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

This is a burnt charcoal vine.


Just ashes.


Good for nothing, you might think.  It’s the end, it’s done for.


Wrong.


I need this.  I actually went to a store and paid for it.  This small burnt vine is just what I need to begin an oil painting.


I use it to cover a page of tissue paper with blackness.  It’s a mess.  There is charcoal and ash on both my hands, on my cheek where I scratched an itch, on the floor, and all over the tissue paper.  Artists have worked the same way since the cave paintings of Lascaux.  In a mess.


I shake away the extra dust and flip the charcoal covered sheet upside down onto my new canvas.  Just a moment before, the canvas had been pure, white and clean.  But I’m not worried about smudges.  I place a traced outline of my initial sketch onto the tissue paper, and retrace my idea over the layers of tissue, and onto the canvas.  Smudges are easily cleaned up.  


What is left is a perfectly prepared canvas, with the image intact.  Iconographers for centuries called this the “cartoon”.  A simple charcoal line drawing, the beginning of  greatness.  With this humble beginning, they could paint windows to Heaven.


Some days my life feels just like a mess of charcoal and ash.  But I’ll take that.   I will embrace the ashes, let them cover me.  I’ll hold on to the faith that God has a plan.  He is the Artist, after all.  He can take care of the smudges.  And he can make something beautiful from a beginning of ashes.

I almost missed it.




As I was driving this morning, the roads were iced over, so I drove more slowly than usual.  Because I was driving slower, I noticed a tree in the misty darkness on the side of the road.  The weather was snowy and foggy…but the tree was so radiant.   Amazing, really.  It was so special, it stood out from all the rest.


The tree was lit brilliantly for Christmas, still glowing in the foggy, January dawn.  Someone had made a great effort to really bestow that small tree with lights of all sizes and colors.   The colors radiated through the frigid darkness, reflected off the dazzling snow in a spectrum of beauty, shining like a beacon of hope and joy in the shadowy world.  


It glowed. 


I pulled my truck over to the side of the road, and rummaged about for my camera.  This was a glorious sight, and I wanted to share it.


But in the hustle and bustle of my busy morning, I had forgotten my camera at home.  I couldn’t capture the moment…  Without a photo, I knew I would probably just forget about the tree, like I forget about all the other little details in my busy life.


I missed it. 


I drove off and went on with my day and my work. But I continued to think about the small tree, laden with lights.  I couldn’t stop mulling it over, and how special and perfect it was.


Later, when I had a chance, I grabbed my camera and returned to the remarkable tree that had made such an impression on me.  I drove to the same spot, but couldn’t see it.


I parked, got out and tromped up and down the country road in my boots, scanning the scene for my special tree.  But all I saw were many trees, all heavily burdened with new snow, boughs dragging under the weight of it all.  Large trees, small trees, maple trees, birch trees, pine trees and spruce trees…  they all looked the same in the brightness of day.  Just a bunch of normal trees.  Nothing special.  When I did locate the “special” tree, it stood like all the others.  Just an offshoot of nature, carrying a lot of snow.   Burdened.


Then it clicked.  I began to understand why this tree was important, after all. 


We are just like the trees.  We stand around, minding our own business, carrying our burdens and problems like anyone else.  We are all the same.


When the troubles of night fall, and fog of worry rolls in, we are lost.  We are just a forest in the dark.  We don’t know where to turn or what is ahead.  We live in fear.  But sometimes,  a rare person comes into our lives of darkness, and dispels all the gloom.  A person of joy, a person of peace.  Someone special.  A person that somehow holds the light of Love within themselves, and lights our world with brilliance and hope.  




God is that light.   He shines within us who are ordinary.  He makes all things bright and holy, a living flame of Love in our souls.  We are the forest in darkness, and God is the Light.


I didn’t miss it, after all.




To the righteous a light is risen up in darkness:
He is merciful, and compassionate and just.


Psalm 112:4

“What do you DO all day, Mom?”  my son asked me, a small tone of jealousy in his voice.  “I mean, we’re at school for seven hours.  What do you do?”  

Wow.  What can I say? That I sit at the kitchen table all day, eating ice cream?  Does he really think that I find all the hidden Snicker bars and scarf them down with no one to stop me?  They do go really well with ice cream…  Okay, I’ll be honest.  That could have happened.

But really, that is his fondest dream;  to be left alone with the refrigerator for seven hours, with no one to stop him.  

That’s not quite how it is.  Since you asked, Son, I will show you what happened at the kitchen table while you were gone.

These are a couple of statues that a very patient person has been waiting to be painted for a long time.  Today is the day...

The kitchen table turned into this:    It was gloriously quiet and deliciously fun.

The statues now look like this:

While I was painting the seeds in St. Francis's bowl, I thought about how much I love my brushes.  I have a lot of them...Some are fancy and luxurious and delicate, some are rotten-looking things that don't appear to be worth keeping.  They might look like garbage to someone who looked in my paintbrush box.  But all my brushes are needed, they all have a special purpose.  Here are two of my favorites:

The one on the right is a luxurious, expensive oil painting brush.  It is sleek and soft, the finest Red Sable Filbert. It is 100% reliable, and far more sophisticated than I am.  It blends colors beautifully.   It softens the lines that other brushes leave behind, smoothing all the imperfections.  

The one on the left is a 99 cent cheap thing from the hardware store.  It is ancient, hardened, crusted over and pretty much destroyed.  But that's why I like it so much.  That old brush can do things that no other brush can.  Like paint abstract, splotchy spots to make seeds in St. Francis' bowl, for example.   None of my other brushes can  do that.  It is precisely because that old brush is ruined that I like it so much, and use it so often.  I need it.  At times, I have taken a scissors and snipped some of the inside bristles, thinning it out even more.  There's not much left of it, really.  
That's why it's so valuable.  

As I painted today, I did a lot of pondering about brushes and people.  

People are just like my brushes... They are all unique, for their own special purpose.  
And we need them all.

So Son, that's what I did today.  But don't worry.  The kitchen table is now cleaned off, and ready for you to eat again.  

And I made cookies.

It’s the first day of school.

The house is quiet.  Eerily quiet.  They are all in school.  

This is probably the first time in 21 years that I have a quiet morning.  Really. I am standing in my house, surrounded by twenty one years of childhood debris.  The walls are scuffed, the windows are fingerprinted.  Laundry spills out of the laundry room like a lava floe, oozing into the living room.  Cereal bowls and sandwich fixings line the countertop.  It is a mess, and I am feeling weird.

“The school bus comes, and you’re supposed to do the happy dance!”  one friend says.

“Want to come over for coffee?” says another.

But I can do neither.   I have too much emotion building inside of me, and there is only one thing to do.  

Cry.

None of the kids were sad to leave, of course.  They were ecstatic, joyful, bouncing off the walls at 6 a.m.  Ready for a new adventure.  Loaded down with 40 pound backpacks, they marched off as eager as Bilbo Baggins leaving the Shire.  

And I am sitting here alone, sobbing to Disney Music Soundtracks.  

Not kidding.  

“You’ll be in my heart, no matter what…  You’ll be here in my heart Always.
From this day on, now and forever more…I’ll be there for you always….Just look over your shoulder, I’ll be there always.”

This isn’t what I had envisioned when I got pregnant, so long ago.  I was on the five year plan:  Five years at home with a child, then back to real life.  I had it all planned out.  Parenting was like a small sabbatical, a little recess on the job of life, I thought.  A side dish.  Ha!

I didn’t know that the agony and the ecstasy of Motherhood would sweep me off my feet and overwhelm me like a tidal wave of love, and leave me sitting here, twenty one years later, crying to Tarzan music like a lunatic.  

I’d better pull myself together, because in a few short hours, they’ll be back, Trashing the Camp.  If you know your Disney music, you’ll know what I mean! 

And they’ll want cookies.

I miss you, Blog Friends!  I hope you are having a wonderful summer vacation!  Life is good out here in the sticks.   

The Mud Pies are made fresh, daily.   In their little bakery that is the front yard, they line up their baked goods on rocks and steps, drying in the summer sun, topping them off with the best blooms from the garden.  This week, however, I turned my back for 15 minutes, and the entire bakery staff and their customers decided to use the pies to make Celtic war paint.  In fifteen minutes, a mighty battle ensued, wherein many kids were plastered in mud.  One child enjoyed this so completely that he covered himself in it.  Head to toe.  Mud.  He was so pleased.  By the time I returned, it was clear that my bathroom was going to be the complete and total loser.  Sadly, the outside water was too cold for me to turn the hose on them, and when they had all cleaned up enough to go home for supper, the bathroom was a wreck.  “Please don’t make me wash!”  the dirtiest child had said, with a smile.  “I want to show my Mom!”  Oh, no, you don’t.  

Watch out for mud pies.  
They make excellent weapons.

Career opportunities abound here.  The laundry pile is climbing half way up to the ceiling, with no signs of stopping.  If the average American washes two loads of laundry per week, (a conservative estimate)  then it is reasonable to assume that I should do sixteen.  Not counting sheets and towels.  Those add up, too.  The dishwasher runs, merrily, three times a day.  It actually doesn’t load itself, though, so good workers are always needed.  And for those career-minded individuals with a “Big Picture” mentality, the heavy traffic around here means the floor is always dirty.  All of it.  From front door to back.  Please send help.  And some Clorox Wipes.

“Success is when your knees are stained green and brown at the end of the day,”  says a local twelve year old.  With that ideology in mind, you might be surprised that so far, only one arm has been broken this summer. But it required surgery, with pins, so that child’s status as a Tag-Playing Superstar is quite secure.  

Did I mention I am working this summer?  Yes, the fridge is empty, unless you want a sandwich.    I have given up grocery shopping entirely to illustrate another (beautiful and amazing) children’s book for Behold Publications.   It is like entering another dimension for me, drawing the Little Flowers saints and virtues.  Very peaceful and gratifying.  And no mud pies anywhere in sight.  

Well, that is the news from the sticks.  

I wish you many days of restful Summer-Vacation sunshine…

Life is good.

I met him two years ago, in Washington DC.  

Within the shadow of our nation’s capitol, the citizens of the First World bustled past, unnoticing.  I was among them.  We moved across the sidewalks and crosswalks as fish swimming in a school, fluid and fast.  He sat against the side of a brick building, alone, clutching a worn backpack.

Our eyes met.  

I stopped.

“Please,” he reached up his hand with a whisper, “I’m so hungry.”

I stopped because he whispered, gently.

“Have you had lunch today?” I asked, reaching into my pocket.

“No, Ma’am. God bless you, Ma’am.”

My own lunch money weighed on me heavily.  I had restaurant plans.  The five dollar bill I handed to him seemed, suddenly, grossly deficient.  I switched pockets, knowing that 5 bucks wouldn’t buy him much lunch at Burger King across the street.

“Where are you from?” I asked.  I was not accustomed to being called Ma’am.  “What’s your name?”

“James. I’m from Mississippi,” he began.  Then came Vietnam.  Then just drifting… I did some coal mining.”  he began to unbutton his shirt, revealing two large, mirrored scars on his dark chest.   “I just got too many problems at once, so I come up here… I got kids, too.  I don’t see them anymore.  I figure life’s gotta be better in the city.”

We talked for a few more minutes.  He told me my daughters were beautiful, just like their Momma.  

I gave him my lunch money.  

And that was that.

It was time to move on.  But before I left, he asked me for something more.

“You pray for me, Ma’am.  And I’ll pray for you.”

“I will, James.  I will.”

Then I walked away.

I walked away, but something about my conversation with James had changed me.  

He was a vagrant.  A miner.  A veteran.  A father.  Somewhere, someone loved him. 

He told me that Someone was Jesus.  “He’s with me, right out here on the street,” James had said.   “He’s the one that sent you to give me lunch today.  He brings me joy, every day.  And he loves you, too.”

Oh, James.  

You; the Forgotten, the Hungry, the Abandoned, the Alone…

You have Joy?

You have Love?

You told me that you also have Peace.

You, James, Unknown Soldier, have the three elusive riches that the Wealthy World strives to find, and cannot.  You have nothing, and yet you have everything.



Well, James.  Today I am back in Washington DC, and I went looking for you.  I wanted you to know that you changed how I see people, James.  You helped me to find Love, Joy, and Peace in my own little world.  I wanted to remember you in a real way, and say thank you, James.

So I went to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  

I didn’t find you.  But you know what I did find, James?  

I found hundreds and thousands of you…

Your fellow veterans were there for you, James.  They came in massive caravans of motorcycles, swarming the National Mall, slowly making their pilgrimage to Arlington National Cemetery across the bridge.  They rode, they walked, they held each other up as they climbed the hill.  They brought their families.  They brought flowers.  They came with children.  And burdens.  And tears.  

They wore leather, and white ponytails, and grizzled beards.  They wore crisp military uniforms and brass buttons and crew cuts.  They wore baby packs and held on to strollers, walkers, and canes.   

Though they came to the cemetery, they also came to give respect and honor to the Other Unknown Soldiers…to the veterans whose lives are still a living sacrifice.  They honor the veterans who are still fighting the battles of disability, woundedness, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  

Like you, James.  

This day is for you.  

Thank you.

Inspiration backfired on me this week.  

I’m a Mother.  Moms always try to inspire.  It’s human nature.  We want to show our kids the world, see how high they can fly.  Give them the best of times…

Because of this, I limit screen time, take them to the library, pay many fines for late and lost books… The library often backfires on me like that.  

But this week, Inspiration really backfired.  

Here’s the story:

Doug and I have had a two-decades long “discussion” about T.V.s and screen time.  

I grew up without T.V., and prefer life like that.  

He grew up with T.V., and prefers life like that.   


Simple.   


End of story;  who cares, right?  Well, when we became parents, we both suddenly cared.  A lot.

The first decade of parenting, I limited technology (ha! like there even was any technology back then!  We had dial-up internet, one tube T.V. and no cell phones.  That old VCR sure was a threat to creativity and intelligence, eh?  Who am I kidding? - I limited technology because there was none!  We read books, went to the orchestra and theater…they learned to paint and to dance.  They spoke Italian.  We read poetry and ate popcorn together.  It was inspiring!

However, the second decade of our parenting, Doug has made the call.  Technology for one and all.   We packed up Charles Dickens;  put away the clay and the dance shoes.  Instead, now it’s Blender (a 3-D modeling program) digital music, digital photography.  Good grief.  This could be the worst of times… So much of work and school are technology dependent, and now we are, too.   We munch microwaved popcorn while watching Netflix.  

But the battle still wages on between Doug and I.  Which kind of life is more inspiring?  What habits foster creativity more?  Is it watercolors with brushes and paper, or Sketch Up on the computer that will best inspire a kid to do great things? 

Just when we both think our own ways are best, something backfires.

Small One tugged on my sleeve, a questioning look on her face. 

“Mom, can I talk to you in private?”

Uh-Oh. Here we go.   My Mom-Alarm always goes off when I hear these words.  Is it something bad?  Are you hurt?  Or is this a tattling moment?  She pulls me into a room and shuts the door, looking a bit urgent. Then she whispers in my ear.

“I think its very important.  I want to become a scientist.  Is that okay with you?”

I stare ahead, feeling that she is right.  This is important. Maybe all those years of inspiration have really done something!  Maybe she will be the next Marie Curie!  Or she will find a cure for cancer!  I could start teaching her Latin this summer…  

She continues talking.

“It’s very important.  I want to invent things.  
Can I have a hammmer?  And a vaccuume cleaner?  
Then I can become a scientist.”

Whew.  Breathe out.  Let her finish, Mom… Listen to her, Inspire her!

“You’ll see a real scientist tomorrow, Dear.  When you go to the doctor, you can ask her about science.  Doctors are a kind of scientist.”

She shakes her head, messy curls falling into her face.

“Uh-uhn.. That’s not what I was thinking about.  I want to be the kind of scientist that makes something.  Invents something  important.  I am going to need blueprints.  Blueprints and a backstory.  Because Dr. Dufenschmirtz has blueprints and a backstory, every time.”  

Oh. 

Dr. Dufenschmirtz.  

He is a cartoon character.  

Apparently, a very inspiring cartoon character.  A mad scientist of Disney's Phineas and Ferb fame.

Did I mention he is a villain?

Technology wins. 

I think I’ll go pull out my dusty copy of A Tale of Two Cities, and have a cry in my tea.   

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

This week, I realized for the first time that I am married to a Firefighter.

I thought he was a sensitive artist type, but I was mistaken.  

He’s a Firefighter.

The way I see it, Firefighters are always on alert, constantly ready to stop catastrophes.  They see a billowing plume of smoke, and dash out with a big truck, hose and axe to stop the fire and fix the problem.

But my problem is that I am the problem.  

And I’m not on fire.

Being an emotional person, sometimes (okay, let’s admit it.  Not sometimes, but daily…)  I have emotional outbursts.   My billowing clouds of emotion tumble about, rising and falling, blown about by the winds of change.  And they do change.  The emotional clouds change color (from pale, baby blue all the way to darkest, threatening green)  they change shape and size (from ooo, a pretty one - all the way to OMG get out of the way, it’s a funnel cloud!)  But the point is, they are clouds.  Emotions aren’t tangible objects.  They float about, scare people sometimes, and then disappear as quickly as they arise.  They seldom emit downpours, unless, of course, it is Typhoon Season.  Then you’d just better get the heck out of the way.  

Take cover.

Now, all this cloud activity would be fine if I had married an artist, or even a weatherman.  

But apparently, I didn’t.

I married a Firefighter.  

At the first sign of rising smoke (or clouds or steam or even slight vapors) he grabs his trusty axe.  Engines roaring with efficiency and power,  he puts on a self contained breathing apparatus.  He grabs a light and radio, and personal protective gear.  He watches the Emotional Clouds for changes in volume, color, intensity, and movement.  He listens for popping sounds and stressing noises.  He scans the walls for cracks.  He is on the offense, ready to chop down doors and bulldoze firebreaks and blast my Emotional Cloud with 126 psi of water pressure.  

He has one thought only.  Kill the fire.  Quick.

But, as we all know, there is no real fire.  Only my Emotional Clouds.  

The more my Firefighter tries to dissipate the clouds, the more I huff and puff and my emotions blow into tornadoes, hurricanes, thunderstorms, and even an occasional blizzard.  Water doesn’t help that.  His offensive tactics with water only ice everything up.  

And he doesn’t want that.

This whole scenario sounds hopeless…  Stressful!  Whatever can we do to fix it?  How can we get rid of the blasted smoke?

The answer is so easy, it’s magical.  You just need the right person for the job.

Call off the firefighter.  

Call up the sister. 

“Hello?” she’ll say, answering her cell phone at any hour.  

“Hi.”

That’s all she needs.  Just by the tone of my “Hi,” she can assess the emotional content, and she knows what to say, what to do, and how to proceed.  Her response may be a compassionate sigh, an I’m-fed-up retort, or even an all-out laugh.  She has even been known to scold my Emotional Clouds away with an oh-for-heaven’s-sake-you’re-ridiculous response.  Whatever she says, it is usually perfect.  Five minutes with my sister, and the threatening Emotional Cloud disappears, melting into a comfortable summer breeze.  Sunshine, even.  Great weather forecast for the rest of the day!  

And my poor, besieged Firefighter is left standing in his tangled pile of high tech, fireproof gear, without a smoke cloud in sight, wondering what happened.   He has all this power and muscle,  intensity, technology, and testosterone, yet all his best efforts often make that cloud worse.  And while he is baffled by and battling the stormclouds from hell, a tiny 110 pound, middle-aged woman vanquishes his enemy over a cell phone.  

Works every time.  He’ll never really know how or why.  He wouldn’t understand it, anyway.  

But I do.  Firefighters battle fires.  

And I don’t deal out real fires, just Billowing, Blustering Emotional Clouds of smoke.  

And that kind of smoke is best blown away by the soft gentle breeze of a Sister.

Thank God for sisters!  

And thank God for Firefighters, too.  They are overworked and underpaid.  Perhaps they are under-appreciated, a tiny bit, though you'll never hear that from me.  

I love my Firefighter.  

It’s April.  Spring has arrived, at last!  I picture a scene of pastoral promise:  The ground is being tilled…furrows dug, seeds sown.  Gentle rains fall, quenching the thirst of bright green sprouts… I may as well imagine a rainbow up there somewhere.  

Reality check…  

This is Minnesota.   It’s 35 degrees and windy.  

Our gardens are inside where it’s warm.

My friends and neighbors plant their seeds inside, in trays of tidy, parallel lines in April.  They light them up with hanging fluorescent “grow” lights.  They water them each morning, so by May, the little sprouts will poke their noses out of the soil.  In June they will be transplanted into real, outside gardens, to grow during our two good months of summer.  By August, everything is so hot and dry that the plants get baked into the parched and crusted earth, just before the Autumn freeze.  That’s right about when Winter shows up for another 9 month stay.  

If you blink, you’ll miss the whole growing season.

This year, I outsmarted the whole system.  The kids and I planted our garden in January.

Okay, maybe it had nothing to do with smart.  We just were bored with a bad case of cabin fever, so we got out the seeds and dirt and had ourselves some fun.  Watching seeds sprout up and grow was much more exciting than watching snowflakes fall and accumulate into mountains.  And we didn’t have to shovel it.  So anyway, now it is April, and our garden has grown.  

And guess what? 
 Just like nearly everything else in Minnesota, it grew up to be Norwegian.  

Tall, thin and pale.  


If the little kids’ feather pollination works, we should have spaghetti squash and tomatoes and corn on the cob by Mother’s Day.  Maybe we’ll get to carve pumpkins on the Fourth of July, before snow comes again.  

In the meantime, Happy Spring!

I haven't posted any flowers in a long while.  Here is one of my favorites.
This was my dad's Crown of Thorns plant.  It covered his desk, sprawling over his workspace,  soaking up the sunlight on the south side of his office, where the sun shone most brightly.  

Under this plant's ferocious gaze, Dad chatted on the phone, buying used hospital equipment like X-ray machines, Geiger meters and pancake probes and ultrasound machines.   He would load the heavy machinery up from metro hospitals, clean, repair, refurbish, and resell.   He loved that job.   It somehow gave him so much joy to take what someone considered "junk" machinery, and to work with it and recondition it and make it something valuable.   He frequently sold to hospitals in impoverished areas, or to countries that otherwise would never be able to afford something as expensive as an ultrasound machine.  He followed up with service plans, because he knew each machine so well, and kept them in good working order.  He took "junk" and helped save lives with it. 

When Dad passed away, I took his thorny plant home.  
It's in my studio now, and still sprawling, covering the desktop, producing thousands of thorns and occasional tiny red drops of flowers.

I like this plant's daily reminder that somehow, God does the same kind of job that my dad did so well.  God takes the thorns and the garbage and "junk" of my life, and with his tender care, he makes it into something worthwhile.  He knows my faults, he can correct them.  He knows my brokenness, and somehow, he can find a place for me anyway.  He knows that someone, somewhere needs me...
And so he turns me into something valuable.  
Thorns and all. 

  

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.

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. 

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.  

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.

“I’m giving up ice cream!” (says the one who gets ice cream only once a week, on Sundays.)

“I’m giving up video games.”  (Maybe just the new one.)

“Well I’m giving up all technology.”  (And that’s harder, so I win.)

“Why do we have to give something up during Lent, Mom?”

“Well…” I begin.  “Look at this pencil.  It’s nice and new, but it can’t do what it is designed to do.  
It hasn’t been sharpened yet.  And this older pencil… It’s getting a bit dull, so it doesn’t work very well.  We have to take something away so it works better.  

It needs to be sharpened.

Lent is like sharpening pencils, except for your soul.  We need to take something away so that we can do what we were designed to do.  See?  The blade is strong, it won’t be easy.  But if you sharpen your soul, you will be better able to do your job.  The one you were designed to do.

So what are you going to take away from yourself during Lent?”

They looked at me seriously for a minute, thinking.  I wonder.  Did they understand?  Do they know how important this is?  Was my Mommy Sermon good enough?  

“Mom?  Can I have my pencils back now?”  

Oh, dear.  Clearly, I am the one who needs sharpening.

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. 

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.

Did you ever receive an unexpected gift?

This is a story of an amazing stranger, a couple of teenagers, a gift… and a dream.

A few years ago, I took some teenagers to Washington, DC.   In trying to be economical, I searched online for hotels.  The affordable hotels, of course, had terrible online reviews.  Higher crime neighborhoods, paper-thin walls, poor customer service.  The great reviews were for luxury travel, which did not exactly match our teenagers-with-backpacks plan.   What to do?  

After watching me change my mind many times, Doug made the decision for us.  
“Choose the least expensive room in the nicest hotel you can find.”  
Whatta guy.  He wanted to give these kids the best trip of their young lives.  A gift.

We were hoping for a Washington DC experience filled with education, art, government, and history.  A swimming pool and pizza were not so high on the list.  So we chose the 150 year old Willard.   Their advertising stated: 

“…this grand Washington DC historic hotel has hosted almost every U.S. president since Franklin Pierce in 1853. On August 28, 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King finished his famous “I Have A Dream” speech while a guest at the Willard. Other notable guests have included Charles Dickens, Buffalo Bill, David Lloyd George, P.T. Barnum, Lord and Lady Napier, and countless others. Walt Whitman mentioned the hotel in his works; and Mark Twain penned two books here in the early 1900s.”

 The photos looked beautiful online, and the place was walking distance to every place we would be visiting.   Charles Dickens, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and Mark Twain stayed here?  We were sold.

I booked one of their cheapest rooms, which was a real splurge for our budget.  But this was an important life event.  The crown jewel of high school, the beginning of the Rest of Life for these teens.  Trips like this can be inspiring!  We wanted them to think big.  The world is a big place, anything is possible.  

Dream big!

In this fog of dreaming, we drove, flew, and taxied toward our destination, backpacks in tow.  Everything took longer than planned.  We finally arrived, utterly exhausted and very hungry, just as darkness was descending on DC.  Exiting the taxi, we were instantly greeted by valets in gloves.  And opulence.  The golden lights gleamed from crystal lighting overhead, reflected on gorgeous, immaculately perfect furnishings.  

Oh, my goodness.  
We held on to our own backpacks and stepped up to the front desk.  

“Welcome to the Willard.  What brings you here tonight?” the front desk man said with a quizzical smile.  We so obviously didn’t fit in.  Politicians and lobbyists consulted around the famous lobby and Peacock Alley.  Others were dressed to the nines for a glamorous wedding reception taking place down the hall.  I felt like Cinderella, showing up at the ball in rags, toting a mop.  Late.   

“And what is it that you expect from the Willard?” the man asked.  

Without hesitation, the bold teen piped up, shoulders back.  “Nothing less than perfection.”

The man put down his pencil. He folded his hands.  “Well, the reason I ask, is because we have a problem with your room.  I see here that you reserved a double queen room, but I would like to change that.  We have one single King room that you may stay in.  The room is larger than the one you reserved, and you would need a rollaway bed.  Would that be acceptable to you?”

“That’s fine” I breathed a sigh of relief.  We had arrived so late, I was glad to have any room secured.  I was so tired I would have slept in a bunk bed.

“If you are certain that you can accept a rollaway, then here are your card keys.  Upstairs and to the right.  I hope that you will find the accommodations to your liking.  Again, welcome to the Willard.”

We giggled in the elevator, feeling ridiculous in jeans and sweatshirts, surrounded by such richness and propriety.

Our laughter stopped suddenly when we arrived at our destination.  A placard on the door in front of us read “Martin Luther King Suite”.

This was the one.

The King Room.

The room in the advertisement.  

The room where Dr. Martin Luther King wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech.

We opened the door to the most luxurious, 5-room suite that any of us had ever seen.  Marble floors, antique furniture, a magnificent view.  The rooms in which one of the world’s most inspiring speeches was written.  

I cried, of course.  

It was like walking into a piece of history, and getting to live there for a few days.  What a way to inspire some kids!

Later, room service was delivered.  Gourmet food, linens, china, crystal were rolled in on a wheeled table by a man in gloves and tuxedo.  He set it out like the footmen in Downton Abbey might have, removing silver domes from the serving dishes and quietly filling glasses.

We had reserved the humblest room in this hotel, and had instead been given the best.  

I slept in the rollaway in the round parlor.  Staring out into the moonlight, I pondered the world.  How was it that I was inside this magnificent spot of the world, overlooking the power strip of the nation?  I sat, secure in comfort and luxury on a rollaway, in the very room where a dream had taken form and started to change to world.  He was a big, important person with a big, important dream… I am a mom with teenagers.

“Why?”  I asked the front desk man later.  “Why did you give us this amazing gift?”

He smiled sincerely, and replied, “It is wonderful to give to someone who doesn’t expect or demand it.”  

There aren’t even words to describe just how important that trip was.  Think back to your teen years…  Do you remember times when people treated you with generosity?  Can you remember all the times that people were just good and wonderful and kind and respectful?  Even to total strangers?

This trip that we took changed our lives.  We saw people differently…kindly.  We looked with gratitude because we were aware of what a gift we had been given.  

I’d like to keep that perspective.  

Each day we have here is a Gift.  

We did nothing to deserve it.  
We couldn’t afford to pay for it even if we did know what to ask for.   

It is a Gift. 

The man behind the desk at the Willard showed us that humanity is kind.  
People can be kind, and good, and generous. 
People can change lives for the better, in unexpected ways.  

If he can wield that kind of power, then we can, too.

That is a powerful dream. 

I have an amazing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. story. 
It has been a super busy day, and is getting too late to tell it tonight... But this picture must go up right now, tonight.  For solidarity.
Check back soon for a surprising MLK story of human kindness and generosity.  

I have been very crummy with resolutions this year.  It is January 5th, and my New Year's Resolution to write every day, no matter what, has ended.  I wrote just once this year.  
I FAILED!  
I could be upset, but I'm not.  
I could be angry, but I'm not.  
I could be surprised or dismayed.  I am definitely not.  
I am quite accustomed to my habits and the way I work.  It's always dysfunctional.  
My work suffers because I am busy living life.  
And life is large. 
I can make all the New Year's Resolutions I want, but that won't change a thing.
There are still hungry mouths to feed, homework to help with, and laundry piling up like a Parisian Barricade in the hall.   
Resolutions, Revolutions...
They come and they go, don't they?  
But the sun still rises in the morning, and I'll be at the stove from 6 am to 6 pm.  
I'll probably be burning the chow, because I'll be thinking about writing.
But we're all used to that.
Maybe I should have resolved to be a better cook.
I could write about that.

Hey, everybody.   It’s Monday!

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

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

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

We can do that together.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gently… One small, tiny kindness at a time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, that was it.  Our moment.

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

Before I walked away, I did one more thing.  

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

A handful of chocolates.  

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


“Peace.”

Laundry.  

Can you even imagine the amount of laundry I do?  I have seven kids, a dog who likes blankets, and a rabbit who sheds.  And I am allergic to them (the pets, not the kids!)  Every single day the kids play outside, digging, climbing, running, tearing holes in the knees of their pants…and I have more laundry.  

I could despair.  But I don’t.

Right now, at this moment, I have seven loads of laundry, piled high on the kitchen table.  Did I mention it’s 7:00 a.m.?  

I don’t despair because I have a secret. 

A laundry weapon kind of a secret.

To be perfectly honest, every time my incredible mom comes over, she throws in a load of laundry before she says hello.  If I have artwork to do, or an illustration due, she is the one to show up and fold towels so I have some extra time.  But Mom Helping is no secret, it’s a well known fact.  In addition to my wonderful Mother, I still have a secret.

About a hundred years ago, when I was in high school, I was complaining about laundry to a friend.  In my ranting and moaning about folding shirts and ironing creases in our jeans, which I totally had to do, Missy stopped me. 


“I love to do laundry!” She exclaimed. 

“You’re lying.”

“No, really.  I love to do laundry. I pretend I work at the mall, and I get to fold all the perfect and beautiful clothes.  It makes me happy because I get to keep them all.”

It’s a mind game.  

It works.  I look at the piles of clothing, towels and blankets, and I’m glad to have them.  It’s difficult to imagine them new and hanging on a rack at Macy’s, but I have become grateful for my laundry.  Grateful to be kept warm, grateful for the quilt and the dog that sheds on it, curled up and cozy when we weren’t looking.  Grateful for the holes in the jeans, because the kid found so much joy in climbing the tree.  

My laundry secret works in many different circumstances, too.  For example, my truck has my son’s name scratched in the side of it.  He picked up a rock back about age 5, when he learned his letters, and wrote his name on the side of our truck.  He was so proud.  And you know what?  We left it there.  I like it, because I am reminded of the pride and joy in his face when he showed me that he knew how to write his name. 

I am free to choose to see the laundry and the scratches and dents of my life in any way I want. I can see things as a burden, as a drain and a pain.  Or I can choose my secret weapon of positivity.

It’s called gratitude.

At our house, the floor is strewn with paper dolls.  You can find them anywhere; the living room, the hall, the stairs.   This morning I found these four girls under my daughter’s pillow.  

“What’s the story here?” I asked.  “What happened to the crumpled doll?”

“Oh,” she said.  “This is Grace.  She’s all the same girl.  This is Grace when she’s happy in the summer.  This is her happy in the winter.  This one is her happy in the spring.  The big one is Grace when she’s at work.  She’s a construction worker, and she works hard.”

I watched as my daughter proceeded to show me how Grace worked.  She crumpled her up in a ball, sent her skittering across the room, retrieved her and started again.  “See her working, Mom?”

I know just how Grace feels!

I have been working on this blog thing for one month now.  Thank you to all the 3,500 visitors!  Because of some very helpful feedback, I have set up a Facebook page for you to “like”.  Also, the blog is re-designed and more user-friendly, I hope.  You should be able to leave comments much easier now.  Thank you for all the helpful and supportive feedback.  Keep it coming!

In honor of Grace the paper doll, here is a little story about my first real job...  





The summer after sixth grade, I borrowed my mom’s bike and  rode down the highway to Cook’s farm, took a deep breath, knocked on the door and asked for a job.  He had a golden tooth, Mr. Cook.  His comb-over blew freely in the warm June wind, flapping against his sandpaper brown, wrinkly cheek.  

“If you last on my farm,”  he said, “you’ll be able to get a job anywhere.  Everyone knows I only keep hard workers.”  We walked together down the hill toward an immense and lush vegetable garden.  “I’ll ring the porch bell when it’s break time.  It’ll be the best icy cold drink you’ll ever have.”

“Thank you.”  

I took the five gallon bucket he offered me, and set my jaw as I walked to my half-acre long row of beans.  No more parochial school, sixth grade uniforms for me.  I was on my way to public junior high in the fall, and I wanted new clothes.  Badly.  I pictured them in my mind, the red swoosh-striped Nike shoes of my dreams.  At $2.50 an hour, it wouldn’t take me long.  Babysitting only earned me $2.00 an hour.  How bad could farm work be?  Here I’d get to be outside, away from frustrating little Sarah, who pouted about Barbies and fought with her sister and wanted the crusts cut off her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when her mom was at work.  I made my mental calculations.  Dad demanded I save $1.25 an hour for college, and give 25 cents an hour to charity, that left a dollar an hour for my shoes, which cost $40. Forty hours of work, forty bucks for the shoes I had coveted since the fourth grade.

I could do this.

Sweat trickled down the back of my neck and cooled as it slid between my shoulder blades. I was used to the work, but our garden at home was tiny compared to this one.  I pulled at the clover, skunk cabbage and grass, and dug at the dandelions with their deep tap roots.  As the sun rose higher in the sky, the mosquitos took refuge in the shady leaves.  Out came the horseflies.  Worse than dive bombing Kamikaze pilots, they plagued me every minute.  At least if they were buzzing, they weren’t biting.  But as soon as the buzzing stopped, inevitably I felt a stinging chomp.  “Why didn’t I wear my hat?”  I whined silently, slapping the top of my head and missing the fly.  My favorite gardening hat was a huge sombrero with fringed grassy ends, which  baffled the horseflies.  I was almost never bothered or bitten at home with my sombrero.  Here there were too many other teens working.  I didn’t need a sombrero in front of them. 

My eyes strayed from the beans, following Mr. Cook’s teenage son, as he entered the raspberry patch.  Mr. Cook had barked orders out loud and clear today.  “And remember, boys.  No one in the raspberry patch but my son!”  At home, I was in charge of strawberries and raspberries.  I knew to be careful around the sharp thorns, and extra cautious of the new green canes, the ones that would bear next year’s fruit.  My dad trusted me with the berries.  Here, I was a bean girl.  Hmph. 

I worked through the row, trying to keep pace with the others.  My bucket was only half full.  Red welts were forming on the outsides of my fingers, where they scraped the earth.  I switched to my left hand.  Less effective, but less painful.  One glance showed me that the older farm kids were leaving me in the dust.  They emptied their full buckets, and began a new row.  I swatted angrily at what seemed to be the 700th horsefly, and left a loamy brown streak of dirt across my cheek.  “Shoes.  Shoes.  Shoes,” I silently chanted to myself.  Another fly, another brown smudge on my face.  “I am going to fit in at junior high.”  

An hour and a half passed by.  My anger and determination were fading, and the monotony of weeding beans in the heat was overpowering.  Mr. Cook appeared on the hill.  Was freedom coming?  Did he see how great I was doing, and I would be hired?  This was a trial day, and I needed to impress him enough so I could earn my shoes.  I glanced at the shade of the foresty raspberry canes.  Neat, parallel rows of tangled, brambly plants. Delicious fruit hidden in secret under each jagged leaf.   Mr. Cook walked closer.  Maybe I was getting promoted!  Maybe he saw my superb gardening skills, and I could go pick raspberries now!  It was all I could do to keep weeding. 

“Well.  I can see you’re a fine weeder.  Before I hire you for the summer, I want to see how you do in another part of the garden.”

Angel choruses rang out hallelujah in my head.  “Rejoice!  I’m off to the raspberries!”  they sang.  I smiled at Mr. Cook.  The raspberries were calling me, and the shoes would be mine.  “Great!  I’m ready.”  So long, beans.  So long, losers. I smiled at the poor unfortunate other older teens, still stuck in the bean patch.  I was off to better things.

Mr. Cook started toward the raspberry patch, but instead made a sharp turn left.  “Over this way,” he said.  “I’ll be watching to see how you handle this job.”  We walked down another hill, near the edge of the woods.  A lake lay hidden in the trees somewhere, I knew.  But I didn’t see any raspberries.  “Here you go” he said, handing me a pitchfork and a shovel.  “You know how to dig potatoes? You have to be strong and careful too.  Shovel around each plant, to dig it up, then loosen the potatoes with the pitchfork.  I can’t sell damaged potatoes at the farmer’s market, so be careful.”

Shovel in hand, I dug in.  This was a test I would not fail.  Dig, Dig, Dig.  Pick up pitchfork.  Loosen earth, grope around in the darkness, searching for potatoes.  Loosen dirt more.  On my knees, I grubbed around at that first plant for a good ten minutes.  Potatoes in the bushel basket, move on down the row.  Was Mr. Cook watching?  I hoped so.  I pushed in to the second mound of potatoes.  The plants grew thick, almost to my waist.  As I put shovel to dirt, a flash of gold caught my eye.  Potato bug.  Looking closer, I suddenly realized hordes of  reddish gold striped beetles were crawling everywhere.  Stalks, leaves, dirt.  I gasped and a sick feeling of doom filled the pit of my stomach.  Thirty rows of potato bug-infested organic potatoes stood like the Berlin wall, between me and my Nike shoes.  I closed my eyes and placed the shovel against the mound.  Dig, but don’t get too close.  I brushed against the leaves, and a beetle crawled up my calf.  Brushing it aside, I got down on the ground to pull the potatoes out of the loosened soil.  An itch on my neck…potato bug.  Crawling up my arm…two more.  Top of my head, on my shoelace, on my arm, crawling towards my sleeve opening!  “Oooh my gaaaaawsh!” I jumped and screamed, leaping for safety away from the potato plants.  I shivered despite the heat, gasping for air.

Mr. Cook was watching from his porch.

What should I do?  I glanced at the crawling field of potatoes, and back at the porch.  I even stole one panicky look at the forest, thinking for an instant that I could make a break for it, through the woods and lake and on to my house.  Flight or fight?  One more look back at Mr. Cook.  Exhale. No dumb bug was going to stop me from getting what I wanted.  Furious determination rose in my twelve year old brain, stronger than fear.  Inhale.  Step back into potatoes.  

I dug a bushel basket full that day, and didn’t even notice my blistered palms.  When the bell rang out on the porch, I emerged victorious, sweat pouring off my brow in dirty brown rivulets, face streaked, with blackened limbs ground in with soil and bug carcasses.  

Mrs. Cook came out on the porch and offered me a tall glass of icy cold Kool Aid, and I felt she was an angel of mercy.  It was red.  

“Thank you,” was all I could mumble before I sucked it down to the last drop, feeling the chill swoosh all the way down my esophagus and down to my stomach like a red Nike stripe.  It was the most satisfying drink of my life.  I had earned it by determination and defeating my own fear.

“You done good,” said Mr. Cook.  “You’re hired.  See you tomorrow.”

I pedaled uphill slowly, savoring the aches in my back and legs, and enjoying the wind in my face.  It was the cool wind of fulfillment.  I looked like I’d been through a war, but I had $7.50 in my pocket, and Kool Aid sloshing in my stomach.  

Victory would be mine.