the reality project  is off to a seamless start with pictures from carolyn. in addition to her responsibilities as a preschool teacher and a mom of two boys, carolyn makes and sells fabulous colorful aprons at the memphis farmers market, among other places. all this is to explain the scene you are about to behold:

carolyn writes, “this is the norm on any given day, and yes, we do eat dinner at that table every evening. all the crap gets moved around or just pushed to the end.”

the fun continues with this shot of the end table next to carolyn’s regular spot on the couch:

let’s play a game! can you spot the following?

• school stuff
• sewing stuff
• jewelry she’s taken off after a long day
• big cup of hot tea for the morning
• the “color swatch” that’s been on the wall for ages (color chosen and paint purchased ages ago, but it’s still not on the walls.)

carolyn, you win the prize for the most colorful take on chaos! and p.s. i will be contacting you about making me an apron!

lately i have been thinking about women’s progress and the gifts each generation of women has shared to improve life for the next. what do i have to offer? in a recent post i wrote for the fabulous liberated life blog, i admitted that

“the contents of my work and family life are tightly crammed into a metaphorical (and very disorganized) closet. the pacifiers and burp cloths live next to my dusty grad school diploma and laptop, which are obscuring a bunch of unread papers about the upcoming “level II beach party” that my son brought home in his school bag. i live in fear that someone will open the door of this closet and instigate an avalanche of all things dear to me.”

there are so many opportunities available to modern women. but what will i contribute to the next generation when taking advantage of these opportunities tends to yield a disorganized mishmash of overwhelming stuff?

and then it hit me (an idea… not the avalanche). perhaps my generation is charged with the important and unglamorous work of telling the truth. we can help define the problem. progress is impossible without an honest look at the current state of things. the plethora of mom blogs and parental facebook confessions speaks to the notion that our generation simply wants the freedom to come clean about the complexities of modern motherhood.

“the truth hurts,” according to an old saying. but sometimes, the truth is hilarious! some friends of mine have recently posted pictures on facebook of their own disorganized mishmashes of overwhelming stuff. these scenes represent the new normal of modern motherhood where everything does not have its place.

many thanks to lane and stiles for contributing the above pictures to what i am titling “the reality project.” let’s say there is a half-eaten sucker stuck to your uncashed paycheck or a jock strap in your fruit bowl. let’s say you’ve been walking by these scenes in your home for three days without even noticing. snap a photo and send it to me! the truth is funny. we might as well laugh. and who knows… we could be doing the next generation a favor.

there are several smells that i associate with childhood. one is the combined aroma of broccoli and chicken that vented from the kitchen of my childhood home into the northern territory of our driveway basketball court. another is the “house smell,” of my friend lauren’s home that was two doors down from ours. this was not a bad smell, mind you. just a distinct smell. but perhaps the most jarring smell to my young nose was the ever-present odor of turpentine and other chemicals used to strip grime, paint, and varnish from old furniture.

i have visions of my parents working all day on a saturday to convert a cheap, ugly dining room table into an attractive gathering place for many thanksgiving and christmas dinners. i have memories of my dad walking without embarrassment from a neighbor’s trash pile with a rolled up rug over his shoulder. my parents’ garage, until a few years ago, was home to all manor of cool pine furniture and even a crystal chandelier, costing my family a sum total of zero dollars. all this is to say that i come from a long line of scavengers and makeshifters. we are proud (and even a little giddy) to be at the bottom of the furniture chain.

there is nothing that i enjoy more than discovering a perfectly lovely piece of furniture by the side of the road, schlepping it home (with the help of my very patient husband), and spending the next few days making it beautiful and interesting. the kids are now in on the hunt as they twist around in their carseats to peer down side streets. on friday, for example, the monkey made the mistake of saying, “look mommy, a treasure!” i stopped the car, flexed my muscles, hoisted this future headboard (old door) into the CRV, and off we went.

the kids and i stayed too late at barbecue fest just the night before, and though we were hurrying home to bed, we stopped for 45 minutes at the sight of this:

even though the kids were cheering me on as i tried to hoist this bad boy into the too-small trunk, my friend susan had to be called in for this job. thanks susan! with just a little sanding and waxing, the wood is now shiny and smooth, and the white paint circle (see above) is gone!

spring treasure season opened this year with a chest of drawers that i spotted while i was on a long run in east memphis. it took our entire family to load this 1950’s nursery centerpiece into andy’s suberu outback. andy removed his belt and used it to “secure” the furniture for a very tedious and risky 20-minute ride home. i wish i had a picture of the pre-makeover ugliness. you will have to use your imagination to envision the tarnished brass handles, the formica top, the off-white grungy glaze, and the cracked peeling lattice that was glued to the top drawers. but here she is in her current state:

until we can figure out exactly what to do with all of this stuff, the ever-patient andy has lost his parking space in the garage. this is a small price to pay, in my opinion, for the thrill of the hunt and the hilarity of my children’s participation in the search and fix up processes. who knows, we might just land a crystal chandelier to live amongst our tools, gardening equipment, and tricycles. then we really will have a treasure island!

i was in first grade when my teacher read the mrs. piggle-wiggle stories to our class after lunch every day.  i remember quite a few details about betty macdonald’s characters and their ailments. i also remember putting a band aid box in my teacher’s chair when she interrupted story time to fetch something from her desk. she returned to her chair and crushed the box as our class erupted with laughter. i ended up in the hall but it was worth it. clearly, i would have been a good candidate for one of mrs. piggle-wiggle’s cures!

but now that i am reading mrs. piggle-wiggle to the monkey, i am surprised at how much i do not remember about these little story gems. i do not, for example, remember this hilarious fossil of a conversation between mr. and mrs. russell:

mr. russell came whistling into breakfast. he said mildly, “oh, scrambled eggs again. i was hoping for sausages and buckwheat cakes.” mrs. russell said, “we had sausages and buckwheat cakes yesterday morning.” mr. russell said, “what about brook trout? bill smith has’em nearly every morning.” mrs. russell said crossly, “perhaps that is why he looks like a trout and his wife looks like a great big halibut” (mrs. piggle-wiggle, betty macdonald, 117).

mrs. russell exibited quite a bit of spunk and self-assurance for 1947, right?

but even more striking than the quick wit of mrs. russell are the phone conversations the mothers have with each other in every chapter. while the children’s bad behaviors and mrs. piggle-wiggle’s unorthodox cures delight the kids, surely these ridiculous phone chats were meant to entertain the mothers. for example, who has never been in an exchange such as this?

“hello, mrs. bags, this is hubert’s mother and i am so disappointed in hubert. he has such lovely toys — his grandfather sends them to him every christmas, you know — but he does not take care of them at all. he just leaves them all over his room for me to pick up every morning.” mrs. bags said, “well, i’m sorry, mrs. prentiss, but i can’t help you because you see, i think it’s too late.” “why, it’s only nine-thirty,” said hubert’s mother. “oh, i mean late in life,” said mrs. bags. “you see, we started ermintrude picking up her toys when she was six months old. ‘a place for everything and everything in its place,’ we have always told ermintrude. now, she is so neat that she becomes hysterical if she sees a crumb on the floor” (22).

in her phone-conversations-gone-wrong, bettty macdonald illuminates and exaggerates the miscommunication, judgement, and posturing that often come between mothers. every night, as i read the monkey his chapter of mrs. piggle-wiggle, i find myself laughing and rolling my eyes as i am reminded about something i have said to another mother or something another mother has said to me. the children in macdonald’s books are not the only ones behaving badly. they’re not the only ones being cured either.

perhaps this is why betty macdonald’s books have endured for over sixty years.  

two weeks ago, back when the world was new, the act of fetching the bird from school came with the added boost of accolades from his teachers about his “near perfect behavior.” in fact, i owe the bird a lot of credit for my easy transition into campus ministry in january. he surprised me with his instant comfort with school rituals, peers, and even group nap time.

that was before he grabbed a handful of the face of another child who was “using his outside voice inside.” there were no accolades that day, of course. just instructions to cut the bird’s fingernails and to insist upon good behavior at home.

we’ve de-clawed our child, who now spends 87.5 percent of his life in time out for clocking his brother on the head with various objects. with every school pick-up, i hope for a report of improved behavior. but the bird is consistent in his resolve to fully embrace the “terrible twos.” it seems that in parenting, there are no immediate results.

there are no immediate results in campus ministry either, as it turns out. i am wrapping up my first semester at the university of memphis, and my offerings of engaging programs and free food are not exactly wooing the masses. i was reporting this phenomenon to a member of my campus ministry board last week, and he encouraged me to think of my work as the act of planting seeds.

i burst into immediate laughter as i recalled what a friend had said to me just the day before. she was surveying my front yard, a space that was completely under construction two years ago due to a drainage issue. i, a novice gardener, researched what plants would be happiest in our wet soil and in full sun. i made dozens of trips to nurseries and googled the names of the foliage on the shelves. and then, much to the entertainment of friends, family, and neighbors, i made what several of them described as the beginning gardener’s classic mistake. i planted one of everything. (i really planted about three of everything but this fact didn’t seem to matter.)

as my friend was surveying my yard, which is now full of all sorts of interesting leaves and textures and colors, she said, “your yard looks great! it’s almost as if you knew what you were doing!”

i guess the same goes for all types of seed planting – parenting, campus ministry, et cetera. there are no immediate results. in the present, we just have to persist with near-knowledge and experimental expertise. then, if the sun shines just right, something beautiful will emerge.

last fall marked the time when both of my friend virginia’s children were old enough to go to school all day. this milestone brings about relief for some and grief for others. in virginia’s case, there was probably a bit of both. but what i noticed from the outside looking in was that virginia wasted no time channeling energy into her vocation. there didn’t seem to be a transition period or a need to brainstorm about how new pockets of time could best be spent. she just seemed to know what to do. “i feel like a new person,” she said.

i am a few years away from the days of two o’clock carpool but i find myself looking upon virginia’s vocational clarity and renewed sense of identity with envy. i am so often caught up in the whirlwind of parenting small children that i forget to imagine other scenarios. a few weeks ago, my therapist asked me to brainstorm about what kinds of things i would do if  there were no limits of income, time, space, stage of life, et cetera. i sat in silence for a full five minutes before i managed to mumble something about a yoga retreat in some sort of tropical paradise. then came the barrage of questions. “would you preach? would you teach? would you counsel? would you write?” to all of these i answered, “i don’t know.”

a few days later, in an attempt to boost my fun-quotient in light of the monkey’s recent daddy stage, i engaged my four-year-old in a rainy day collage-making activity. we each had a piece of poster board and a stack of magazines, and we spent the better part of two hours cutting out images and arranging them to our liking. while the monkey was busy cutting out smiley faces, i was having an internal debate with myself. i resisted cutting out yoga journal phrases such as “live in the moment,” and other notions to which i should subscribe. instead, i created a collage of things that truly excited or described me.

two weeks later, i still become giddy when i look at this mix of cool place settings, fabulous red hair, outdoor vistas, colorful throw pillows, funky stockings and shoes, and most of all, modern rugs and furniture. is it sad that the most vivid alternate reality i can conjure up is one where white home decor would not quickly fall victim to tracked-in mud and yogurt-covered fingers? despite the embarassingly material nature of my longings, i had such fun creating this little two-dimensional world. as i was cutting and pasting, there was a part of me that woke up from a deep, monolithic mom trance. and as silly as it sounds, i think that same part of me, when pressed for deeper revelation, could potentially lead me beyond the world of lime green chaise lounges and into a new season.

i plan on making more collages. who knows what wildness will emerge from the silence? who cares how irrelevent those two-dimentional windows into my soul may seem? i want to cultivate the kind of imagination that will help me feel, as virginia describes, “like a new person” with each passing phase.

if the monkey were to plan a wedding, he would follow the lead of julia roberts in steel magnolias. in other words, “pink is his signature color.”

as the mom of this pink-loving fellow, i have enjoyed MANY a self-administered pats on the back for allowing the monkey to exist outside of society’s color rules for boys and girls. you should see me at the cupcake counter, for example, proudly presenting both boys with their requested pink “plain janes.” i love myself in those moments.

but last week while we in asheville, the pink craze got a little more complicated when i took the monkey to pick out this season’s “creek walking shoes.” from a lovely, multicolored bouquet of keen sandals, the monkey plucked these with great zeal:

he was as pleased as punch (pun intended). i, on the other hand, was faced with an unexpected choice. is it my job to protect my children from teasing, or is it my job to help them be their truest selves? i hated myself in that moment.

i texted andy the above picture along with the words, “HELP! what should i do?”

his sentiments were the same as my own. we both want to protect our children from teasing AND help them be their truest selves. meanwhile, the monkey commenced to skip around the store in the fabulous pink shoes.

i contemplated my next move and imagined the silent horror of the sweetly-smiling sales woman, observing my attempts to squelch my son’s spirit. should i explain to my four-year-old that kids are mean, and that in our more traditional town, kids are mean AND traditional? or should i just purchase the pink shoes and hope for the best?

i opted for plan C. we revisited the multicolored bouquet of keen sandals “just to check for any other colors we might like.” and lo and behold, there was another pair on the display that was calling the monkey’s name. the dark pink pair:

now this pair is much more pink in person than the above picture reveals, but i didn’t care. surely he could be his true self in these shoes AND avoid teasing. we bought the shoes, and i was off the hook.

but only temporarily. i’m convinced that time and again, i will be revisiting the questions i asked myself in the shoe store. ultimately, i believe that it’s healthy to be selective about when, where, and with whom we reveal the deepest parts of who we are. i want to teach my kids to be selective. unfortunately, nobody learns to be selective without being teased.

i’m not sure i did the right thing. i am not writing to defend my choice. i’m just saying that in parenting, everything is complicated. nothing is as simple as wanting my kids to feel the cool mountain stream washing over their hot summer feet.

 

elizabeth agonized over her decision to return to full-time work in 2010 as a certified financial planner. she feared that her children would not transition well to aftercare, and she was right. seven-year-old A confessed that she “has never felt so lonely in her entire life.” W, age-five, regressed and started wetting his pants at school every day. “we were all grief-stricken,” elizabeth laments.

in her book perfect madness, judith warner describes the silences that fell in her interview groups with mothers because,

“there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. it is permissible, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition.” there is an underlying assumption that we “cannot really challenge the american culture of rugged individualism… we lack the most basic notions now of what a different kind of culture might look or feel like” (31-32).

elizabeth broke the silence and confided both her guilt and her ambition to her dear friend angela, a teacher by trade, who was working part-time in addition to the full-time responsibilities of raising her two nine-year-old boys. together, the two hatched a plan that does challenge the american culture of rugged individualism. elizabeth withdrew A and W from aftercare, and angela quit her part-time job to integrate A and W into her family’s weekday life.  

 elizabeth admits that she did not put much stock in the initial chatter about such an arrangement. “how would this mother of two be able to go to three different schools every afternoon, much less herd this group of four children?” she questioned. “i knew i could never do it myself.”

but in december, angela made it clear that she was serious about the idea of caring for A and W. she approached elizabeth with a proposal, and the two talked candidly about fair compensation, day-to-day details, and looming fears. 

“i will always remember sitting in [angela’s] kitchen making this agreement, and the enormous feeling of relief that washed over me,” says elizabeth. “i started to cry; i was so grateful. when angela responded that ‘we are helping each other,’ that really resonated with me. we’ve been helping each other ever since.”

angela describes the process as an easy decision, informed, in part, by her own experience of returning to full-time work when her boys were five years old. “it was tough on them. they would cry and pitch fits whenever they had to go to aftercare. elizabeth’s situation struck a familiar chord,” she explains. “her family was in need, and i was in a position that allowed me to help her. i am very comfortable looking after children!”

on a typical day, angela fetches A from school at 2:45, drives eight to twelve minutes to pick up her boys, S and L from school, and finally makes her way to a third school to pick up W. once her honda accord is packed to the gills, the entourage returns to elizabeth’s house, and the older kids finish their homework. angela uses this time to practice numbers, letters, sounds with W. she even unloads the dishes if they’re clean! all of the children have after-school activities that vary throughout the year. A currently plays soccer soccer on wednesdays and S has basketball on mondays and wednesdays. for a change of scenery, the group gathers at angela’s house on friday afternoons, snow days, holidays, and other vacation days during the school year.

“the kids get along pretty well,” angela muses. “they are like typical brothers and sister. not every day is perfect, but it’s always an adventure! A and L play very well together. W really looks up to S, and S takes being a big-brother-type seriously. he is always talking about W, and he even taught him how to shoot a basketball and jump rope.”

both angela and elizabeth credit the the success  of their arrangement to continued flexibility and open conversation. they have tweaked the details of their partnership as needed. angela recommends this kind of innovation only in cases where “both moms communicate openly and go with the flow. nothing is ever the same twice with this many kids in the mix. everyone is growing and evolving, and i think it’s important to keep this in mind.”

both moms describe the entire collaboration as a MakeShift moment. from impromptu rainy day walks that combat cabin fever, to the occasional depositing of children at elizabeth’s office, the little crew of six is making it all up as they go. 

on collaberative mothering, perhaps elizabeth says it best:

whenever i watch a show on lions or elephants or primates, i get sad.  i see how other creatures nurture their young together. other creatures have not forgotten that it takes a village, a pride, a pod or a pack, to raise young. yet in our “modern” society, we have alienated mothers from each other, and mothering has become quite an isolating experience. having this relationship with angela makes me feel like we, as mothers, are helping each other, the way god intended.  it is such a blessing to me.

list of things to do:

• potty train the bird
• wean the bird from his chew toy (pacifier)
• switch bird to a big-boy-bed
• eliminate (excuse the pun) the monkey’s night-time pull-up
• experience a miraculous and heretofore unprecedented boost in energy

my kids are ready to move forward, and i can foresee that life without diapers, chew toys, easily-scaled cribs, and pull-ups will be easier. but not without getting much more difficult first.

list of supplies needed:

• big boy pants
• wine
• elmo potty
• padded room (for all of us)
• screwdriver for crib disassembly
• marriage counseling
• big boy bed
• washer/dryer
• B12 shot
• sense of humor

wish us luck!

i used to wonder why middle school girls are so mean to each other. why the seismic shift of affections, the dramatic purchasing and demolishing of “best friend” necklaces, the endless note-passing and back-stabbing, and the constant labeling and striving for that which is popular?

yesterday, as my children were wailing (again) at the prospect of spending time with me while their daddy went out for a jog, it hit me: middle school misery is part of the preparation-for-motherhood process. only such a colossal test of self-esteem could come close to readying a gal for the sucker punch that comes when, apropos to nothing, she falls out of favor with her children.

when “the daddy phase” began a few months ago and my children began approximating time spent with me to sharing a cage with a hideous monster, i remained strong. i returned their unhappy scowls with hugs and kisses. when the monkey set aside an entire day to cry about the misfortune that his preferred parent has a full-time job, i remained calm. when i returned home from a two-day vacation last week to the monkey’s disappointment that “i didn’t stay away longer,” i made myself ignore these words. but yesterday’s pathetic chorus of daddy-wanting hysterics was just too much. if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. i starting crying myself.

so here i am, 34 going on 13, dissecting the anatomy of the popular parent. from my non-randomized qualitative study of one, i can conclude that popular parents are not preoccupied with cooking, cleaning, folding, and typing. popular parents are fun! they are like cruise directors, shuffling two kids to four fabulous locations all in the time that it would take me to locate and cram on the necessary shoes. never mind that popular parents just grab the first ill fitting shoes they see. everyone is having the time of their lives!

the next thing i know, i am also studying the anatomy of the unpopular parent by way of yet another non-randomized qualitative study of one. at its best, this “research” leads me to the conclusion that unpopular parents are simply not fun. at its worst, it is a bit like what anne lamott calls KFKD radio:

“out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on” (bird by bird).

i made it through  middle school in one piece. surely i can keep myself intact in the face of a couple of preschool boys. step one: find a new radio station.