What are little girls made of?  

Sugar and spice and….a hyperdrive.

This is the scene I encountered today in my kitchen.  

Small One had pulled the kitchen bench out from under the table, and was using it as a mechanic’s car creeper thing.  Since she has never, to my knowledge, ever seen anyone work on a car, I’m not sure how she knew this.  I myself had to google “auto mechanic’s tools” just to learn what a car creeper thing is called.  You know what I’m talking about; the little flatbed on wheels that mechanics use to move around under cars while they are being repaired.  How did my five year old know about this?

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m in the army.  I fix cars and machines.”

Way to go, Rosie the Riveter. 

I admire her industrious ways.  She tinkers away with scissors and tape and a paper wrench that she has made by herself, tapping on and taping the underside of the kitchen table. 

“What are you actually doing to the table?”  I ask.

“Silly Mom,” she says, laughing at my naiveté while she switches tools.  “This is a space car and I’m installing a hyperdrive.”  

Oh, is that all.  How did I not know this?

“What’s a hyperdrive, Dear?”

“It’s from Star Wars.  It makes spaceships go fast.” she said. “Wanna watch me?  Then we can have cookies that I made for a tea party.”

So we chatted together while she worked, and I listened to her intergalactic travel plans for after the hyperdrive was installed.  When she finished, we used toothpaste to polish an antique silver tray she liked, and she loaded up her homemade paper cookies.  They were delightful cookies, with glued-on ribbons and yarn pom pom sprinkles.

Then, like many generations of mothers and daughters throughout history, we had a lovely tea party together. 

Today proves to me that she really is made of sugar and spice and everything nice… 

And hyperdrives are very nice.

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!

Spring Break!

Woop! Woop!  Excitement is high this week.

“Where are you going for Spring Break?”  Another Mom asked me.  I knew she was going to Florida, taking her kiddos to Disneyworld.  And I am sure, knowing this mom, that her vacation was planned to the detail, and the whole week would be thoroughly enjoyed by the polite and happy Someone Else’s Kids.  

And I was not jealous.  Really.  Of course I would love to take kids to Florida for Spring Break, but it would have to be Someone Else’s Kids. 

Not mine.  

Definitely not mine.  

“So what are you doing for Spring Break?” she asked again, jolting me from my reverie.

“I am staying home and breathing!”  I smile.  This is the truth.  And I will enjoy this.

Because staying at home with nine people and pets and friends and drop ins is going to take a lot of calculated deep breathing.  I may hide in a closet, too.  That will be the only quiet place, I am certain. 

On Monday of Spring Break, I bought six pairs of tall rubber boots and six sets of watercolor paints. The kids and their pals are going to have a magnificent week of stomping in puddles and watercolor painting.  I am sure it will be a great week.  I scrub all floors, and am certain that the white tile will remain clean for many days, with those wonderful boots keeping the mud outside.  I am so pleased.  I will probably get to think and write and paint, while they are so busy and happy.

On Tuesday of Spring Break, I admired the copious spread of landscape paintings in the quiet of my kitchen.  They seem to have gone through half a ream of paper.  It was still early when I discovered that the “quiet” kids had created a huge mudslide in the back yard, which they were sailing down, standing up, like barefoot water skiers.  There was still no mud in my home, but the backyard looks like Southern Californian mudslides.  They are banished from the backyard.  After lunch, Little Guy had set up a winter sled in the widest puddle, a small lake, really.  

“Watch me, Mom!”  

He took a running leap, soared in the air, landed with a thump on the sled.  The sled galumphed and sloshed, propelled forward, while Little Guy flopped backward, sitting down right into aforementioned mud lake.  While he was inside, getting clean, dry clothes, two little girls came squishing in.  It seems the depth of their puddle exceeded the height of their boots, and their little toes were swimming in muddy ice water.  And one had fallen in, and scraped her hand on an icy stick.  There was blood in the mud.  

My gosh.  I have flashbacks back to my first son, who made mud pies in the rain with a cut on his foot.  It was a teeny tiny cut, but he chose to make mud pies in a corner where the dog had gone to the, um, baño.  Yes, indeed.  That ended with a few days’ stay in Children’s Hospital with a staph infection.  With visions, no, nightmares of the blue line of infection that ran up that child’s leg, I gasped and hauled today’s kid right into the sink, and slathered her with soapy water.  Antibacterial ointment and bandages followed.  Before I even wiped up the mud from their socks and feet, Another Boy came slumping in the bathroom, pale faced and ghostly.  White lips.  Bloody knuckles.  His freckles stood out on his nose and cheeks like dark sentinels of approaching doom.  What happened?!

“I - I - I slammed my fingers in the dooooooor!”  He sat down on the white tile floor in his very muddy jeans and very muddy socks and held up his very muddy and bleeding knuckles.  I think he was going into shock.  

“Into the sink!”  I shouted.  “Hey, You in the Sink, move over!”  I saw another vision of blue lines of infection slinking up this kid’s veins, and pull out the antibacterial soap and antibacterial ointment and bandages again.  

There are now four muddy kids on the white tile.  They are adorned with muddy socks, muddy jeans, muddy shirts, muddy lips and muddy hair.  Even though some of them are bandaged up, they are all magnificently happy.  I am shown the muddy sinkhole of their creation.  The five foot wide hole of what they call “Sopa di Baño” that is now in the ground where there used to be grass.  They are proud as punch of all the mud pies lined up on the front porch.  

I make them change clothes, and start the laundry.  And they are all banished to the kitchen table to paint.  

By Wednesday of Spring Break,  the mud is disappearing, mostly dried up in the yard.  But I am noticing a trend in the paintings.  One kid has taken blue painter’s tape, and their creations now decorate his bedroom wall.  

“Look, Mom!  A cyclops!  And Medusa! and this guy’s a troll.  Every time someone hits him with an axe, smaller trolls break off him and see?  They’re everywhere.” 

Indeed.  Even the Kraken’s tentacles are climbing on his wall, right next to the Hydra with the four heads.  

Pinterest would be appalled.  I am reminded of the cute boys’ bedrooms posted on Pinterest, a website that brings together decorating ideas and moms with free time.  Pinterest shows me bedrooms for boys:  happy tree houses painted on walls, red, white and blue ships and boats and plaid and dolphins…  On Pinterest, everyone has clean tile floors, and there is no mud.  

On Pinterest, there is no Kraken slithering up a child’s wall. 

By Wednesday of Spring Break, I told them it was video game day.  

I am hiding in the closet.

And I am eating chocolate while sitting on the very clean closet floor.  I think that I realize, for the first time, that a mud puddle to a quiet, thoughtful artist mom is a very different thing that a mud puddle to a group of loud, adventuresome, energetic kids. 

I also think the closet is really nice this time of year. 
Let me know when Spring Break is over. 

Little Fugue in G Minor by Bach is softly echoing through my living room.

I love this song.  Especially when it’s played by my kid.

Gentle, lilting, then intense, the notes tumble over each other like a waterfall, and I am carried away.   It is such an emotionally charged piece, and of course, I get choked up watching her play, imagining her in the very distant future, dressed in a floor length gown, performing Rachmaninoff on a stage. 

She’s just a little kid and she halts on some of the notes.  Determination is written on her face, and at the difficult passages, her small fingers pick out the notes timidly and delicately.  She looks over at me.

“Hey Mom,” she sighs and stops playing.  “Can I play a kid one now?  I like Chopsticks better.”

Reality check.  

The truth is, the Bach I so enjoy comes from my kid playing a magic piano app on someone’s Ipad.  

It’s not the real thing, it’s just an app.  Pathetic, right?  But I’ll take whatever music I can get.

I did buy an old piano, almost twenty years ago.  

I bought it used, and now it is unused.  

It has been moved three times.  In those twenty years, I have paid for three kids’ piano lessons.  I idealized the thought of piano playing kids like our former Perfect Neighbor Kids, who learned from their grandmother and could play anything, sensitively and beautifully.  Collectively, my kids know exactly one song on the real piano.  Just one, rollicking, pounding jazzy creation of their dad, who likes to tinker in music.  

No one can really play the piano.

The last time I had our real piano tuned, about twelve years ago, the guy was quite taken aback.  

“You say some of the notes won’t play,”  he began. 

“Yeah, it’s a pretty old instrument.”

“That’s not the problem.”  He sternly looked at me.  “Do you know what I found in this piano?”


Did I want to know?  Because that sounded like a loaded question to me.  What was it?  Was there money?  A treasure map to a lost civilization?  Or something hideous?  I looked at him nervously.  Was it terrible?

“What?”

He made a flourish with his hand, displaying the hidden contents of our piano.  Stickers.  A postage stamp.  More stickers.  Twelve small paper dolls.  A family photo.  And 89 cents in coins.

Hmm…

“How would you expect this piano to function properly when it is being used as a safe deposit box by your children?”  He humphed.  

That was the last time I had it tuned.  

And that is why the only piano music around here comes from an app.  

Until recently.  

Someone Else’s Kid was visiting our house, and sat down at our neglected, old treasure receptacle of a piano.  The notes reached my ears while I was making supper in the kitchen.  I stopped everything to listen.  It enchanted me.  I crept to the edge of the wall, and peered around the corner so as not to disturb whoever was playing.  Someone Else’s Kid continued, intense and smiling.  Eagerly, his fingers fluid like water, he poured out song after song…Joplin, Bach, Mozart, Schumann, and more.  I didn’t know my piano could sound like that!  He had a look on his face that was priceless.  I think it was love.  He loved playing the piano.  Every note was joy.  I leaned against the kitchen wall and a tear rolled down my cheek.  It was beautiful, because he loved it.  

After a while, Someone Else’s Kid got up, and ambled away to another adventure with the boys.  

But his music stayed with me.  

It certainly was not my piano that was worthy or beautiful.

It was the child’s Love, shining through the piano.  Through that wretched piano.  

Love changed it, and enabled it to make beautiful music.

Isn’t that what God does for us?   

We may be old and broken, beat up by the world.  People may think we are useless.  We collect junk on the outside and we often come with hidden baggage on the inside.

But the truth is, when God loves us, our real worth shows.  Love makes us be beautiful.

And God always loves us.  

I should have been doing the laundry.

I should have been making breakfast.

God knows I should have been cleaning the floors, or scrubbing the bathroom, or wiping the 3,000 fingerprints off the windows.

But something magical happened in the forest this week.

Usually, the forest is dark, dormant and barren in winter.  Cruelly abandoned, really.  The leaves are gone, the butterflies and flowers are gone.  The songbirds bailed a long time ago.  They’re somewhere South, sipping margaritas on a sandy beach, posting colorful selfies on instagram to those of us who are jealous and cold and left behind.

Left behind, we feverishly clean our cabins and long for spring.  Because it gets claustrophobic and messy, living in a box in the snow for six months out of the year.  I miss the sunshine.  It’s dark in the box.  

But, for one glorious morning hour this week, all that darkness was transformed.  

Who knows what all was involved…humidity, temperature, the angle of the lights, the alignment of the planets…  Whatever it was, it was perfect.  Every stick, every twig and every branch in the woods was covered in ice.  Illuminated with icy, heavenly light, the forest sparkled.  It glowed.  It refracted rainbow spectrums and ignited the woods with joy. 

I left the housecleaning in a heartbeat, and coaxed Small One out the door.

This was one of those moments.  One of those experiences that stay with you forever, able to  warm your heart on the coldest of future days.

Small One and I walked through the diamond forest together. 

An hour later, the sun had weakly risen in the sky, the ice had melted, and not one glittering crystal remained on any branch.   It was back to darkness again.  Normal.  As if nothing remarkable had ever happened.

We returned home, back to the laundry pile of doom and the drudgery of cleaning…

Later that afternoon, as I burned dinner yet another time,  Small One smiled at me.

“Remember the diamonds, Mom?”  

“Yes, Small One.”

“We walked right in the middle, didn’t we?”

Yes, Small One.  

I smiled back at her, and felt the joy return.

Beginning the pictures on a new project... Watercolors make me happy!  
Watercolors + Baby = Joy!  This is your mathematical equation for the day.
Hope you find joy today, too.  

Yes, they are old.  You may think that they are over, and they are done.  
But these hydrangeas just keep giving.  In the dark and cold and thirty degrees below zero wind chills,  they give life.  
The shrub feeds a pair of cardinals and other birds.  It gives them a bit of shelter to hide from the wind... a bit of comfort in a sometimes frigid world.  The birds are joyful about it, too.  They fluff about and huddle deep in the branches, their clear songs ring out, breaking the silence of snow.  
Hydrangeas remind me of my grandmother.  She is gone now, but the seeds she planted and the memories she left still remain.  They warm my heart on the cold days, reminding me that I was loved.  The teeny tiny, gentle woman wore pastel and liked flowers and wrapped her fluffy hair in toilet paper at night to keep the style safe after she had it set at the beauty parlor up the road.  She painted her fingernails pink, but she was fiercely strong.  
She had wanted to be a nurse, but when the War came along, she worked in a factory instead.  She married a soldier who she met when he was dancing, wrapped up in crepe paper in a pub on Halloween night.  Then this woman, who had wanted to be a nurse and go dancing,  lived the rest of her life taking care of others instead.  She cared for her children, her mother in law, her mother, her grandchildren, and even touched the lives of her great grandchildren, showering them with love and food and a place to call home.  She cared for the immigrants and the poor, she taught children and fed the birds.  And come hell or high water, she went to Mass to pray every day.  
Now she is gone and it is winter.
But the seeds of her love are here still.  I remember her big pots of soup, homemade noodles drying on paper bags all over the kitchen.  I remember her gentleness, her "Ach, Schatzie!  You're such good kids!"  She dropped everything and moved in with us whenever my mom was ill.  She stepped in and adapted to our teenage lives, doing what she could to make it better.  In cooking and cleaning and doing all the monotonous small things, she gave us structure and stability when life was tough.  She surprised me once with a pink satin dress for homecoming, when my mom was in the hospital and my  world was dark.  She pushed aside my black combat boots, and said, "Put on a little pink lipstick, Dearie.  The world is a beautiful place."  

That's why I wanted to share my hydrangea with you today.  
It may be old. 
But it's a good place to find shelter from the storm.

“Good Morning!” my friend sang out when I answered my cell phone. “Want to have a long distance cup of coffee?”

“Sure,”  I say.

“Ooooh!  Good!  I’m sitting here in a lawn chair on the sandy beach.  The Gulf air is so warm,” she beamed.  “People all around me are playing and swimming.  I’m wearing a sweatshirt, though, because I’m a little chilly.”

Hmm.  Nice.

“What a coincidence,” I say, without a hint of sarcasm.  “We are also at the beach.”  

We chit chat for a just a few minutes.

“I love you.”  
“I love you, too.”  

Then my friend returns to the sunshine and her cup of plain, weak black coffee, just how she likes it.  I turn back to our frozen beach, longing for the thick, caffeine-jacked coffee awaiting me at home.

Here at our beach, it’s minus 2 degrees with a strong north wind, which cuts through my jacket like a knife and makes my ears pulse.  My fingers hurt and my toes are numb, but someone has plowed a rink, and my five year old is learning how to ice skate…  And she is smiling.  Her too-big boots do a shuffle-shuffle-glide across the frozen lake. Powdery snow blusters away on the wind with every step.  Some years the ice is bumpy and pock-marked, but this year it is smooth as glass, reflecting the morning sun like a three-mile diamond. 

And I am rich.  

Not because I possess this three mile diamond.  
Not because someone is on a balmy vacation, and I am not.  
But because we are here, skating across the public beach on a winter morning, freezing our extremities off.  And we are together. 

Because we can say “I love you” and mean it.  

“Hey, Small One!”  I yell over the icy blasting wind.  “Want some hot chocolate?”  

I hold her hand as we make our way to shore.  

“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too.”

And I am rich, indeed.

I had help today.  

Good thing, because it took six coats of paint (six!) to cover a brown wall in my kitchen.  
Please don’t ever paint walls brown.  You will live to regret it, six times over.  
Brown tree trunks are nice.  Brown dirt is nice.  Brown chocolate is the nicest of all.
But brown on a kitchen wall is not nice.
Dark and cozy, but not nice.
Buttercups and Daisies are cheery and nice.  Sunshine is the best cheery of all.  
But we don’t have any of those…everything outside here is dead and brown.  It’s that kind of winter. 

I’d like to paint every room in my house a cheerful yellow.  But the six coats of paint required to cover the brown frightens me off.  And also, the family is rebelling.  

“Claude Monet did that,” I tell my kids for the hundredth time, showing them internet photos of Monet’s happy yellow kitchen and cheery farmhouse. “You could grow up to be a famous impressionist painter if you ate your oatmeal in a cheerful yellow room.”

“Please no, Mom.”  they groan. 
I won’t tell you what else they said. 

But it wasn’t cheerful.

I did have help though, as I said.  Somehow, between coats 5 and 6, Dog took a leisurely stroll through the paint tray that I left on the floor.  He then ambled all through the living room.  Thank God it's not carpeted.

So, here we come to the point of my ramblings.  It took me all day to cover up my small brown wall with a clean, joyful color.  It’s a little wall.  An accent wall.  Maybe only 12 feet by 9 feet.  

ALL DAY.  And it was hard work.  I was so tired that while making spaghetti for the crowd, I burned myself three times, the pasta welded together like a brick, and I cried.
So much work and exhaustion.  During all this, in the dead, brown world of Minnesota winter, 

God made it snow.  

In ten minutes, the entire neighborhood, and most of Minnesota, was whitewashed a perfect, pure and glittering white.  Ten minutes.  What irony. 

I try and I try to do my bit…make my corner a little bit brighter and better.  To find the love, joy and peace that I know is hiding there, among the cobwebs and brown paint.  In my own way.  With old paintbrushes and leftover paint which I have to check for lumps because it is really old paint.  My way stinks.

I need to step back, let go of my own ideas, and just let God whitewash my world.   It appears to be outta my league.

Snow.  He covered the dead and brown world with crystal clean purity today… made it all a beautiful place.  

And he didn’t even need my help. 

A Notice from the 5 Year Old:

“Hey, Mom.  See my new last name?  It’s Lutbrgr.  So, if I do work, then everyone will know my name, Lutbrgr.  That’s my work name.” 
“Oh?  Do you prefer Miss, Mrs, or Ms?”
“Ms.  Definitely Ms.” 
“What kind of work do you do, Ms. Lutbrgr?”
“I lift weights.  Also hang on the gymnastics bar and do gymnastics.”  
“Who pays you money to lift weights?” 
“I pay money myself.”


I couldn’t make this kind of stuff up.  Their words are priceless.  

I swear that I’m going to remember them, each little goofy thought and amusing anecdote… but when the house finally quiets down, late at night, and I search for the treasures of the day, sometimes all I am left with, all I can think about, are the dirty pots and pans waiting for me in the sink.  

And I am tired.

What even happened today?  Did I make it worthwhile?  Did I talk with each and every person in a meaningful way?  

I hope.

What did we talk about at supper?

I listen for echoes…voices laughing and yelling and trying to one-up the person sitting next to themselves.  
“Sit by MEEEE.”  
“He sat by you yesterday.”  
“Can I have seconds?” 
“I need money for school tomorrow.”
“Don’t kick me under the table.” 
“Can I have thirds?”
“They’re all yelling!” Doug moans.  “Can’t we just be civil and take turns speaking about something normal?  I wasn’t raised this way!”  (That’s the trump card, right there.)  
Small One launches into another verse of “Frozen” as she passes the spaghetti.  
“Let it GO, LET IT GOOOOO!”  But they don’t let go, and Little Person number 3 knocks over her milk.  It spills down through the crack between table extensions.  Aww.  Am I actually EVER going to get to eat?  Because I’m hypoglycemic and feeling pretty ugly right now.  I mop up the spill, and the spaghetti is finally passed.  

“Spaghetti rhymes with Raghetti, did you know that?  Raghetti is my favorite character in the Pirates of the Caribbean Lego Video Game, Mom.  Did you know he can pop his eye out?”  “Yeah!”  Pipes up Another One.  “And after he pops it out, he has another one!  He has so many Lego eyeballs!”  

Then, The Rivals lock elbows.  They try to compete discreetly, but to no avail.  It’s another battle of wills and wits.  Who is taller?  Who weighs more?  Who gets more pepperoni?  Who can win in arm wrestling today?  Who gets to unload the dishwasher?  Who has to load? 

Those two have been wrestling for authority over each other since age 3.  But it’s all good.  As long as they still have affectionate nicknames for each other… and they do.  They just like to compete.

And the final remembrance of my day:

“Hey, Mom.  If you ever have to go away for a long time, can SHE be my mom?”

Ouch.

Sometimes this is actually a topic of conversation.  Because when you have a lot of sisters, you have a lot of females telling you what to do.  

“Brush your teeth!”  
“Stop chewing with your mouth open!”  
“Look what I have in this box….SNAP!  Gotcha!”  
“MO-OOOOOM!”

One of my babies had two mommies right from the start.  Really.  He called me Mommy, because I am his Mommy.  And he called his older sister Mommy.  The Smaller Mommy, his big sister, always cuddled him, always had time to rock him, always cooed at him and hugged him and babied him and loved him.  She cast off her American Girl Doll like wet socks left in the hallway when he was born.  He was her very own living baby doll, and he loved her right back.  That boy is now programmed to be adored.  
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You:  The Boy That Was Never Put Down!  The Boy that was Cuddled Continuously Until He Could Tie His Own Shoes!  
He was held and smiled at and adored until he was old enough  to walk down the street. 

That’s a lot of love.

Sometimes my adult children have complaints about things in their childhoods.  Usually it is funny stuff like burnt fish stew that they had to eat anyway, or the Oatmeal Punishment, where they had to eat oatmeal until their bedroom was clean.  For as many meals as it took…  For as many days as it took…  (That is a battle of wills no one won.  We only succeeded in assuring Someone’s lifelong and thorough hatred of oatmeal.)  Sometimes they remember the ways we really messed up as parents.  And we sure did.  

We still do.  

I mess up every single day at this parenting thing.  Every kid is unique, every situation is unique.  There is no manual.  Being a family is tough.  And you never quite know at the time whether this is going to be just a moment, a flash in the pan soon forgotten, or A MOMENT, one of the moments they remember for the rest of their lives. 

Which leads me back to Ms. Lutbrgr.  I don’t know who these kids are going to grow up to be.  I didn’t special order them…I made a lot of mistakes while they were (and are) growing up…
I don’t even know what we talk about at the dinner table half the time.  

But you know what?  

I love them.  

And even if they hate oatmeal the rest of their lives, and carry deep regrets about the clothing they had to wear in junior high, they still have to admit that they were loved.  

They were loved.  They are loved.

And that is a good place to come from.

You go, Ms. Lutbrgr.  Go get ‘em.

Do you have Happiness or do you have Joy?

They are two very different things.  
Happiness depends on external circumstances…   Is the sun shining?  
Are you feeling well?  Are you living in peace?  These things seriously affect our ability to be happy.  

Happiness doesn’t happen easily.

Because of this, the Pursuit of Elusive Happiness seems to consume our lives. We buy the right clothes, live in the right neighborhoods, choose the right friends.  We go to the best schools, work at the best careers…eat at the best restaurants.  We just want to be happy, but so often that is not possible.  Happiness is fleeting.  
Illness, tragedy, disaster strike.  
We suffer.
And there is nothing we can do about it.

But I am not a fatalist.  There is more to the story than that!

I had a happy place when I was a kid.  Off the beaten path, on a forgotten section of a neighbor’s unused farm, there was small pond, a stand of maple trees, and a field of wildflowers.  Neglected and abandoned by the whole world, I claimed it as my own.  I hiked its hills and discovered butterflies, made bark boats to sail the pond, and dreamed very big childish dreams.  I wanted to stay there forever, because that place made me happy.  But you know what happened?  

The property was not mine.   
The property was mined.  

Literally.  

One day the bulldozers moved in.  As I watched from a perch in a tree, my happy place of dreams was mowed down, churned over.  Over the next few years, the land was carved up, trucked out, and driven away.  
Perhaps you have some of that earth in your yard, as landscaping?  
Is it making you happy? 

Probably not.  

But happiness is overrated.  There is something more important. 

The thing we really can’t live without is Joy.

Joy is a gift. 
It is yours, right now, despite any crushing problems you are feeling.
Because no matter what your circumstances, no matter how little control you have over your own life, you can still receive Joy. 

You can’t buy it.
You can’t make it.
You can’t take it.
You can’t control it.

But it is given to you, every day.  

Look around you.  

When I began searching for Joy, I began to find it everywhere.  
It is not in any whirlwind of activity that I pursue.  
It’s not in the loud volcanic explosion of daily stress.
It’s not in the thunderstorms of life, which always return, screaming for attention.

I found Joy in the soft, steady breath of a sleeping child.
I find Joy in the iridescent majesty of a dragonfly wing.
I find Joy in the sparkle of morning dew on a leaf in spring. 
Joy lives in the icy crystals of snowflakes, unique and beautiful. 

The small things of this world can fill you with Joy.

The big and troublesome things don’t ever go away, but they can’t suffocate Hope 
if you find Joy in the small things. 

When I think back to the “happy place” of my childhood, I smile.

It wasn’t possessing the property that was important.  It doesn’t really matter that it disappeared.  The important thing is that is where I began to find Joy.

Joy was given to me in the rippling waves of that little pond.  It was there, in the silky milkweed seeds, floating on the breeze just for me.  Joy was in the warmth of the sunlight, dancing on the purple sweet clover along with the bees.  
It was given to me.  
A gift.

And no one can take that away.

Joy.

Want some?  Look around you.  It is here... A gift for you.

I Choose Joy.

This is a deliberate choice on my part.  It does not come easily.

The week before Christmas, my relatives came down with the flu.  This was the same flu virus that, a few days earlier, had five of my family members sleeping in the living room, flopping over all the couches and chairs and cushions so I could check on fevers in the night.  I am hoping we are not the reason they got ill, but chances are, we shared our germs.  So sorry!

The week before Christmas, there was also a car accident.  No one died!  But one car was totaled, and several ribs were broken.  Thank God my loved one will be all right.  The car can be replaced.  The ribs will mend…  

The week of Christmas, in a separate incident, the brakes went out in our big truck.  Not just a mild squeaking, but an all-out, light flashing, shrill beeping, call-a-tow-truck-your-brakes-are-out kind of thing.  The thing went sliding backwards down a driveway.  In true super-hero style, Doug let out a loud “Whoa!” and galloped into the open door and saved the day.  He doesn’t even own a cowboy hat, but he wrangled that twelve year old, nine-passenger Suburban into submission, singlehandedly.  I was impressed. I saw the whole thing happen, and I stood there slack-jawed, looking at the looming fence about to be squashed.  I didn’t move until after it was all over.  

Did I mention I have a large family?  When one gets the flu, many more soon follow.  Poor One with cracked up ribs had to go into seclusion to avoid the flu, as the cousins fell with fevers, one by one.  Most of us missed Mass on Sunday.  Missed confession.  Missed band concerts, missed parties, missed school.  Were we prepared for Christmas?  Well, some of us even missed that.  

But you know what?  Christmas still came.  

There was no snow to be seen, so for supper, Superman grilled deliciously marinated steaks outside.  My job was to fill the oven with 23 large potatoes, and turn it on to bake while we went to Mass on Christmas Eve.  It is not my forte to cook for a crowd.  I’ll clean and smile, but please don’t put me in charge of a Christmas dinner for 20!  My only job was potatoes. 

Halfway through Mass, the panic button in my head rang out.  I had forgotten to turn on the oven.  My one, stupid, lowly job!  Twenty three mammoth baking potatoes, and they would be raw.  I knew my phone was in my pocket.  A couple of quick clicks, and I could have texted someone to help me out.  But what was I thinking???  This was Christmas Mass.  If the Christ Child himself came to Earth that night, would I be present?  Would I have been like the shepherds, leaving all worries, running to greet the Savior?  I was so ashamed.  I took my hand out of my coat pocket.  I would not have been a shepherd, I would have been hanging out in the back fields, texting about potato emergencies.  Caught up in a web of worry.  Didn’t I think that the Savior of the World would watch over us, and help us in our troubles?  It didn’t matter if those troubles were car accidents, broken bones, eleven cases of the flu, or even something as small as 23 raw potatoes… It would all be okay.


When the last “Joy to the World” had rung out, we left church to go dashing through the snow, over the river and through the woods.  

And guess what?  The ones who stayed home had seen the negligent error of my ways, and rescued the potatoes by turning on the oven.  Christmas dinner was saved.  The children improvised a (slightly sarcastic) song about all our troubles and our own Christmas Miracle of the Potatoes, which ended in peals of echoing laughter.

We ate our deliciously marinated steaks with spuds, enjoyed each other’s company, gave each other gifts, and had a lovely time.  

Late at night, we left with presents piled high in the car, along with all the kids and the leftovers from supper.  

A discovery was made the next morning.  Somehow, in the pile of presents and leftovers,  that stock pot of meat marinade had spilled in the back of the car. 

Our car has literally been soaked in meat marinade.  Used meat marinade.  A salty concoction of fragrant garlic, soy, and ginger, made to tenderize and break down the meat, infusing it with unforgettable flavor and smells. Oh, we won’t be forgetting this smell.  It billows out in an overpowering, smelly cloud when the car doors are opened.  Thank God everything is frozen outside, or we would be driving an Evil, Raw-Meat Stenchmobile.  

As I think back to the ruckus of this Christmas season, I have a choice to make.  Choices like this one define our lives.  What will I choose to remember?  Will I cherish the bad times, becoming resentful and even envious of the picture-perfect Christmas photos I’ve been sent by others, the ones where all the kids are smiling together on a beach in the sunshine?  Will I  dwell on the negative, remembering the only difficulties?  Or will I choose joy?  Tough call.

But the choice is mine. 

A:  I can choose eleven cases of flu.  Four broken ribs.  Illness and pain.  One totaled car.  Twenty three forgotten potatoes.  The failed brakes.  And the spilled meat marinade still brewing, rancid in my car.  

or  

B:   I can choose the moments of Joy.  

They were there, you know.  

Moments of Love, Joy and Peace. 

Did I forget to mention those?  Sometimes they are easy to overlook.  Troubles are loud and demanding, but moments of Love, Joy and Peace are soft and sweet.  They are the quiet candles, flickering in this dark world.  These are the moments for which I am thankful.  The gifts I want to cherish…

No alarm clock.

The dog wasn’t sick.

After Mass, in the hustle and bustle of evening darkness, some kids ran to the outdoor creche.  The golden light shone around their silhouettes,  gleaming warmth and radiating hope.  They were the modern day shepherds, seeking the Child in the stable.  They found him. 

During the busiest week, my twelve year old made supper for me.  He didn’t only cook “for me”, he did my cooking chores for me.  That means supper for nine hungry people.  It was delicious.  

The children were all loving and kind to one another.  No fights, no squabbles, only joy in being all together, out of school.  Pure bliss.  

One of the kids helped me wrap presents.  Even her own.  I enjoyed her company so much.  She is infinitely better at details and decorating, being careful with corners and matching patterns.  She made us all laugh by her choice of Disney Princess wrapping paper for the most obviously masculine gifts.

The school aged kids each gave us a beautifully glittered and glued Christmas card.  One said “Merry Crhistmas. Thanks for being such a good Mom and Dad.”  They will decorate my Christmas tree as long as the construction paper shall survive.

Stella perched on the couch next to me, and read me The Twelve Days of Christmas.  All by herself.  It is impossible to know which one of us was more pleased and proud. 

On a quiet walk through the woods, the giant snowflakes fell slowly, melting fast.  I came upon a  grove of small trees, covered in glittering jewels of melted snowdrops.  A thousand sparkling branches stretched out, adorned as royalty, hidden away off the path.  A gift just for me and the raccoons.

Small One gave me a hug for a Christmas present.  She wrapped her soft little arms around my neck, then gently touched my cheek. 

 “You’re the best Mommy I ever had.  I love you.”

These are just some of the moments I choose.  

They are everywhere, you know.  Those seemingly elusive moments of Love, Joy and Peace.  They are all around you, waiting to be noticed, treasures like the glittering jewels I found in the woods.   Like the soft touch of a child’s hand in your own.

Despite the loud circus of troubles we encounter, Christmas has come.  It has come, bringing gifts of Love, Joy and Peace.  They quietly wait to be noticed, to be chosen, to be remembered.  

And I search for them, very deliberately.  

I choose Love and Peace.  

I choose Joy.

May your hearts be as crowded with Love as this stable is.  Panda bear and all.

Some of my kids are obsessed with “Olden Day Stuff”.  

I’m a history major, I get that.  Old Stuff is intriguing.  I spent my childhood absolutely longing to search my grandparents’ attic.  That secret half-door leading to mysteries under the rooftop was a forbidden zone.  Filled, I was certain, with dolls and Christmas ornaments and treasures and photographs of my Great Aunt Marie, the flapper girl who cut her hair short and played the piano at the silent movies downtown.  Mysteries and Secrets and Christmas!  They were hidden away, just like Narnia in the old wardrobe.

As it turns out, I saw the attic and its contents when I grew up.  The angled roof underbelly had exposed fiberglass insulation, and the floor had empty spots where a kid could fall through the plaster and into the living room below.  I’m glad it was off limits, even though they stored the Christmas stuff there.

We decorated our Christmas tree this week, and it has lots of Olden Day Stuff on it.  Some people have stylish trees, pretty trees, even decorator-themed trees.  

We are not those people.  

Our tree is a veritable cornucopia of memories.  At the top, there are ancient breakable blown glass ornaments from my grandmother’s tree.  They are out of reach of little ones.  They are accompanied by all the candy canes that the older kids want to keep away from the little ones.   Below the candy cane contraband are the sentimental wonders that only a mother would keep and cherish.  

One of the ornaments was given to me by my oldest daughter, the very first Christmas that she could talk.  “Look, Mama. A ‘ormament’ for you!”  She had crumpled up a napkin from coffee and donuts time after church.  Masking tape held on a coffee stirrer that she said were antlers, and she drew two magic marker spots for eyes.  “It’s a reindeer!”  My very first Mommy gift.  It’s been on my Christmas tree for twenty years.  Really.  A crumpled brown napkin with a coffee stirrer taped to it.  I can still see the sparkle in her eyes, all pleasure because she had made it for me.

The rest of the tree is covered with memories.  Finger painted things and jingle bells strung with beads on yarn, and many tin-foil-covered-cardboard Stars of David. There is a pipe-cleaner assembly that used to say “Merry Christmas”.  Now it is just tendrils, but I remember the nimble little hands that made it for me.  Olden Day Stuff.  

Probably inspired by all the old stuff on our tree, all this week my daughter has been asking me to make her an “Olden Day Lunch”.  

“Please make me an Olden Day lunch, Mom?”  

What she wants is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cut in half, with a tangerine, in a brown paper bag.  Sound exciting?  

Olden Day Lunch.

It got me thinking…

“Did you know, Small One, that when I was your age, there were no cell phones in my house?”

“Where were they?”

“They hadn’t been invented yet.”

Her eyes widen.  

“Did you know, Small One, that Netflix hadn’t been invented, either? No Amazon, no Netflix, and no DVDs.”

She looks at me in wonderment.   “Oh, you watched movies on the VCR thing?”

“No.  Actually, when we got to watch a movie, we got into our footie pajamas, My mom and Dad made about 5 batches of buttery popcorn, packed it in a brown paper grocery bag (Ooooh, real Olden Day Stuff!) and we piled into the car to go to the drive in movie theater.  We watched a screen the size of a house.”

Very impressed.  I could see the wheels turning in her little mind.  

“What else didn’t you have, Mom?”

Let me think…No microwave.  No dishwasher.  Wait, no.  We were the dishwashers.  We sang songs and harassed each other while we did the dishes.  No remote control gas fireplace.  No remote control at all.  No carseats, no seatbelts in the back seat.  No answering machine, no cell phones, no cordless phone, no pager.  No computer…No credit cards…no carpool, no playdates, no daycare, and my goodness: no disposable diapers.  

“Did you have food?”

“Yes, but we had to grow much of it in the backyard, Small One.”

“Did you have clothes?”

“Yes, Dear.  Mostly hand-me-downs from my sister and the neighbors.  One was a pretty pink dress, but I only got to wear it to church on Sundays.”

“What else did you have, Mom?”

“A sled dog.  And a sled.  And a big hill.  And dirt.  We played in the dirt a lot.”

Actually, this is not a lie.  The neighbors on the next street over had loads of black dirt hauled in for some landscaping plan that was never implemented.  They had a literal mountain of black dirt in their backyard.  It grew wild with magnificent weeds that were taller than me, and we made trails and forts and wove great rooftops of blooming clover that swayed over our heads, populated by butterflies and bees.  We lived on that hobbit-hill, summer after summer.  Games of tag, scavenger hunts for pupae and caterpillars and ladybugs and beautiful garter snakes, basking in the sun.  We were so filthy at the end of each summer day.  Trudging home through the weeds, we’d pull the dandelion fluffs and prickers out of our tangled hair and compare scrapes on our knees.  After a bath, we’d take a wet washcloth to bed, to keep ourselves cool while we listened to the crickets chirp through the screens. Because we didn’t have air conditioning.  

But we did have a Christmas tree.  

“And guess what, Small One.  Our Christmas tree was covered in Olden Day Stuff, too. Your aunt once squirted out a blobby blue patch of glue, and stuck a bunch of sparkly beads in it and tied it with a golden ribbon.  If you look closely, you’ll see it is on your grandmother’s tree again this year.  Because that was my sister’s Christmas gift to my mom.  And moms are sentimental about stuff like that.  We can’t quite keep it, can’t quite throw it away…but we can decorate our Christmas trees with the Olden Day Stuff for forty years or more…  

After I tucked everyone in bed tonight, I took another look at our frumpy old tree.  I had to smile.  Maybe it’s something about the lights twinkling in the darkness, winking at me, reminding me of the magic of Christmas and childhood.  I see my grandmother’s ornaments, and my great aunt’s ornaments, and the decorations my own children have made through the years.  

Some good years, some not so good years.  

But you know what?  We always had each other.  Someone was always hiding the candy canes at the top of the tree, where the little ones couldn’t reach. 

And even now, with all our modern conveniences and electronics, we are still harassing each other while we do the dishes.  And we’re still singing the same “O Come O Come Emmanuel”, captivated by the same flickering Advent candles, lighting up the darkness.  Waiting for Mysteries and Christmas and Secrets.

These are the Olden Days they’ll remember tomorrow.  

And they are magical.

It’s December.  The wind has been howling for a month already.  The lake is frozen over…  it was minus 4 degrees outside this morning.  It must be time to get a tree. 

Because that’s what we do around here, for fun and merriment in the Winterlands.  We chop down a tree, and bring it in the house.  Things aren’t claustrophobic enough, being cooped up in our homes all winter.  We have to bring a tree in, too.  And then we decorate it.  Sparkly things, odd ornaments and do-dads from generations past.  Gifts, mostly, from one friend to another.  They are made with beads and noodles, paint and glue, sequins stuck on by preschool fingers.  Every gap in the branches is then filled with plastic, glittering icicles, and we plug it all in to the electrical socket.  Bling!  We are happy.  We have a tree.

I love Christmas trees.  I do.  But I love them before they come into my living room.  

I love Christmas trees when they still grow, soft and silent, in the woods.

I can’t resist a walk through a forest after snowfall.  I always find something beautiful there, in the halls of the Snow Queen.  Ice crystals on spruce needles…a forgotten, now glittering robin’s nest tucked into a branch…pink circles of peppermint candy cane melted and refrozen on my child’s cheeks… As I trudge, making a path where no one else has been, snow creeps into the gap in my boot where it doesn’t quite cover my ankle.  I don’t mind.  A red cardinal sings to its mate in the treetops.  A thermos of hot chocolate is waiting in the truck.

You can tell that I am no help in cutting a tree down.  None.  I am entirely captivated by the forest’s beauty.  The trees are majestic and whispering, hiding rabbits and owls in secret spots.  I like to be with them.

Cutting the tree is Doug’s job.  He is reasonable and practical, and can definitely tell if the tree is three feet too tall to fit in the living room.  Also he can work a saw.  Just another of those mechanical things that I don’t do.  One of my favorite family photos is of Doug, showing off with a tree for me.  

“I don’t need the car brought down here,”  he boasted.  “I’ll just carry the tree.  It’ll be faster that way.”  And off he went up the snowy path to find our car.  He’s a strong guy.

But one year, he wasn’t there much before Christmas.  A work deadline loomed over his head, and he just didn’t have time for tromping in the woods.   

“I can do this.”  I thought out loud.  “How hard can it be to cut down a little old Christmas tree?”

I bundled up four kids in their warmest outdoor gear, and piled them into the minivan.  Off we went, to a tree farm.  The pre-cut trees lined up in the driveway in neat rows, tightly tied in twine.  The beautiful ones.  The best of the crop.  For sale.

I didn’t want them.  

I wanted a different tree, a scrubby, not-quite-a-Charlie-Brown-tree.  I wanted the kids to tromp through the woods with me and choose their own, unique Christmas tree.  They would remember this their whole lives.  Of this I was sure.  This was one of those moments.

The tree farm man waved at me as I slowly pulled off the main drive.  “Can I help you choose a tree?” he asked.  “No, thanks.  I’d like to choose my own.”  I began to roll up my window and drive, when I heard him say “Ma’am, do you need a saw?”

Well I guess I did.  

“Thanks,” I said.  He pointed the way to the shed where I could choose a saw and a cup of cider.  “We have a few saws to choose from.”  

I knew he smiled.  I could feel his grinning amusement as I heaved myself from the van.  

“Ma’am, are you sure you want to go out and cut your own tree?  Cause I could do that for you.”

“No, thanks.”  I pulled myself up to power posture stance, my enormous belly protruding from my tightly stretched coat.  I was nine months pregnant. “I got this.”

I was determined to make a memory for my kids this day.  Not the kind of memory where mom gives birth in a forest.  That couldn’t happen.  I delivered long overdue with every one of my kids.  Even though my due date was technically here, I knew I would still be pregnant for weeks.  And sawing a tree down just might be the hard physical labor that it might take to get me into actual labor.  Or not.  

I drove carefully down the bumpy hill toward the first grove of trees.  Every bump hurt.  I began to realize that tromping through the snowy forest was perhaps not going to be possible.  I bet this first grove of trees was the one I really wanted, anyway.  No need to go further.  

“All right, kids.  Everybody out!  Let’s go find our Christmas tree!”

Tears.  Someone was sobbing.  No, two Someones were crying.  Remember that hot chocolate I mentioned?  Well while driving over bumps, the whole thermos had spilled on one of the kids.  It had been big enough for five, and now it was emptied in her lap, and dripping into her boots. Her sister said she felt like she had to throw up.   And the Little Guy was sound asleep.  

“Change of plans.”  I moaned.  “You all stay here.  No one is going outside in the woods in December soaking wet or sick.  You’ll get pneumonia before Christmas.”  The oldest child offered to stay in the van and make sure there was no mischief.  Wise choice.

“Okay then.  I’ll take my saw, and I’ll choose a tree.  Rub the frost off the window;  can you see any tree you like?  Which one?”

They pointed to a large blue spruce, about twenty five feet off the trail.  Through virgin white, unmarred snow.  I’d have to tromp, chop, and drag that thing all the way back to the van myself.  No. 

“How about this beauty right here?” I pointed to a giant spruce right next to the trail  It was huge.  Glorious.  

I tried.  I really tried.  The branches were thick and large, and growing low down into the snow.  Spruce tree needles are sharp and they hurt when they scratched my face.  Never mind the needles.  I couldn’t fit my large body under the low branches to get near the trunk.  I rolled and pushed with my boots to get leverage, but I couldn’t stuff myself under that tree.  Too pregnant.  

Now I was covered in snow and my belly was cold.  My hands were cold.  Someone in the van was crying again.  I went to the next tree over, one with obvious bare spots.  I didn’t even look to see if I liked it or not.  It was a tree, and it was going to be my Christmas tree.  I thumped down in the snow and crawled under that tree.  I sawed.  I sawed and sawed and sawed some more.  I was tired.  I laid down on my side like a bloated hippopotamus wearing wool, and sawed at that tree with frozen fingers.

“Ma’am?”

He had followed me.  

“Ma’am?  Can I help you now?”

“Yes.  As a matter of fact, you may.”  Suddenly quite self conscious, I tried to sit up in the snow, under the tree, and crawl out with a scrap of dignity.  I found none.

He helped me up from the snow, and I sat in the driver’s seat, huffing and puffing and cold.

“Ma’am?  Is this the tree you were trying to cut?  Because I don’t see any saw marks at all.” 

“Anywhere.  Doesn’t matter.  Just cut it down and throw it on the van roof, please.”  I was defeated.  And sick Child wanted a bucket.  Wet Child was cold.  Toddler was waking up.  Tween was embarrassed.  Perhaps mortally, as in forever.  This was definitely a memory making day, yessir.  

The man cut down the tree like slicing butter, bundled the tree with twine and tied it to my roof.  

Twenty bucks and a memory to cringe about for years to come.  

As I drove home, we sang Jingle Bells at the top of our lungs, laughing all the way.  

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.

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.  

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.

“Mom, why do you have grey hair?”

“It’s a gift from you, my dear.”  

“But why don’t you get rid of it?”

“Because I earned it.”

“But no on else’s mom has grey hair.”

How does one respond to this?  I’m an old mom…..  I could say  “That’s because I’ve had seven kids and I’m old enough to be your grandmother, my dear.”    But I don’t really want to go there.  Many of my old classmates are grandparents now.  They post adorable baby pics of their grandchildren on social media, and get to send them home at night with their mommies and daddies.  And my classmates don’t have grey hair.  

My mother doesn’t even have grey hair.  She had me when she was just 25.  She was young and cool and had fashionable clothes, painted fingernails, and frosted hair, sipping coffee with her lady friends.  I’d know date night was coming, because before Dad got home from work, she’d sit down at the kitchen table with the nail file and paint, and carefully smooth on a fresh coat of fire engine red.  When Dad got home, they would kiss each other in front of us kids, and go out to dinner, holding hands as they left.

I think I’m more like my grandma, who also had seven kids.  My dad was her youngest, and her home always seemed to have uncountable quantities of cousins swinging from trees and playing tricks on Uncle Joe and running off with fistfuls of Aunt Rita’s giant oatmeal cookies.  I have no idea what kind of hairstyle my grandmother had.  But she did have hair.  It was grey.

Another child chimed in “Mom, do you want to go to the spa today?”

Do they even know what a spa is?  Oh, wait.  Of course they do.  One walk down the toy aisle of any store will show you that dollies today come with spa chairs and cucumber slices for dolly eyes, hair dryers and makeup accessories.  When I was about four, I had a doll that only had a head.  Her head sat on a pedestal, and little girls were supposed to practice their preschool makeup and hairstyle skills on the head.  As a future and budding artist, I painted that head with glee.  Stripes on the eyes, patterns on the lips, facial tattoos…the doll was only in my possession for a short while before Dad thought better of it, and chucked it.  

But I digress.  “Mom, can I do a spa day for you today?”

That’s more like it.  I don’t have to go anywhere, or pay a lot of money to try to look like a chic, younger mom.  I can sit at my kitchen table, keep the coffee I.V. dripping, and pose as a doll head for my daughter.  I can do that. 

Out came the makeup case.  Out came old curling irons, hair straighteners, and long-closeted products cast off from teenagers who no longer live here. I sat at my kitchen table, and was slathered with multiple colors of base, sparkly eyeshadows from the nineties, and heaven knows what else.  I felt pampered and refreshed until the blobby old mascara wand hovered near my eyes.  I’d like to preserve my ailing sight more than I want mascara applied.  When the perpetual pony tail was removed and the hot curling iron came near, I just closed my eyes completely.  I spent an hour being re-created and made over into something new.  

“How is your forehead so pinched?”  one asked.

“OOOh, Mommy!  You look so beautiful!” said another.  

“You are like a hairless wonder” said the one who inherited thick locks from my husband’s side of the family.

“Oh, Mommy!” again.  “Will you look like this for church every week?”  

After all was said and done, I paraded around the house, blinking my sparkly eyes and tossing my grey head while we laughed.  Then I locked the bathroom door and chiseled it all off.  I'm pretty sure there was  play-doh in my eyebrows.  If it wasn't play-doh, I do not want to know what it was...  

And so, here it is, Monday already.  My pedicure is still purple with sparkles.  My pinched brow and grey hair are back.  And I am typing this with two kids and a 90 pound dog on my lap.  Sunday’s spa day was remarkable and hysterical, but I’m not sure I can recommend this spa to my friends.

I think that like grey hair, a trip to this kind of spa has to be earned.

Stella loves a good party.  One recent morning, I woke up, stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee, and found this.  

She had the table all set for seventeen (count ‘em), and the pancake mix was out on the countertop with a bowl.  

“Pancake party, Mom? Chocolate chip pancakes?”

It was six a.m. on a Saturday.

I hoped no one was really coming.  

“Are you hungry, Stella?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to make chocolate chip pancakes just for you?  There’s no party.  Only eight of us today.” I said. "And everyone's still sleeping."

“No.  It’s a party!” she insisted.

She’s always loved parties.  If she gained a year for every time we’ve sung “Happy Birthday, dear Stella” then she’d be in her eighties.  When she was little, we used to pull out little birthday candles and put them in anything, anytime, just because her happiness and delight was so sincere and contagious.  When she asked, we adorned muffins, pancakes, even mashed potatoes.  Once we were at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, and Stell told the owner it was her birthday.  So with much pomp and circumstance, they served up a plate of sticky rice, formed into a cake, glowing with a candle atop.  She was ecstatic.  The entire restaurant joined in the singing.  Her little brother did get a bit jealous with all Stella’s birthdays, but he’s come around.  She’s initiated many impromptu parties for him, too.  Her surprise and joy cast a tone of happiness into each day.   Why shouldn’t we celebrate a person we love, whenever we want to?

“Today is your birthday, Mom.”  She smiles, caressing my cheek.  “Happy Birthday to you!” 

Thank God for paper plates.

Here is Stella, signing “I love you”.  

If I had caught a glimpse of this girl nine years ago, I wouldn’t have been afraid.
If I had known then that her favorite words of all would be “I love you” 
then I wouldn’t have listened to what anyone else had to say. 

When the geneticist told me about all the “Fifty markers of Down Syndrome” and the myriad of potential health problems, I was scared.  When they announced the words “mental retardation” and “three holes in her heart”, I was terrified.  What did that even mean?  

A rather patient pulmonologist drew me a picture of the chambers of the heart.  He tried to fill me in on the high school biology I should have remembered in the middle of the night in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  Understanding the heart as a simple mechanical muscle was easy, according to him.  He also said they could fix the holes. 

But what about “mental retardation?”  What does that mean?  As I thought about it, I realized it was much easier to contemplate “giftedness” and “deficits”.  Because I like visual things, I drew myself some charts, which included headings such as Social, Intellectual, Creative, Spiritual, Financial.
I also included ideals I valued, like Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness.

You get the idea.  Then I started filling people’s names into my chart.  For example, Alfred is a creative genius, but is financially deficient.  Betty is spiritually gifted, but socially inept.  Carla is intellectually superior, but awfully unkind.  See how I changed their names, so they can live on in blissful ignorance?  I’m so intellectual.

The next day, I cornered a cardiologist. 

“Who says being intelligent is any more important than being creative? Why do you think being intelligent has more value than being spiritual?  How can you tell me that having a high IQ is better than having much joy?” 

I surprised that poor cardiologist.  She responded with a get-back-in-line attitude.  “I have spent my entire career helping those with physical disabilities and weaknesses to live a full life.  And I have known many intelligent people who have a disability in kindness, or a disability in finding joy.”  She may also have said “So back off, Mama!” but I’m not sure.

As Stella grew, the holes in her heart began to heal.  The big one closed, all by itself.
As Stella grew, the deficits in my own heart began to heal, as well, but not all by themselves.  I needed Stella to help me.  Stella is peaceful, kind, gentle, loving and joyful, all those ideals I valued.  She is not so good at math, or at tying her shoes.  But she is teaching me to become patient, because I have always stunk at that. It was my heart that needed healing, actually.  
And Stella is the one who is the genius in healing hearts.  

Here's hoping you enjoyed today as much as I did!

Christmas Eve.  

Snowflakes swirled softly, descending on a peaceful scene of Mary, Joseph, and newborn Jesus, cradled in a manger.  Peace and serenity reigned there in the snow globe, on the shelf.  But that was just a snow globe.  I turned away.  Lights flashed, blinking Christmasy red, green, blue, yellow.  These lights emanated not from a Christmas tree, but from a heart monitor, I.V. drip, bili blanket, feeding tube, oxygen tent.  My newborn baby laid in the neonatal intensive care unit of a downtown hospital, cradled in an incubator.  Rather than peppermint and gingerbread, I smelled only my own fear.

 We named her Stella Lucille.  Born just a few days earlier, her name meant “Star Light,” for the star of Bethlehem that showed the wise men the way to Jesus.  But our little star couldn’t breathe or eat on her own.  I held her flaccid, tiny body in my arms, after her birth.  Though she was swaddled in a warm blanket, her head flopped back like a rag doll.  She was cold, so cold.  Her fingers and mouth slowly turned purple, then blue.  Within minutes, a small army of specialists and nurses had whisked her away from me.  We now knew that she had three holes in her heart, and Down Syndrome.  

Merry Christmas, right?  My other small children waited for me at home.  We’d planned it all out, this baby was the biggest, most exciting Christmas present for our family.  Everyone waited for her.  There was a dolly cradle under the Christmas tree, where we’d planned to lay our newborn for a Christmas family photo. We would light the candles in our Advent wreath, sing carols by the warm glow of candlelight and Christmas tree lights, and celebrate the births of baby Jesus and baby Stella.  Then, off to Christmas Eve Mass with my extended family.  After Mass, we had planned to crowd into Grandma’s house with all the relatives, eat Christmas dinner, and enjoy the celebration with cousins, aunts, uncles and siblings until late into the night.   Even an old family friend would make his annual Santa Claus appearance, after supper.  He’d come in his stuffed red velvet suit, bells jingling, handing out gifts to all the children, laughing his Ho Ho Ho’s, calling each child by name and surprising them with the tidbits and details he knew about their antics.  This was how we wanted Christmas to be.    

But, Stella wasn’t coming home.  I had been discharged from the hospital that morning, but I couldn’t bear to go home without her.  Like Santa, I wore my own whale-sized, post partum velvety green Christmas outfit.   My other children waited for me.  But I didn’t go home for the family photo.  The cradle under the tree remained empty, and my heart remained filled with fear.  My husband arrived, the nurses assured me my baby would be safe and cared for.  But I just couldn’t do it.  I just couldn’t leave my helpless, weak daughter alone without someone watching over her.  

“The other kids need you,” coaxed my husband, Doug.  “We have just a little more time here, then you have to leave, for their sake.”  

My heart felt torn in pieces.  I caressed Stella’s soft exposed arm with my finger.  

“God,” I prayed silently.  “help me to trust you with her.”

Doug gently loosened my fingers on my baby’s arm.  “It’s time.”

My tears welled up inside, as Doug escorted me out of the NICU.  The fear of the unknown, the fear of abandoning her when she needed me, the fear of being abandoned by God surged in my heart, threatening to burst through as we approached the hospital’s security exit door.  I forced my legs forward.  “God!  Send an angel to help me through that door!”  I pleaded.

Doug’s hand rose to push the locked handle, when suddenly, a familiar, smiling face loomed close on the other side, peering through the window into the unit.  Startled, we opened the door to find our very own Santa Claus, standing sheepishly in the hall with his wife.  “I don’t want to intrude on your privacy,” he began, “But I came to see Stella so I could tell your other kids that Stella got the first present on Christmas Eve.”  

How quickly God can turn our sorrows to joy.  “Come and see her!  You’ll be her first visitor ever.” My smile was genuine, and we ushered Santa back to the NICU.

“Family only.”  The nurse at the desk arched her eyebrow at us.

“That’s all right, I’m his brother!” Santa replied, patting my husband on the back.

“Oh, I’m so glad!” the nurse smiled.  “Welcome, Santa!”

“Ho, Ho Ho!” Santa chuckled, as we magically walked back through the doors.

Once inside the NICU, he sat in the rocker, next to her incubator, whispering hushed Christmas secrets that only Stella and Santa could share.  Catching a glimpse of the snow globe behind them, I beamed.  In sharing the joy of her birth with Santa and his wife, a bond was forming.  A bond of trust between God, who answered my prayer, and Stella, a child who never would be alone.  

God had sent me his angel for whom I prayed, dressed up as Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.  I began to realize that even though the circumstances were grim, even when nothing goes as we planned it, and we feel abandoned and alone, God is still with us.  He watches over us, and He has a plan.  

A little later, we left the hospital.  Real-life snowflakes swirled, softly descending on Doug and me as we made our way through the starlit parking lot.  The hush of a Silent Night surrounded us, enclosing our family in a circle of trust, just like that snow globe.  Peace and serenity grew in my heart, like the newborn faith I felt.  I was ready to celebrate Christmas Mass with my family.

And Stella Lucille, our little star of Bethlehem, began to lead us on a journey toward trusting God.  She truly was our family’s best Christmas gift, though perhaps not in the way we, ourselves, had planned.  

And that Christmas Eve night, when I felt so afraid and alone, God sent Santa Claus to help us find our way.