. 

“Well, people all over the globe eat this way.”  I told myself.

“No!”

“Actually, yes.  Africa, Asia, South America, Antarctica…”

Look, if you have to hold Antarctica up as an example to defend your menu and food choices, then something is seriously wrong with your life.  And besides, those continents don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

But truth is truth, and facts are facts.  We couldn’t go anywhere to eat anymore.  Not with Stella and her Celiac Disease.  Even if we packed her a dinner from home and went to Grandma’s, we would have to follow her like hawks to make sure she didn’t toddle over to the buffet or the cookie trays and eat something that would cause her hours of screaming and pain.

We would have to stay home and make our little family a Gluten Free Thanksgiving.  

“Well,” said my mom.  “If you’re not coming to our Thanksgiving dinner, then we are coming to yours.”  

“Really?”  I was surprised.  “You guys would do that for us?”  

Everyone?

I have a big family.  Some of them are normal.  They’re the in-laws.  

The rest of us are like the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota… our lives are messy, tangled up together, bumbling around, having fun and in each other’s business all the time.  Oh, the year this story takes place, we have, collectively, seventeen kids under the age of twelve.  

One of those kids was my newly-born son, so I was busy with diapers and nursing and ‘new mom narcolepsy’.  All that meant is that I was so fatigued every minute that I could, and often did, fall asleep mid conversation.  Pardon my drooling.  I have six kids, my thyroid just quit and my dog chewed another hole through the drywall.  Would you like to come to my house for your Thanksgiving celebration?  This would have been a great sacrifice for anyone, even without the gluten free part.  

My poor sisters in law.  They are both from families with much more decorum and manners.  The rest of the bumblers I didn’t worry about. They were used to adapting.  And besides, most of them are kids.  They won’t even care if there is no stuffing or bread or pumpkin pie.  

They have each other. 

And that, after all,  is the whole point of it.  Thanksgiving or any holiday…  the idea is to be thankful for each other.  It’s not about the turkey, or the particular recipes you cherish, or the traditions and china plates passed down through the generations.  It’s about being thankful for each other.  And that’s what my extended family did that year.  We let go of our expectations and our traditions, and we were glad that we had each other.  

Doug made a feast of roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, corn bread stuffing, all gluten free and delicious.  One brother and his wife brought cinnamon ice cream.  Another brother and his wife brought paper plates, cups, and plastic silverware, which meant no one had to do the dishes.  My sister made a mountain of veggies, freshly steamed and drizzled in butter and almonds.  Sixteen little kids had the time of their life, playing hide and seek in every nook and cranny of my house.  The dog ate scraps, cleaning the floor with great joy.  I sat on the couch with the baby, a fatigued but grateful beached whale, sleeping. 

Happy Thanksgiving!  

Thanksgiving, Part 2
Fast forward to 2004….

Months after Stella was born, things got pretty chaotic.  My once-private little life was invaded by a veritable army of home health nurses, doctors, cardiologists, birth-to-3 teachers (who knew that was even a job?)  a speech therapist, occupational therapist, et cetera.  

But all that is just background, another story for another day.  

Right now I am remembering a newspaper article my mom brought over to me, shortly after Stella was born.  She, like her mother before her, is a Clipper.  She sees articles in papers and magazines, and clips them out to share.  Real newspaper.  Real scissors.  The pre-internet sharing of stories. 

Anyway, she clipped an article about a family whose child was diagnosed with severe food allergies. 

“This might make you feel better.”  She said.  “Other people have troubles, too.  I’m so glad you don’t have to deal with this!”  

I read the article with sadness and a bit of trepidation.  The poor family had to separate the kitchen into two parts:  allergens and non-allergens.  Separate toasters, separate knives, separate jars of jam.  How could a parent keep all that going perfectly?   I knew that there was no way in the world I could handle that kind of intensity in the kitchen!  

In September, Stella turned nine months old.  My smiley little elf was growing.  

“She needs Cheerios,” the occupational therapist said.  “Great finger practice.  Picking up those little bits of cereal will really help her eye-hand coordination.”  So we started the baby food routine.  A little bit of this, then add a little bit of another, then soon we had worked her way up the food chain to Cheerios. We celebrated when she sat at her high chair, gingerly picking at the little pieces.  We cheered when they made it into her mouth.  Even the dog rejoiced, because now magical delicious bits of kibble rained down from Heaven every time Stella was put into her high chair. 

By October, she was getting much better with her fingers.  But somehow, in those months, she had developed colic.  Every evening, the sweet little cherub would tighten up, screaming like a fire engine.  There was no consoling her.  Tears rolled down her cheeks and mine, too.  I held her and rocked her, singing every song I knew.  Around 2:00 a.m. she would fall asleep from exhaustion.  Night after night, the same crying.  A nurse taught me how to hold her cradled on my forearm, which applied pressure to her belly and seemed to help her calm down.  None of the doctors in our life had any answers.  Some of my relatives’ kids had spent their infancy crying, too.  Colic consumed my every evening, and I began feeling stretched and helpless.  How could she be so happy in the day and so in agony every night?  Though she couldn’t speak to me in words, it was obvious she was in pain.  How long could this last?  November was horrible.  Thanksgiving was just juggling kids, trying to cook and keep Stella from her now inevitable nightly screaming.  

In December, we scheduled a visit to a Special Needs clinician in the city.  There had to be something someone could do about this.  At his initial exam in January, the doctor asked many questions.  “I am going to test her for Celiac Sprue,” he said.  

I had never heard of it. 

By February, Stella and I were following up in the office of a pediatric gastroenterologist.  “She does have Celiac,” he explained.  “As far as diseases go, this is the best one to have.  There are no medications.  That means no side effects.  All you have to do is feed her a gluten free diet.  I’m sorry that I can’t tell you what kind of food you can buy.  (This was 2005;  food ingredients labeling laws had not yet been passed. There was no other way to learn what was in the food you purchased.)  You’ll have to call the food companies to find out if there is any wheat, barley, rye or oats in each product.  And you’ll have to make most things homemade.  You’re about to become a great cook of plain meat, rice, and vegetables, because your daughter needs you to do this.”

Good grief.  I’d spent the previous ten years learning how to cook and bake.  I could even make French eclairs with Bavarian creme from scratch.  I could easily whip out a batch of my grandma’s cinnamon rolls and homemade bread without using a recipe, I’d made them so many times.  What was this Celiac?

“Oh, and don’t worry,” the gastroenterologist added.  “No one else in your family will have this.  Stella probably just has it because she has Down Syndrome.”  

Famous last words.  

That was the day I began reading labels and separating foods.  By that evening, my kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off in it.  But I had one tidy little cabinet dedicated only to Stella’s food.  Our first Gluten Free Cupboard.  I taped a sign on the front of the doors that said “Stella’s Food.” 

Our Separated Kitchen Nightmare had begun.

Did I mention that at that time, I had five children, age 10 and under?  

Feeding time at the Mahnke Farm became unbearably difficult.  Two peanut butter jars. Two butter dishes.  Two kinds of bread: one homemade and deliciously whole wheat, the other was some crusty, cardboard like expensive brick of Gluten Free mystery bread.  I was frantic to keep things separate so that Stella wouldn’t get bread crumbs or gluten in her diet. If she did get wheat or gluten, it always gave her about three hours of agonizing tears.  I felt so guilty, like a complete failure of a mother every time she got cross-contamination.  I tried many different methods.  But Stella’s cupboard and our cupboards didn’t stay separate for long.  The two little ones loved to crawl inside and throw things out.  Then the next kid would come along and dutifully put it all away, but in the wrong cupboards.  I bought colorful stickers and stuck them all over Stella’s food so the kids would know.  But they liked the stickers, and the toddlers put them all over every food item.  I bought Mr. Yuk stickers next.  Remember those?  Big, green circle stickers of a yucky face?  Try making a kid eat a can of wheat noodle soup that has a Mr. Yuck sticker on it.  Uh uh.  The next effort was Sharpie markers.  Anything that came into the house that was wheat got a large, black “X” drawn on it.  Cereal?  X.  Macaroni and cheese? X.  Everything prepackaged and convenient?  You got it, an X.  Soon Stella’s little cabinet was full of little else but raw potatoes.  She thought it was great fun to open the door, grab a potato, and crawl away as fast as she could.  She learned how to throw from tossing hundreds of potatoes around the kitchen.  They were her favorite food and probably one of her favorite playthings.  

She started to heal.  Slowly, over the next two months, Stella stopped the nighttime screaming and calmed down once again.  She had peaceful evenings, hugging and smiling again. She was better!  The gluten free diet was working!  We were so pleased.  

But it seemed at least once or twice a week, she was getting cross-contamination from somewhere.  Play-doh:  made of wheat.  Finger paints:  wheat based.  Even foods like yogurt and soy sauce and canned peaches often contain trace amounts of gluten that would cause Stella pain.  Worse yet, she was crawling all over the house now, and if one of the other kids dropped crumbs anywhere, Stella would find them first.  If we went on an outing, people like to give little kids a sucker or a cookie.  I couldn’t take it anymore, I felt as sorry for myself as I had for the family in the newspaper clipping my mom had given me.  I was super pregnant again, maniacally scrubbing the kitchen floor with Clorox wipes every time someone pulled food out to eat.  I could barely fit under the kitchen table. And guilt consumed me every time Stella got sick.  Something had to change.

So we did what we had to do:  No gluten in our kitchen.  Period.  It was tough, but it worked!  Stella no longer got sick from random crumbs.  And my stress level and guilt went way down, because Stella was a peaceful, happy baby again.  

We did find a compromise for the other kids, who still liked a doughnut or a sandwich now and then.  

The bathtub. 

Our tub had a spray hose on the shower head, which made it very easy to spray the tub clean.  So every time the older kids wanted to eat wheat, they got to eat, sitting perched on the side of the tub.  In five minutes, I could spray it all clean, with no crumbs to make Stella sick.  And with the bathroom door shut, Stella didn’t see them and know she was missing out on a treat.  Many a caramel pecan roll was eaten in that bathtub!

Beautiful.

The solution to all our problems was so simple.  The “best disease to have,” the pediatric gastroenterologist had said. He was right.  Give up everything you like to bake and eat, and your daughter will be happy and healthy.  Simple.  After half a year of Gluten Free life, we had GF cooking down to a science and an art. Stella was growing and happy.  The other kids were happy with their contraband snack location.  And I was happy to not be scrubbing the floor every half an hour.   We were gluten free pros. 

And we were just about ready for our turn to host the big Thanksgiving feast for all our extended family…

Well, here it is, Thanksgiving week, and instead of shopping and cleaning and baking and cooking, I keep on thinking about messed up expectations.  

About times that I have been derailed from well-laid plans.  

And about one particular really crazy Thanksgiving that no one would choose to have, and yet it all worked out okay in the end.  This may take a few days to tell… 

Here is Part 1:


Often my holiday plans have been messed up.  

Not small glitches, here and there, soon fixed with scotch tape.  I mean big, unfixable mess ups.

Bigger than the first time I ever hosted Thanksgiving dinner. 

I was a pretty new at the domestic stuff, and still learning how be a mother.  This was the first Thanksgiving my little family would have in our house, and I wanted everything to go perfectly.  In the frantic flurry of all the shopping, planning, baking, and especially cleaning, I had forgotten to check on the thawing turkey.  The night before Thanksgiving, all the crystal was freshly washed and gleaming, the china dishes in their places, but I had been so distracted that I completely neglected the bird.  Now where was that thing?  It wasn’t in the fridge.  Not in the freezer.  I began to panic when our guest of honor, my mother in law, entered the kitchen.  She was a great cook.  I was not.   Especially when I couldn’t remember where the turkey was.

“With what will you season the poultry?” She asked.  

I smoothed out the tablecloth, adjusting the edge.  I was about to tell her all about the exciting salt and pepper seasonings with which I was familiar, when suddenly it hit me.  I remembered where my turkey was.

In the car. 

It was in the car, in the garage.  Of course.  

We had just a smallish refrigerator, and it was stuffed completely with side dishes and trimmings.  So, for the last few days, the turkey had been kept cold in the garage.  This was Minnesota, after all.  The garage is just a big walk-in cooler.  

Or not.  

It was actually much colder in the garage. Like probably 300 degrees below zero.  Yes, the turkey was found.  But it was frozen solid as a rock.  So, the night before that Thanksgiving, in the dark of frosty cold Minnesota, I trekked to the only open store to find a thawed turkey.  

Then my mother in law stepped in to cook the meal.  She rustled up more than just the salt and pepper I had planned, and even glazed the carrots in a caramel blend of butter and brown sugar.  Delicious things came out of my oven that day, and as my mother in law stirred the gravy and garnished the potatoes, I saw her happiness emerge.  Even though she was visiting from far away, she got to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her son.  And it was just like he’d remembered from his childhood.  His grandmother’s china plates were on his table, his mother was at the stove, doing her best.   Everyone was happy.

It was a beautiful Thanksgiving day.  
It wasn’t the one I planned.  
But it was a beautiful day.

This flower is for you.  Please share it with someone you love.
I like the little bud there, just waiting to bloom.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!   (So says Dog.)

I dragged my feet on this blogging thing for years.  Several times in the past, I’ve designed blog sites, only to abandon them.  Writing and painting and photography have always been part of my life.  But I’m such an introvert. the thought of sharing my writing with the world somehow made me think that it would be like turning myself inside out, exposing my brain to the elements.  

 That hasn’t been the case.

I worried that if I put my photos and paintings on the internet, that I’d lose my copyrights, and wouldn’t have material for a book or two (or ten!) that I have planned. 

That hasn’t been the case, either.  

Giving my Sunday Flowers to you gives me a huge amount of joy.  They aren’t my creations, after all.  And I really shouldn’t be such a photograph hoarder…I have twenty years’ worth of photos to share!  Why have I been hiding them away, archived and forgotten?  Maybe someone else needs a moment of beauty, too.  What if somehow, one beautiful bloom given to you could make your day a little brighter?  

I like that. 

I used to worry that giving my writing away in a blog would leave me with nothing left.  But the opposite is true.  Now I see that putting just a few months’ worth of stories out there is more like pulling a few timbers from a dam.  There are decades of laughter and tears jammed up in here.  Watch out below. : )  If some of my words and pictures make you laugh and cry, then I have done my job.  If they give you hope, or help you to remember love, joy, and peace, then I will have really succeeded.

On November 24, the Christmas issue of Guideposts magazine will be out.  Look for my crazy Las Vegas Christmas story in it, in both the print edition and at guideposts.com.    I got to illustrate the story, too.  Betcha didn’t know that I used to live and work in Vegas!  And I know, ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,’  but this is one story you will like.  

Thank you for your comments and encouragement along the way, and thank you for reading my blog. 

I like that.

(Regal Dog of Contentment and Happiness here...)

Maybe a Frozen theme song with adapted words is just what you need to get on with the shoveling today.  Stay warm!  I'm on hot chocolate patrol.  

I have a question:  How many minutes does it take for peaceful, quiet snow angels to turn into a rumble-tumble snow circus?  Don't blink or you'll miss the transformation.

Yesterday, I attended a funeral for a woman who died, unexpectedly, in her sleep.  Just like that.    She didn’t know that it was her last day here.  She did the things she always did.  When the coroner came to the house, I was told, she said that in all her years as a coroner, she had never seen a home so orderly, clean, and tended to.  The woman had her clothes for the next day lying out, pressed and ready.  Holiday cards were written, addressed, and stacked up for the mail.  The woman loved her family, and was on good terms with all of them.  She was prepared.  

She was ready.

This got me to thinking:  What will they find when I’m gone? 

When I was a child, my grandmother stayed with us frequently.  I can still hear her precautionary warnings as we left for school.  

“Did you remember to change your socks and underwear, Schnookie?  If you get in an accident, you don’t want someone to find you in dirty underwear.”  

I stressed about that as a kid.  I worried about the what-ifs of someone finding me, unconscious, in mismatched socks or less-than-clean knickers.  My gosh.  What would happen?  What if I hadn’t scrubbed behind my ears, either?    Would they also see what I wrote in my diary when I was mad at my sister?  There was a lock on my diary, at least.

I didn’t realize until much later the lesson she was trying to teach.  She wanted us to stay clean, whether people could see it or not.  She was warning us that all of our secrets would come to light, one day.  


I have a good example of that.  Can I tell you a story about my grandfather?

Gramps picked apples and made homemade applesauce every autumn.  Usually he picked “seconds” off the grass at the apple orchard, checking carefully for the freshest fruit that had fallen from the trees.  Bushel baskets full of crisp red apples lined the kitchen countertops and table, as he began full-scale applesauce cooking production.  Wash apples, peel apples, slice and chop apples, pinch of this, pinch of that…cook it all down, sweet and simmering, so that even the neighbors all the way down at the end of the block wondered where that delicious apple pie smell came from.  

All of his visitors received gifts of his homemade sweet applesauce.  He packed it in recycled butter tubs and plastic boxes and re-used cottage cheese cartons, filling three large freezers in his basement.   Walking carefully down the steep steps of the home he’d built for his family after the war, we grandkids had to walk past an ancient gas oven, complete with mint green steel trim.  It looked as if a gingerbread boy might come popping out of it at any moment.  Then pass by Grandma’s washing machine.  I can still see her there, standing in the cellar in her floral housedress, feeding fresh-washed laundry through the wringer.  We waited by with the laundry basket and wooden clothespins.  It was our job to hang the laundry out on the line in the back yard.

“Watch out for your fingers, Dear!  I don’t want you to get hurt!”  She’d say loudly, as the black rollers pulled each article of clothing through, squeezing the water out in rivulets that flowed back into the tub.

Gramps had a much more gruff tone of voice.  

“Keep your diamonds.  Gimme a heart.  Every pig’s got a heart!” he’d say, as he trumped all the tricks and won all the card games.  Monkey Bridge, Bridge, Sheep’s Head, it didn’t matter.  He said it would make us good at math, but that didn’t work out so well for me.

After the games, we’d follow him downstairs, and he would open the antique green paneled door to his “cold room”.  I think “cold room” was the original root cellar of the house, cool and dry.  But now it was packed full, floor to ceiling, with coupon items that Gramps had purchased for almost nothing.  “Take some cereal,” he’d say.  Or “load your car up with toilet paper before you leave.  The store paid me to buy that.”  In his retirement years, he commandeered the kitchen and collected coupons, dispersing the goods throughout the families of his children and grandchildren.  The “take home pile” of toilet paper and cereal was usually topped off by plastic tubs filled with applesauce, fruits, home grown vegetables, coolers and insulated boxes and newspaper-wrapped bins… He loved to give us the food that he made.

We all loved it.  

Then came the day that he died.  He was working in his organic garden, when suddenly, that was it.  Card game over.

When he was buried, all my family gathered together.  We tried to comfort Grandma, but after 50+ years of marriage, there was no comfort for her without him.  We prayed, and ate together, we even played his card game of Sheep’s Head around the dining room table. We neatly folded back the tablecloth, and I lost, as usual.  Evening fell, the relatives began to disperse, and the funeral mood began to lift.  

“We need to clean out the freezers,”  my aunties said.  “Since you have a truck here, you take a freezer home.  We’ll even let you have all Gramps’ applesauce.”  they promised.  

So, with mixed emotions, we trudged downstairs.  “Think of it as your inheritance!” chuckled one of my aunts.  “You can take home all the applesauce that Gramps made for himself.”  What a sweet gift.

We opened up the freezer and began to unpack it.  We chuckled about how many applesauce cartons I would be taking home.  But upon opening the freezer, it became clear that something was wrong.  Gramps had spent months making applesauce and handing it out as free gifts to those he loved.  

But his freezer at home was filled only with apple peelings.  That’s what he had saved for himself.  All the good and sweet fruit, he had packed and given away to others.  

He kept just the peelings for himself.  

All these years later, I still don’t quite have the words to say just how that made me feel…

I always recognized that he worked hard for us.  Despite any faults he had, and his gruff voice and his card-playing compulsion, I knew he loved us. 

But I didn’t know about his secret sacrifices.

It made me feel small and humble…

And loved.

That was a good secret to discover.  

Wandering through art museums is something I really love to do.

I recently spent a day at a gallery with a daughter.

She is like her dad, that one.  Intense and talented, she sees things that most people do not.  Her dad draws comic books for DC in New York.  She essentially grew up in an art studio, surrounded by Batman, Superman, and the DC Universe for companions.  Her world was filled with epic battles in art, and the good guys always won.

When she was young, I read Gardner’s Art Through the Ages to her more often than Go Dog Go.   She and her siblings made (and still make!) extreme messes at the kitchen table, in watercolor, acrylic, pastels, charcoal, graphite, clay, sticks, fabric, sculpture, even lights.  I love the moment of discovery, when a dinosaur emerges from the Play Doh, roaring in the hands of a toddler.  Our Family Nights include covering the kitchen table in rolled paper, and dumping the box of markers in the middle.  Everyone draws.  Art is as essential as breathing.  

Back to the gallery:  While in the museum, we saw this gorgeous painting by Whistler.  It stared,  large and looming on the wall ahead.  My heartbeat quickened.  So did our pace.  By the time we reached the painting, I was crying, and she had tears on her cheeks, too.  We stood in awe in front of the vast, white wildness, and the grandeur of Whistler’s oil brushstrokes overwhelmed me.  Seeing my daughter feel the same power of emotion from some paint and canvas multiplied my tears.  

She claimed the tears on her cheeks sprang from sheer embarrassment, because her mother kept blubbering in public.  

But I don’t think so.  

I wish you a beautiful Sunday!  
Let go of your worries and busy-ness today, or you may miss the incredible small things all around you.  This beautiful bloom is one of my favorites.  I would not have found her if I hadn't been quietly soul searching.  She was in the middle of a large garden, where she was surrounded by flowers more showy than herself.   She didn't seem important at all, until I sat myself down for a bit, and took some time to really look at her.  I found a treasure of beauty when I took the time to search.  I know a few people like this flower.

Check out the latest Down Side Ups cartoon...  

Socks are a Problem

Socks are a very big problem.
Every day that I write or paint, I do not wash socks.  How many days in a row can I go?
This morning, the bus was nearly to our house, and Little Guy still had bare feet.

“Mom! I can’t find any socks!”

“Did you look in your drawer?”

“Naw.  They’re usually not there.”

What kind of sad commentary is that? 

“Look in my studio, Dear.”

Of course that’s where we keep the socks.

And the rest of the Laundry Tidal Wave.  The doors close, so I can live in denial that we are about to be overrun by laundry.

“Hey, Mom!” He comes out yelling.  “Wow!  Thanks, Mom!  A matched set!  That almost never happens!”

So, due to the snow this week, instead of the usual 56 socks randomly thrown in the laundry room of doom, we have “Bonus Socks.”  

Bonus Socks are what you get when Little Guy plays really hard out in the mud, like this:  

Bonus Socks are also earned when you have a wonderful blizzard like the one that hit the midwest this week.  Bonus Socks are hanging everywhere.  They are drying on the rack in the entryway (they are supposed to be there).  They are hanging, quite damp, by the fireplace in great anticipation.  I mean, if you were a kid and you were told to hang up your socks to dry, wouldn’t it occur to you that, um, snow…socks….fireplace….they go together.  Maybe Santa will come four or five weeks early, it’s worth a shot.  There are bonus socks under the couches, in their beds, and everywhere else.  When a kid’s socks are wet with melting snow, they just have to come off right then.  Or that’s what they tell me.  What do I know?  I just wash ‘em.

On the subject of snow, the kids enjoyed it enough for all of us.  I watched as they flung themselves from the top of the hill, bellyflopping without a sled, trying to swoosh to the bottom.  They used no sleds because sadly, I wouldn’t let them.  What a dumb call to have to make.  I hate refereeing.  But twice last year, kids on sleds crashed into a post thingy about half way down the hill.  It didn’t look very important, but both times our septic system alarm went screaming off, and no one could flush any toilets or take any showers till the septic superman came to fix it.   And based on that picture of socks, we clearly need the shower.  But I know that now the snow is here, I will cave in a few days.  They will be sailing down the hill on sleds, building jumps and flying.  

Small One likes to build, too.  She built a snowman.  I stand corrected:  A snow girl. She ran to the house, excitement so high she was bounding.  

“Guess what, Mom!  Guess what, Mom!  My snow girl likes snowball fights!  She doesn’t even care if I toss a snowball at her face!  See?!?!”  

With vigor, she chucked a powdery white snowball at the snow girl.  She was right.  Snow Girl didn’t even flinch.  Later, at supper, I commented to the family how sweetly she played.  

“You’re kidding, right Mom?” said a wiser child.  “Do you know what happened to that Snow Girl?”

I calmly scooped up another ladle of potato soup, and admitted I didn’t.  

“Well…The older guys were down at the bottom of the hill, having a snowball fight.  Small One pushed her Snow Girl all the way to the edge of the hill,”

“And heaved her off the side!” chimed in another kid.  “The big Snow Girl rolled all the way down to where we were playing.  Small One ran down the hill after her, yelling like Wallace the Bruce, and joined in our fight.”

After supper, I looked up Wallace the Bruce.  Can’t look ignorant to the son on topics of history.  Apparently, among other things his mother would never want to know, Wallace is remembered for opportunistic and surprise attacks, strategically using terrain to his advantage.  

Hmmm… perhaps I can train her (and them!) to use the mountainous sock terrain in my home to lead attacks against the laundry pile.  Now that would be a surprise.  

Maybe I could reward them in clean and dry Bonus Socks.

Happy Birthday!

This week, three of my kids celebrate their birthdays.  
That yells out “Yikes” loud and clear for any writing or thinking that might have taken place.  
Do you do anything special when someone you love celebrates a birthday?

I try.  

This week, there will be three cakes.  Three special suppers.  Three ‘no chores’ days.  And presents… in addition to my regular list of breakfasts, lunches, snacks, suppers, laundry, grocery shopping, driving, and cleaning.  

Oh, and a blizzard happened.  Which meant shoveling, and helping to clean out the garage to fit the car inside.  

I may as well try to tightrope walk and hula hoop this week, too.  What a great week for failure! : )

I tried to write a blog post around midnight last night, and all that came out was a jumbled, angst ridden poem about oncoming snowstorms.  Not quite the “Love, Joy, Peace” theme.  You will all thank me that it’s deleted.  A poet I am not, even if I had a garrett in which to hide away and think.

Well, this is short and sweet because the laundry is awaiting.  I think the next load is an entire basket of mismatched gloves and mittens that the kids collected, anticipating the blizzard.  I hope some of them match.  

Oh, and if anyone really wants breakfast this week,

I’ll just say “Let them eat cake!”

Hey, everybody.   It’s Monday!

The elections are over… Time to get back to work.

Let’s work together to make this country, and this world, a better place for everyone.  

We can do that, even if it is just for one person at a time.  

We can do that together.  

I am so inspired by this quote from the beloved Dr. Seuss:

“To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.”

When Stella came home from the hospital, she was small enough to fit into her sisters’ doll clothes.  And oh, boy, did her older sisters like that!  Skip the preemie clothes.  Baby Stella wore ball gowns and little prairie dresses and ethnic dresses…  She like being held and cuddled so much.  It became a moment of bonding for all the little sisters.    She was the littlest one in the family, but she had such a big impact!  Her smiles were contagious.  Her joy in the attention of her sisters warmed their hearts.   She loved them right back.  
And our lives were never the same again.

So go ahead, choose a person.  Make today better, even if it is for just that one person.  Give them a hug or a smile.  One kind word can travel a long way.

You could perhaps change someone’s day, their outlook, the way that they treat their children or employees.  

The ripple effects of your kindness could indeed change the whole world.  

Gently… One small, tiny kindness at a time.

Dear Readers,  
I'd like to give you a flower.  Actually, I'd like to give you a whole armload of them.  I am kind of obsessed with their beauty.  When I was a kid, I worked for years in a commercial flower garden.  I pulled weeds, and dug rain trenches and battled horseflies...it was hard and sweaty work.  But every time it rained, it was my job and incredible privilege to take off my shoes, and walk barefoot through the puddles of the soggy flower farm, gently shaking the raindrops off of the petals.  When the sun comes out after a rain, the sun's rays magnify through any droplets of water on the blossoms, and cause small burn spots.  No one wanted that!  So, I actually was paid to be the Rain Drops Shaken Off the Petals Girl.  What a glorious job.  Every person in the universe should have a task like that, at least once in his or her life.   
I may possibly have twenty years' worth of my flower photography hobby archived on my computer.  In honor of that, and my intense love of flowers, I will give you a bloom every Sunday...
Collect them.  Enjoy them!  They are just for you.

I saw her across the plaza on a cool spring afternoon.  

I was wandering a foreign city, exploring its history and majestic architecture with my chubby baby gurgling on one hip.  And I saw her.  She looked old, and she paced the cobblestone street in front of an old building, back and forth, back and forth, a wisp of cigarette smoke trailing softly behind her.

“Don’t bother with that one,” a local said with open disdain.  “That’s legal here.  She chose her profession.”

My idealistic heart felt a sudden and crushing hurt.  She couldn’t have just chosen this as a career, like choosing pizza or cheeseburgers in a cafeteria line.  If that was true, she must not have had anything from which to choose.  My steps slowed, and I let the others in our group move ahead, toward their sight seeing and shopping destinations.  

Standing partially behind a pillared building, I watched the woman for a few minutes.  Pale red, frizzed hair.  Her eyes sagged, swathed in blue frost.  She looked too tired for high heels.  Every now and then, a man’s face appeared in the window two stories up.  He surveyed his cobblestoned world, a king in his tower, and was quite obviously watching over what he considered his property below.  I began to seethe with anger and rebellion toward a culture that would accept this woman’s plight, and stand by, doing nothing.

 I fiddled with Baby’s sling, and patted her soft fuzzy head.  She blew spit bubbles at me, grasping at strands of my ponytail, which was coming undone in the wind.  My beloved daughter.  If only we could shelter all the world’s daughters from injustice and poverty and cruelty and addictions!  If only the daughters of our world were treated with dignity, worth, and respect!  I hugged my daughter closer, wishing to shield her from hate and wickedness.  Wanting to shelter her.  Hide her from the truth of a sometimes brutal world.

But then my heart began to come undone just like my hair, in the fresh force of the spring wind.  I breathed deeply, and asked myself if it was possible to change the world.  Possible to change the world of one person.  What could I do?  I was alone in a foreign country with a baby in tow.  What can any of us do, faced with injustice and hardship and pain?  Fight?  Yell?  Scream rebellion?  Complain or blame someone?  None of that would help this one woman, this day.  

She needed gentleness to ease the pain… kindness to soothe the hurt of her circumstances,  which would perhaps not be changing.  She needed compassion.  She needed someone to tell her that she had dignity, and worth, and that she was loved by a God whose presence she had perhaps never encountered.  

I left my pillar, hoisting Baby up.  Heart beating, I walked across the plaza.  As I came closer, the man’s face soured.  He scowled out the window, leaning his elbow on the windowsill, darkness and oppression dripping from his glare, down the bricks of the building.  

“Um, excuse me,”  I began, stuttering as I always do when nervous.  “Uh, can I talk to you for a minute?”

She glanced at me with question in her eyes, and her then her eyes darted up to the man.  Her submission to his stare was unnerving.  She didn’t speak English.  I wanted to tell her so much.  I wanted her to know about the Magdalen that my God loved so very much, whose great love was greater than any trouble she ever had.  Greater than all the authorities and governments and Corrupt Ones with Power…  

But the man upstairs yelled at us.  Her painted eyebrows rose with a plea, and she spoke to me in a gravelly voice in another tongue, clearly trying to say there was nothing here for me.  

If I gave her money, the man would take it from her.  Did I have nothing for her?  

I discovered that I did.  With two steps closer, I was there at her side.  I took her hand in mine, and for one glorious instant of Sisterly Solidarity which smashed all barriers of time and season and place, The Woman and I held hands, with a murmuring girl baby smiling between us.  We stood together in Sisterly Solidarity, across the chasms of culture.  We rebelled against circumstance with a moment of gentleness.  No words needed.  

If we could do that, then perhaps our daughters could do the same.  Stop hiding.  Stop the fear.  Dismantle the anguish and pain of their worlds, and turn it into compassion and love, and something beautiful.  We could do this.

So, that was it.  Our moment.

I said goodbye to her in my language, she answered back in hers.  

Before I walked away, I did one more thing.  

I pressed into her hand all that I could give her, all the sweetness and joy that I held in my pocket:  Chocolates.

A handful of chocolates.  

“Peace,” I said, as I turned away, back to my own path, with my beloved daughter.  


“Peace.”

I have a boy.  He is growing bigger, but still kind of a little guy.  He doesn’t like to comb his hair, it sticks up in the front and in the back where the cowlicks are.  He licks his fingers after he eats something he really loves, like bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches.  When he falls asleep at night, he hugs my hand to his chest, and underneath the baggy t-shirt that was a hand-me-down from his grandpa, I can feel his heart beating.   

I love this boy with my whole soul.  I know every freckle, every joke, and sometimes when he’s asleep, I step into the soft darkness of his room and listen for the steady rise and fall of his breathing, just to hear him and be at peace.

Once upon a time, exactly thirty years ago, you had a little boy, too.  And you tried to get him to comb his hair, and watched as he enjoyed his favorite supper that you prepared.  Was it pizza?  When he fell asleep at night, did you sometimes stay by his bedside, re-telling his favorite story until his eyes gently closed and his breathing smoothed out and the soft snore of a boy who played really hard that day touched your heart and made you smile quietly in the dark?

Maybe I cherish my child so much because when I was a kid, my own mother was often too ill to sit at my bedside…  When I had a nightmare, Dad came to save me and rub my head ’til the monsters slunk away, back under the bed.  The doctors never gave her long to live, and one year, we opened our Christmas presents in the Intensive Care Unit because she couldn’t stop bleeding.   People came to the hospital in the night, after they sang their Silent Nights at Christmas Mass.  They came  to donate blood to Mom because our small hospital was all out, and she needed more to make it through the night.  She raced away from us by ambulance on Christmas morning. Because of them, she made it.  Years later, at Parent Nights in high school, when all the players on the team line up to thank their parents and everyone claps, my friend’s parents always made sure that one of them stood by me so I wasn’t alone.  One time, just once, Mom came to a game.  Dad wheeled her up to the sidelines in a borrowed chair, and she beamed at me with love and pride and I don’t know how she did it, because her back was broken and probably her ribs and collarbone were broken, too.  She was so weak, dying, really.  But she smiled at me and loved me from her broken shell of a body.  

That’s when everything changed.  That day, November 6.  

Something horrible happened in your life that day - I am so sorry that it did.  
In one single heart-wrenching, terrible moment, an auto accident took your son away from you.  As you sat in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, looking for your son, hoping to see the rise and fall of his little chest, praying to God for strength to bear the sunrise of a day without that boy, you made a choice.  The light had gone from your son’s eyes, and you thought of others.  

You made a choice that a part of your son would live on in the broken body of another human being.  You gave a stranger a second chance at life.  

And all the way across the country, that is exactly what happened.  Thirty years ago, a team of doctors transplanted your son’s liver into my mother’s decrepit body.  Thirty years ago!  How does one say thank you for thirty years of life?  It is through your anonymous gift of your son’s liver that my mom lived to see her children grow up and graduate from high school.  It is your generosity in your sorrow that allowed my mom to be here for our graduations from college, our first real jobs, our engagements and our weddings.  Mom was here for her twenty fifth wedding anniversary.  And her fortieth.  She was there when her granddaughter was born, named after her.  She was there when her grandson was born, named after your son.  She is present today, and dearly beloved in the lives of all nineteen of her grandchildren.

After getting a second chance to live, she decided to choose joy.  No matter what the circumstance of each day, she finds the love in it.  She has a special gift for making others feel that joy and love, too. 

I wonder about you, Little Boy’s Mom and Dad.  I pray for you.  Have you found peace?  In your great loss, in your great generosity, have you found the spark of joy that lives on even when happiness seems gone?  I think you have.  I think you have because you are the kind of people who give others hope even when you have little of your own.  That makes for a life that even when it is colored by pain, it is filled with love.  

I thank you for thirty years of life, given to us by you and your son.  And I hope and pray that you, too, have somehow made it a life filled with love.

God bless you,

Another Boy’s Mom

The Little Guy woke up not feeling well today.  

He curled up in the biggest chair, with the biggest stuffed animal, and looked very small indeed.  I “set him up” as we call it, with a glass of water and an empty ice cream bucket, just in case.  His face and lips were so pale that his freckles stood out like sentinels.  

“Aww, poor kid,” I said, handing him a comic book.  “Is there anything you want?"

“Bacon.”

Hmm.  Not so sure that’s a good idea, but lest his brother and sisters get it all, I brought him a half piece.

With all the rush and bustle of bus-boarding, I didn’t pay much attention to him.  The last crumbs of a bagel were disappearing off his plate as I finally turned back to see how he was doing.  

I look at sick kids with just a little bit of a woozy feeling in the pit of my stomach.  When they were all small, one cold virus entering the family could spell out weeks of no sleep for Doug and me.  The two with the weak immune systems would catch everything, and not get over any of it without antibiotics.  One of the babies had bronchitis so many times her first year, that the doctor refused to prescribe any more antibiotics for her.  That was one long year.  Doug moved a rocking chair into our small bathroom, propped me up with pillows, and that’s where I slept with the baby, for weeks at a time.  Throughout the night, we’d turn on the hot shower to humidify the dry winter air, making it easier for her to breathe.  She was sick most of her first year.  And she’s not the one we had to hang a sign on the front door for, saying “No Visitors, Please, Sick Baby”

We all know that germs can run rampant through institutions like daycares and schools.  Same goes for big families.  I have a picture of six of us, lying on the living room floor, on couches, on chairs, each with our own bucket.  I will not be posting that one online.  If there was ever one single germ cell of the flu, or hand, foot and mouth disease in a public place like the science museum,  one of my kids would find it and bring it home.  I’ve had three kids at once, curled up in my lap, throwing up at intervals.  Most viruses last only a few days or a week, but multiply that by nine.  You get the idea.  Those were (and are still?) glorious days…

But today it’s just a headache…

“Can I get you anything?” I ask again.

“Yes.  Mom, can I have my paper airplanes and book that I got for my birthday?”  

His little sister and I collect all the paper airplanes we can find in his room, a small stack of unused paper, and the book.  Soon he looks happier, earnestly folding paper airplanes called “The Phantom Phoenix”, “First Fire”, and “Nighthawk”.  

Then the air races begin.  

When I next walk into the room, he and his sister are both standing on the arms of chairs, on opposite sides of the room, laughing and firing paper airplanes at each other.  It’s going to be a good day.

And I’m guessing he won’t need a bucket.