Oh my gosh.  
New year.  We need you.

It's 2022.  

Mask:  check.
Double mask: check.
Protective eye gear:  check.

No, I'm not headed on an airplane. 

Helmet: check.

No, not headed to the grocery store.  Or school.
​

It's 2022 and I'm sharing some joy in the form of a recent ski shot.  

For the record, I am posting only silent video.  On all the rest of the shots, I was laughing and giggling maniacally as I drifted down the slope, phone in hand.  Trying to capture the bliss and thrill of hurtling down a very small mountain at night in below zero temperatures.  

God's creation is so incredibly joyful, exciting, mysterious and beautiful!  
And there is so much adrenaline to be had!

A young snowboarder swooshed past, shaking his head.  
"Sheesh, Lady.  Put the phone away."

I think I will.  

Now that you've had your laugh of the day,
Go out and enjoy the wild ride that 2022 may bring your way. 

​Phillippians 4:13!

April 15.

Tax Day.

Groan...

For as much as I love paint and words and creating messy things,
I despise record keeping and ledgers and the monotony of orderliness.  
Calculating tax returns ranks right up there with the time I got a root canal.  

The root canal was particularly memorable because not only did it hurt like heck, but while the perky, young, blonde endodontist with red manicured nails heartily shoved medical machinery, including a running drill and what might have been a catalytic converter into my mouth, she asked 'getting to know you' questions.  

"Do you have kids?" her smile gleamed, sparkling with a million dollars of dental work.  I was flat on my back, white-knuckled, having infected tooth pulp sucked out with a vacuum hose.  I didn't feel much like small talk.

"Auhughmshix..."  I attempted to smile, and held up six fingers.
  
"Ohmygosh! Imagine, six kids!  How can you keep track!  Ohmygosh if anyone asks you how many kids you have, you can just say half a dozen!!!!!"   Her peals of laughter echoed loud enough for me to still hear today. 

Needless to say, I did not reveal to this woman that I was five months pregnant with number seven.  Better to let her imagine I swallowed a globe on my way in for the root canal.

Compared to Tax Day, which I have to endure every year, that root canal was nothing.  Just a fleeting irritation.   

But April 15 comes every year, with its infernal receipts and columns and calculations.  I am not fond of April 15.

Today my son came home from school, dumped his math homework on the table and said, "Mom, is tomorrow April 15th?"

"Yes."

"Awesome!  Will you make a cake to celebrate?"

"Are you nuts, Kid?  Who celebrates Tax Day?"  

"Mom!" he said, looking shocked with disbelief.  "April 15th is Leonardo Da Vinci's birthday!  How could you not know that?  It's important!"  

Well, who knew?  

April 15 is special!   I think I will go bake a gluten-free, sugar-free cake, after all.
​
Then we will really have something to smile about.  

Mona Lisa (public domain), Leonardo Da Vinci

Yesterday, after supper, I flopped down in exhaustion.  Right on the armchair like Raggedy Ann.  It had been one heck of a day.  Not that it was unique or anything.   I am 49 years old, and I have a lot of kids.  Exhaustion is my middle name.


“Mom!” a teenager comments,  “I didn’t know you could sit like that!”


I was too tired to care.  Yes, even old moms flop on chairs and put their feet up.  Within seconds, I had dozed off.  


“Michelle?”  I hear a small voice.  “Michelle?”  


I open my eyes just a crack, and see Small One standing near me.  She is holding a clipboard, and wearing glasses and her sister’s long, white, button-down sweater.  This can only mean one thing.  


“Michelle?  Are you ready for your doctor’s appointment?”  


Oh dear.  


It’s my fault.  I could have been promoting her possible future career as a hair stylist or masseuse.  If I had done that, maybe she would be standing by my chair, wanting to rub my feet.  But no.  This kid’s been told her whole life that if she wants to, she can be a doctor. 


So she’s here to draw my blood.


With a pencil.


I smile wanly as she takes my arm and pushes up my sleeve.


“See, that didn’t hurt much!” she says, taping a bandage to the inside of my elbow.  She begins to question me, writing notes furiously on her clipboard.  She confers with her sister, who is playing the nurse.  They whisper back and forth about my being tired and having sore feet.  She examines the pencil, holding it up to the light and peering intently.  


“O.K. The blood test results are in,”  the little doctor says.  “and I have great news:  


You’re pregnant!”
​

7:00 a.m. Happy Thanksgiving text from the family.  
9:00 a.m. Early Mass.  
By 11:00 a.m., I had peeled 22.5 pounds of potatoes.  I am not kidding.  I am the Undisputed Mashed Potato Queen.  I have prepared mashed potatoes for family holidays for many years, because they are impossible to mess up.  It’s all about butter, whipping cream and vast quantities of potatoes.  But about the time I put the third stock pot of water on to boil the last of the spuds, I knew something was not right. 


At 1:00 p.m. We were supposed to be at Thanksgiving Dinner, for 31 people.  
But Small One had a headache, a raging sore throat, and a fever of 101.5.


Time for a plan B.  


1:20, late as usual, the rest of the family packed into the trucks with the potatoes and drove away for dinner.  Small One and I cuddled up on the couch together.  


“Happy Thanksgiving, Kiddo.”  I said.  “Just you and me.  What do you want to do?”


“I like corn.”   She whimpered, huddling under her blanket.   “Can we eat corn out of a can together?”


Yes, we can.


And so we did.  


After all the cooking of the morning, the only clean pot in the kitchen was an egg poacher.  I was far too tired to wash dishes.  So I dumped the egg poaching cups out of the pan, and dumped a can of corn into the poacher.  In a few short minutes, we were cuddled up together in the big arm chair.  The poacher piled on top of every other pot and pan and potato bowl in the house, and I left it balancing there.  


And Small One and I ate canned corn with mashed potatoes.  She wore a damp washcloth on her head.  


Our Thanksgiving feast was unusually quiet. 


There was no hand holding, no long traditional prayer.  No cousins jumped about, shrieking and laughing, snitching treats.  No games of tag were dashed under the table or up the stairs.  No aunts discussed politics or sales, no uncles hammered out the details and how-to’s of organic gardening or ant farms.   No sisters talked about low-glycemic desserts, and no sisters dished up huge portions of homemade gluten free pie, crowned with whipped cream. No college kids regaled us with horror stories of final exams or roommates.  No one asked me to cut up their food.  


Just Small One and I, together, ate canned corn with mashed potatoes.  We did smile at each other.    


And we were thankful.  


She was thankful that she had her mom.  She had her blanket.  And she had her favorite food, canned corn.  


I was thankful for peace.  For hugs from my child.  For the antibiotics that would surely cure yet another case of strep throat.  I was thankful for the dirty dishes piled high, which meant that there was plenty of food for the family celebration.  I was thankful for the family.  Even if I wasn’t with them.  I was thankful for my mom, who hosted the party in her always-clean house, for a sister who made three turkeys, for a sister in law who baked all the pies.  I was thankful for the sister in law who made a special plate up for me, when all was said and done, with the best slices of turkey on it.   And mashed potatoes.  Lots of mashed potatoes.  


I fell asleep, holding Small One while she watched Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving special.  


I slept in the peace and quiet of alone-ness, hugging my feverish child, and dreaming of My Big Fat Family Parties.   It was almost like I was there, in the fray.  


Sometimes being absent makes me appreciate life even more.  


And I’m thankful for that.  

“This is highly unusual,”  the nurse practitioner said.  


Of course it was.  


“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this happen before,” he continued.  “Five family members test positive for Strep throat at the same time…”


I tried to give him the lame excuse that our dishwasher was broken.  Why?  Why would a broken dishwasher lead to five cases of strep?  Well, gee whiz.  The repair company schedules a week out, and we were sick of washing so many dishes.  So in the interest of saving time at the sink, we shared a water cup or two.  That’s all.  This is excluding all of my teenagers, of course.  Let it be known that they shared no cups.   Yes, the small ones and I were the only ones to share cups and therefore, get strep.  


Welcome to my life.  If there was a prize for being unusual, we would win.  Not if there was a prize for something unusual like, say, winning the lottery.  Not that kind of unusual.  No, we tend to win the “5 Cases of Strep Throat at Once” sort of prize.  



Last week was kind of a record, though, even for us.  Five people with fevers, sore throats, and short fuses, all at the same time…it didn’t really count as “Fun and Memorable Days Off School.”  We drank a lot of broth.  Broth was such a hit, that we had it four days in a row.  That means I didn’t have to cook, which was kind of a bonus.  I just kept the stock pot warming on the stove, and voilá:  Breakfast, lunch, and supper!   Too bad I was too sick to enjoy the vacation from cooking.  


But on the up side, nothing happened to the laundry.  Nope.  It’s still there, waiting for me, right where I left it before we got sick.  And it has multiplied.  What joy!  Our Laundry Mountain is a young mountain range, and somehow continues to grow over time.  I think that defies geological norms, but then again, it’s not truly petrified yet.   


We got into the doctor’s office really early.  To do that, everyone skipped breakfast.  “There is still Halloween candy in the car,” I said.  “You can have suckers for breakfast.  And it doesn’t matter if you’re still in your pajamas.  Let’s go!”


Thank God for penicillin.  I really am grateful.  You may not have been able to tell when I picked up the prescriptions, though.  I had a fever and a carload of sad, crabby sick kids, all with sore throats and fevers.  So of course, the pharmacy had problems filling our prescriptions.  Because I didn’t want to share germs around the world, we went to a new, drive-through pharmacy.   


Our prescriptions ended up at a different drive-through pharmacy with a similar address, other side of town.   I rested my head on the steering wheel, looked at the poor guy at the window (who did not want my germs) and said “I am not driving across town to that other pharmacy.  How long will it take to fill it here?”  


Thirty minutes.  We could do that.  “Look, let’s all get ice cream for our sore throats,” I said, hoping that would kill a half hour.  I couldn’t take everyone home and back again.  We were going to stick it out and wait.  But it was still morning.  No ice cream shop.  Fevering child number one began to sniffle.  “No crying!” I yelled, my head beginning to pound.  “I’ll fix it.  Look, there is a McDonalds with a drive through across the street.”  But that wasn’t any good, either.  Morning McDonalds for the gluten free crowd is limited to an egg McMuffin with no muffin.  Also no cheese, because my kids are the only kids in America who won’t eat melted cheese.  


“I’m sorry, kids.  But I am not paying $2.79 for each of you to have bread-free, cheese free Egg McMuffin.  That’s just a boiled egg and a piece of ham.  Not even if you’re sick.  You probably couldn’t swallow it, anyway.  Then it would end up on the car floor with all the Halloween candy wrappers.”  


We went back to the pharmacy.  They needed another half hour to solve insurance problems. 


By then, even my best-natured kids wanted to go home. 


“No, we can do this!”  I entered cheerleader mode.  “Look, there’s a lake here.  Let’s drive around the lake and see what we can see.”  Silence fell in the car, as I drove them into sleepy boredom.  Ten minutes.  Twenty minutes.  At thirty, we were back at the drive through pharmacy.  


“Still having trouble with one of the insurance cards,” our faithful pharm tech said.  “I mean, it’s obvious that all the cards are the same family, the same numbers…there must be a glitch in their system.  I’ll need another half an hour to solve this.”


I looked at him.  I had glassy eyes, disheveled hair, and white knuckles on the steering wheel.  He smiled sheepishly and said he hoped we all felt better soon.  I handed him the cash to skip insurance, and finally drove away.  


Five bottles of penicillin, one big couch, and Netflix were all we needed.  
And some broth.  Out of five clean mugs. 


Next time my family does something unusual and noteworthy, I’m going to ask for a Different Prize.  

I found these Acorns lying on the ground today.  There were so many of them!  They had fallen from a great height, a Giantess of a tree, really.  The tree has some broken limbs from last night's storm, but she is stronger than she looks.  The cracks and broken parts will heal.  Trees have a way of doing that.  She will survive, probably another sixty years or more.  Even if she doesn't know it, she is stronger than this recent storm.  

But some of her acorns had fallen in the wind.  Some were cracked and broken, some were too small.  All they had needed was a little more time with their Mama Tree.  Just a few more weeks, really.  Just time, nothing more.

If they had been given a few more weeks, then Earth would do the rest.  

Like for this other Little Guy in my yard...  He was given enough time on the Tree.  He fell into my flower garden a few years ago, brown and plump, and Life Happened.  

He got dirty and muddy.  He got cracked and broken up.  It rained on him a lot.  Sheesh.  He had a rough time for a while, just like the rest of us.  But then, in all the pain and trouble, after he thought he was dead and buried, really done for, this began to happen:

And then, this.  This is his future!

Every rainstorm makes that Tree stronger.   Amazing, isn't it?  All that power, all that beauty, all that potential, hidden away inside a tiny little Acorn...

All they need is a few short months with a Mama Tree...

And God will do the rest.  Mightiness unleashed!

Years ago, the Irish dance group Riverdance made an appearance in our city.  Their thunderous shoe stomping, jumping, frenetic tapping and leaping lit up imaginations, made a generation of Americans fall in love with the Irish, and changed my kids’ childhoods forever.  It was a crazed phase, really.  Irish dance schools popped up all over the U.S. in response to clamoring parents, willing to plunk down hundreds of dollars for imported hard shoes and curly wigs.  The universal story of oppression and rebellion and heartache and finally, freedom, told by glamorous athletes in tap shoes was powerful enough to make most hearts pump green blood.  It made us all feel Irish, deep down.  I ordered three pairs of little hard shoes for my daughters within a week of the show.

But no one wanted to open an Irish Dance school way out in the sticks.  So down to the city I went, and I found myself a teacher who would travel to the edge of civilization once a week.

God gave us the luck of the Irish when he sent that teacher to us.  This dancing Irishwoman took my impetuous ideas and impulse purchases and gently turned our  country kids into Irish Step Dancers.  

“Riverdance is great,” she used to say.  “But there are centuries of Irish dance and rich cultural traditions that your kids would appreciate more.”  For the next nine years, she patiently taught our growing group of kids dances from Irish history, set dances from the Irish countryside, dance steps normally done at parties on propped-sideways doors and kitchen tables, and even one that she learned from an Irish garbage man. 

She was brilliant.

“They can share joy through dance,” she explained.  “It is not just about performance and competition.  With music and dance, they can bring happiness to so many.”  With that aim in mind, she led them from nursing home to nursing home, across our metro area.  Instead of competing for trophies, they danced for the elderly.  

And the elderly responded, loud and clear.

They sang along.  They clapped their hands, tapped their velcro geriatric shoes, and pounded their canes to the beat of the kids’ shoes.  They smiled at the children, cheering them on with each jig and reel.  Inevitably, the strains of “Oh Danny Boy” drew tears from the nursing home residents.  Wispy voices joined in, crackling on the high notes.

Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling,
'Tis you, 'Tis you must go and I must bide.

Once, some of the moms found a treasure trove of cast-off dance costumes at a thrift store. The day we tried them out for the first time, a white haired man from the fifth row raised his cane, shaking it.

“Does your Mammy know you’re out dancing in that red dress?”  He scolded the girls.

We put the kids back in pleated plaid skirts.  Good to know your audience.

One performance, something happened that I will never forget.  It was around St. Patrick’s Day.  The kids put on a show in a Memory Care Facility.  This wasn’t the first time they’d danced for people with Alzheimer’s.  They didn’t expect much of a response here.  They were veteran dancers, after all, who showed up with gifts of cookies.  Just a bit of joy for the elderly, who seemed to need it.  

It happened to be a Sunday, and many residents had families visiting.  We wheeled residents out to the sunroom, set out the platters of cookies, musical instruments, and plugged in our speakers.  Silence fell in the room, and the first dancer took the floor.  The ten year old girl began her traditional Irish jig, hard shoes banging and rapping away at the floor.  That’s when it happened.

A frail man, who had been quietly sitting to one side staring vacantly into space, suddenly pushed away his walker and stood up.  His flaccid, sad face broke out in a huge grin.  

“That’s my song!”  He yelled.  “I know this one!”

He gleefully bounced to the front of the room, took the girl by her small hands, and proceeded to dance all about the room, jigging his heart out.  He leaped and turned, kicked and twirled with the girl, as well as any ninety year old man could.  The lilt of the music kept him aloft, and it was as if eighty decades of age melted away and the two dancers became one with the music, dancing their jig.  

As the song ended, the girl guided him back to his chair, and he eased down, still smiling.  His family was shocked, his daughter openly sobbing.  

“That’s my song!” He said again, before falling silent, back into the shadows of Alzheimer’s.  “That’s my song...”

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,--
Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so!

Cartooning at downsideups.com today...  Click to visit me there.

Ok.  I’ll admit it.  I’ve got a secret agenda.  For twenty years now, I have been trying to grow a cardiologist.  I buy doctor kits, plastic stethoscopes, bandages, biology books…I promise to help with tuition.

It’s not working.  

No matter how many textbooks I buy, no matter how many educational “field trips” to the doctor we have made, I got nowhere.  I can’t tell you how many hours we have spent playing cardiologist.  When I only had daughters, I deliberately chose only female doctors and dentists, hoping the girls could see role models around them.  That didn’t work, either.  Once, on an urgent care visit, a male doctor entered the room and my daughter thought he was a fake.  In her experience, only girls were doctors.   I did try hard. 

For all my efforts, the closest I got was a child interested in the Boy Scout First Aid Manual.  Then she got mad because she couldn’t be a Boy Scout.  But that is another story.

The first Barbie my daughter had was a doctor.  I finally caved on the whole Barbie thing, because she came with a lab coat and stethoscope.  But you know what?  Within a short amount of time, she was wearing strapless ball gowns and high heels.  What a sham.

“Don’t worry, she’s still a doctor, Mom!”  my then-three-year-old assured me.  “She’s just a pretty doctor!”

My plans have failed.  

Until this week.

Somehow, after twenty years of playing doctor and performing play surgery with spoons and dolls, the tide seems to have turned.  Someone is interested.  

For the last week, this child has awoken early, donned a white sweater that is her “lab coat”, and proceeded to give shots to the whole family.  Dog included.  I have had my “blood drawn” with her yellow Crayola crayon fifteen times.  The box of Band-aids contents are dwindling, and the bathroom wastebasket is overflowing with plastic exam gloves.  Really.  She found my box of gloves for oil painting (I don’t like solvents on my hands, thank you) and I discovered she is using a new pair for every band-aid application.   A roll of toilet tissue makes a very fine cast, did you know that?  

It’s been an intense week.  

Last night, I sat melting into the couch, exhausted from the busy day.  
“Will you brush my hair like you used to, Dear?” I asked Small One. 

“No, Mom.  It’s time for a blood draw.” She responded.

I am losing.  Twenty years of efforts, and all I really want right now is a little attention.  Maybe a Mommy Makeover so I can sit on the couch in a coma and feel petted and loved.  

But she wraps my upper arm in an elastic hairband, and tells me to make a fist instead.  

“Gotta get a good one this time, Mom” she says as she feels my veins.

Gosh. 

This makes me question all I have ever stood for.  Who wants to play cardiologist, anyway?  Isn’t it more fun to have your hair done and your eyebrows waxed than to have thoracic surgery?  How did I fail to show them the importance of a good haircut or an occasional foot massage?  I failed.

Ah, well.  Perhaps this won’t last, either.  No matter how we as parents promote and groom our kids for their futures, the bottom line is that the future is theirs.

It belongs to them.  

When it comes right down to it, the choice to wear high heels or toilet tissue on their feet is theirs alone.  My job is to keep on being Mom, because that is what I chose for myself so long ago…  And to love my kids and support them no matter what they choose to become.  

I have to go now.  The doctor just called my name.

It's Friday... I'm at downsideups.com!  Come and visit : )_

This winter, life has been a bit rough.  
We’ve had one continuous Germ Fest after another.  
After Thanksgiving, we all had the flu.  After Christmas, the infections began:  double ear infections, bronchitis, strep throat…Jolly good fun.  January was topped off by a case of Mononucleosis, like a cherry on top a very large bacterial parfait.  

I knew we had all had ENOUGH when the Mono was diagnosed. Everyone was sick of being sick.  That week, Little Guy came into the living room wearing a home made Plague Mask.  

A Plague mask!  

You know, those beak-like masks, dark robes, covered in oily wax from the dark ages?  They wore them when they came to collect people that died from the Plague.  Does Little Guy really think it’s that serious? 

“I’m not getting HER germs!”  he snorted.

How does he even know what a Plague mask is, you ask?  Oh, I don’t know.  History books lie around here in bulk… We could probably construct furniture from surplus hardcover books.  Can’t get enough history and art and literature, right?  But I digress.  Back to the Plague.

He was wearing two pairs of Spiderman boxer shorts on his head, a long, dark Obi Wan Kenobi robe from Halloween, and he was wrapped up in a scarf.  With mittens.

Way to be proactive, Little Guy.  
But isn’t he taking this a little too far?  He had his share of antibiotics.  Can I blame him for being wary?  There has been a lot of talk about the measles at Disneyland…whooping cough, chicken pox, Ebola…   How much disease talk can one little kid take? 

How does a kid decide what is fine, what is trouble, and what is DOOM?

Little kids just don’t know.  How serious is serious?  I mean, we go to the doctor a lot.  They don’t forget those shots easily.  

“Okay, Mom.  I trust you.  You say I gotta be shot up with diseases today, then I trust you.  I may scream and try to run away, but I’m still counting on you to take care of me.  …Are you kidding, Mom?  THREE shots at once?  I’m gonna run.  Will I die?  Will I still know who I am tomorrow?  Can I have a sucker AND a sticker?”

I know that’s what they’re thinking as I sign on the dotted line, saying I accept all possibilities and it’s my own fault if they die because of vaccinations.  I know it.

They don’t have much control over their lives.  So they take what they can into their own hands, and craft a nice little Plague mask for protection.  How effective is that underwear hat  going to be, Kiddo?  I had to laugh.
But after I laughed, I realized that I do the exact same thing.  No, I don’t wear boxers on my head for disease protection.  But I do ridiculous things to try to make things better.  

Safer.  

In control.

I could insert a list here:  I avoid doorknobs.  I (still!) buy antibacterial soap.  I wash my hands compulsively. I call out “drive safely!” to everyone, even adults.  Will this really make a difference?  They do know how to drive safely already.  But I still worry.  I teach them to be careful with scissors (“Blades down!”)  careful with pencils (“Oh, my goodness turn that around, you’ll poke your eye out!”).  One of my older kids prefaces requests with “I know you won’t like this because you say I’ll poke my eye out, Mom.  But can I please have a ________?”  Fill in the blank with anything that any normal American kid might have.  And mine do not.  Like real darts or real bows and arrows or bb guns or sharpened blades and axes from the middle ages…  

The truth is, I can’t control life, and I worry.  Even though I make them eat vitamins and probiotics and gluten free bread, we could still get hit by a truck tomorrow.  I can’t control life.  It happens. 

It does happen.   

Eating organic isn’t going to save us from life any more than Spiderman underwear on our head is.  We can’t save ourselves.  Vaccinations, disabilities, illness, even the Plague…  We can’t stop it.  We just have to roll with it and love those kids as much as we can.

We need to hug them and love them and tell them they are worth it.  They are worth all the sleepless nights and doctor bills and drawings on the walls and the yogurt in the carpeting and the headaches and the overtime.  And no matter what happens, whether they get a shot or need surgery or are fighting cancer someday, I am here.  I am here because I love them, and nothing can change that.  Not Autism.  Not Down Syndrome.  Not a poor report card.  Not two months of being sick.  Not even the Plague. 

I’m here because I love them.  All of them.  No matter what.
I’m a mom.

Yes, you still have to have the shot.  
You still have to eat oatmeal.
But you are loved.  So everything is gonna be okay.

Later on, after the Plague Mask Kid went back to play, the One With Mono had something to say:

“This is the life.  I hope Mono sticks around for a long time.  The doctor actually told me I have to lay around and sleep as much as I want to!  No medicine, no shots.  Just my bathrobe and the couch.  Jolly.”

Jolly indeed. 

Life is good.  So put that Plague mask away and hug someone.