3-23-19 CARRIER

We are carriers of more than biology.

When two people decide to dive into parenthood there is a new energy that sifts down to earth from heaven, and it meets, as it approaches the people planted here, a similar energy rising up from hell. The process of raising children is like walking through dark, dank, musty caverns with weepy walls and while you are walking these unbelievably beautiful little explosions of light and sweet fragrance pop all around you. They light the way into the next dark chamber. And so it goes until suddenly you find yourself at home one night and you realize you want to sit down and watch a show, or read a book, or actually go to bed and YOU CAN! While you were in that twenty-five-year stupor of utter exhaustion the kids went off and grew up and left home.

There’s this particular spot early on in parenthood where it seems that you are bound to be in this space for a devil’s eternity and those sweet little sparkly explosions have ceased to manifest themselves. At least it was that way for me, and since parenthood is a highly personal thing, I speak only for myself. We had four kids in six years, and I was done bearing children by the time I was 27. When you have them that close you don’t get the added bonus of older kids being able to help with the babies. You’re on your own, with a hula hoop of needy little fingers spinning around you, and their fingernails need to be trimmed and they all need baths and all they’ve had to eat since you all got up at 5 am is graham crackers and water that they got for themselves by dragging a chair up to the overloaded kitchen sink. 

I remember sitting in a church meeting during that time and the ladies in the meeting were discussing motherhood and got onto the topic of teenagers and they shouted in what felt like unison, “If you think babies are hard just wait until they’re teenagers!” I sat in my chair in the back, by fourth baby asleep on my droopy shoulder, my eyes filling with overwhelmedness and hopelessness. After the meeting a friend came up to me and said: “I feel like I need to tell you there is no time that is as exhausting physically and emotionally than when they are all little at once. You will get through this, and those kids are lucky to have you.” This gal had eight kids, and she knew what she was talking about. That little cluster of words she gave me got me through years of parenting.

At one point, when they were all in elementary school and I was PTA president and living at the school myself, we went through a whole season where Kate, Annie and I kept getting strep throat. It got to the point of ridiculousness. Finally, after too many months of antibiotics, I dragged the whole dang crew down to Instacare and asked for strep tests for every one of us, even though half of us were never sick.

Dave went along with it because he was in that young parent daze as well as that young attorney stage and was just as stunned and lost as I was. Turns out that Dave, Sarah and John all had strep, with no symptoms whatsoever. They just carried that germ in their back pockets and handed it over to Kate, Annie and me as soon as we got over the last case. The doctor explained that they must have been carriers.

Who knew? 

He put us all on a course of antibiotics and finally we were able to sleep at night and were back to our regular level of dysfunction during the day.

The concept of carrier, at least in biological terms, has been brewing in the back of my head ever since then. I realize that in many ways I am a carrier, unaware, of all sorts of things; biological, spiritual, emotional. 

Hanging clouds at midnight.

The concept bubbled up to the forefront of my consciousness the other night while Dave and I were down at the Farmington Art Center helping our son John and his daughter Ruby work on sets for the community youth theater play, Pirates of Penzance.  John had volunteered to do the sets. Ruby is a policeman in the play and John saw it as an opportunity to spend one-on-one time with Roo. The director had asked for a black and white set, alluding to the sea , while at the same time making it possible to be on dry land. Anyway, as I stood in the center of the hall, surrounded by my son’s creative efforts, with a silhouette of a church to my left, a large black tree to my right and a cluster of seagulls at my feet, I watched as John and Dave hung clouds from the rafters. I was planted in the audience space to tell them how high or low to hang them. I had a sudden sentimental recollection of one of those magical sparkly explosions that occasionally popped in the caverns of my young parenting. I realized, with joy and delight, that my boy was an artist, and he was letting that artist in him out to play. And while I stood there evaluating the position of that cloud, I realized that each of my children had recently begun to manifest the artist in themselves. Each of our four kids have unusual gifts in visual art. Neither Dave nor I have that gene actively working, and yet these kids who came from us all have it. Dave and I are carriers. Awesome!

John and Ruby.

We are all carriers of something. Good or bad, or both at once, we place in the pockets of our children nuggets of something that we cannot do ourselves. It is part of the magic of parenthood to watch them pull those nuggets out of their pockets and polish them up. 

Carry on.

a photo of John taking a photo of Ruby

John's large portrait of Queen Victoria for the play.

Annie and her kids painted this happiness
on her laundry room wall.

Free hand flowers. She bought the paint in the
Home Depot reject paint bin.

Sarah's large oil painting of Duck Creek.
The walls of our home are blessed by her artwork.
Her undergrad degree is in Fine Art.

Kate wanted to make some Star Wars
gingerbread men, but couldn't find cookie cutters,
so she made her own out of a foil pan.

And then there was that whimsical day I found these on
the kitchen table. Kate decided to make miniature
Santa dinosaurs.

And finally, because tonight was closing night for this girl,
here's Ruby in costume.
(She's the one on the left.)
Brava, Roo.

3-27-18 ANGER Holy Tuesday

I was sitting on the couch writing when Dave got home last night. As we were chatting, the kitchen door creaked open.

"Hi, Banzie!" I heard Dave say as he passed into the kitchen. When there was no response, I paused from my writing. Then I heard mumbled moans, and I could tell his arms had wrapped around our daughter Annie's shoulders, and then the sobs came.

"I can't do it any more. I'm just a terrible mom. I can't do it." 

I heard the muffled words, spoken through a stream of tears that soaked into her daddy's shoulder.

You need to know, first, that Annie is an exemplary mother; full of love and patience and good humor and lots of faith. And because she is a good mother, she is a frustrated mother. 

I will explain.

In my opinion, the person who feels weak, and has faith in a higher power, is humble enough to be taught as they witness their own weakness. That humility, when coupled with hope and effort, opens access to the Holy Spirit, which is the source of truth. There is no better parenting resource than the Holy Spirit. A frustrated mother is one who is engaged in parenting. The perfectly satisfied mother is either in denial or has checked out and let someone or something else do the parenting for them.

Parenting reminds me of the time we were in Disneyland and our daughter Kate, who was three or four at the time, got super scared when the floor started dropping out of the Haunted Mansion. If there had been any way to remove her from the attraction at that point, I would have taken it. But we were stuck. So I knelt before her, took her in my arms and told her that the only way out was through. But, I assured her, I will hold you until the ride is over, even if it gets really, really scary.

Sometimes the only way out
is through.

Annie, now on the couch beside me, sat there with a river of tears puddling in the crease of her neck. 

"I'm just a terrible mom. Why did God even think I could handle children?"

When the story finally emerged, I could see my own story in it. And, I dare say, the story of every other mom I have ever met, at least the real-life ones.

Turns out Annie had asked the kids to pick up their toys. Let's try to remember the number of times any of us parents have done that. Now let's try to remember the number of times we have been ignored. And now, lets try to remember that feeling of repeatedly asking... nicely, I might add... the same question over and over. Finally, the dam breaks, the steam builds to bursting, the straw breaks the camel's back! And Annie - worn out from lack of sleep, frazzled by non-stop dealing with irrational pre-schoolers, and being hormonally challenged during this week when she is weaning her baby - blew her stack. All this converged as Jordon walked in from work. She screamed, and threw up her hands and had that "I've had it with these kids" kind of fit that secretly made me giggle inside because it was so familiar to me. And since she knew the kids were safe with their dad, she walked out! And, here's the really great part, because they moved back to Utah she had a safe place to come and blow off some of the steam, or lift the drain in her tear catcher and let it out at her old home base - our house.

The honest truth is I was grateful for the whole sorry turn of events, because it brought her home.

Annie and Calvin
on the first day of Kindergarten

Eventually, after a good chunk of love therapy, and a hot dish of left over hamburger stroganoff, she decided she wanted to hug her kids before bed, and she returned southward to the ones she loves.

I got to thinking, late into the night when I knew they were likely all safely and happily sleeping in their darling house on Cobble Creek Road, about the emotion of anger and where it might fit in our eternal character. We give anger a bad rap, we Christians.

Monday, the day after Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, he released his anger in the temple.

I am not a bible scholar, by any means, but I think I understand the importance of the Triumphal Entry. Certainly Jesus had entered Jerusalem before. What set this return apart from the others was the way Jesus let himself enter. For years he had hidden the fact that he knew he was the son of God. More specifically, the chosen son of God, who would redeem mankind. By openly admitting that he was the chosen son of God, he was breaking the law. This was known as blasphemy. And by breaking the law, he would be subject to punishment. The moment Jesus set himself on the back of that pure unblemished foal of a donkey, he knew the cog had been set in place, and the gears of fate had begun to turn.  He had been foreordained to do this, yes. But knowing that did not eliminate the intensity of the suffering that would come.

I imagine the juxtaposition of emotions during that holy week that led up to His resurrection. Believers were ecstatic that their master, the Messiah, was finally being acknowledged. But the Master, knowing what was likely to come, had to have been so sorrowful. Empowered, yes, and sorrowful, too.

So, when He arrived at the temple, able to say that this was His holy house, I imagine He was pretty upset that the humans there had scattered their "toys" all around. And when they would not pick them up, well, the Parent got angry and turned the tables over and tossed them out!

No one would call what Jesus did abuse. Still, it had to hurt his heart to get mad. Maybe I am justifying our humanness. Or maybe He is giving us hope.

Hope, that even in anger we are entitled to some direction of the Spirit. Hope, that we can be forgiven for unrighteous anger. Hope that we can tell the difference between divinely justified anger and unrighteous anger. And hope that our children will be able to forget the repeated times when we "lost it" in our attempts to parent them well.

There came a point, for Jesus, when enough was enough, and He needed to let people know that some things will just not fly with Him.

And there comes a point, in our humble castles we call home, when our littles need to know what will not fly with us.

Holy Monday is that blessed day when Jesus reminds me that He understands me, even when I am scream-my-head-off mad. And my Annie reminded me, last night, that children who have felt that increase in love that follows outbursts, cannot even remember that their mom was a screamer. Annie swears she doesn't remember me yelling.

Hooray for selective memory.

By Tuesday, the word was out, and Jesus was called by temple leaders to account for His behavior on Monday. So began the blessed end. It would be his last day, as a mortal, in His holy house.