name: MaryAnn

age: 38

current city: Springfield, VA (suburb of Washington DC)

living situation: I live with my husband Robert and my “blessed trinity” of children: Caroline (age seven), Margaret (almost five) and James (almost three). We have two geriatric cats, Maya and Willy, who’ve been with Robert and me since the beginning of our marriage 16 years ago.

Our neighborhood is classic suburbia in many ways—July 4 block parties and neighborhood yard sales. But it’s also wonderfully diverse. We see women wearing hijab pushing their kids in strollers in our neighborhood, and there are more than 100 languages spoken here in Fairfax County.

occupation: I am pastor of Idylwood Presbyterian Church, Falls Church, VA, and a writer. I just finished a three-year stint as a monthly columnist for Presbyterians Today, our denomination’s magazine, and am one of the founders of Fidelia’s Sisters, an e-zine which is by and for young clergy women. I’ve written for secular publications too; I even had a short piece published in the Washington Post Style section a few years back! And I am working on two book projects, although it fills me with anxiety to say that out loud, because I’m not sure whether they’ll ever get done.

how do you structure your time and space? I work part-time for Idylwood, which is a small congregation. When I tell this to fellow pastors, they usually look at me knowingly and say, “Oh come on, there’s no such thing as part-time ministry, right? You just get paid part-time for full-time work.” I am on a mission to prove them wrong! This is my second call at part-time status. I started out full-time as an associate pastor of a large church seven years ago, and when James was born I asked to move to half-time. The congregation was gracious to make the change. Now I work 2/3 time.

It’s a constant struggle to find the balance. I’ve had to make peace with being the “good-enough mother” and the “good-enough pastor.” But most days, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love the work I do, preaching, teaching and caring for this quirky congregation. Yet my schedule is flexible enough to take Margaret to “tap and tutu” class at the rec center and lead Caroline’s Brownie meeting from time to time. I work shortened days, which allows me to exercise in the mornings and still be homeafter the bus drop off in the afternoon. I work a lot of evenings too.

I have an office at the church, but I do a lot of work in my home office. It’s located in our dining room, which we converted into a creative space/study several months ago. In fact, I named my blog “The Blue Room” in honor of this room. You can read more about it here.

Our childcare situation is a dream come true. A neighbor who used to teach preschool began a daycare in her basement when her own daughter was born. She follows a curriculum but it’s more relaxed with the feeling of being at home. She’s half a block away, which makes mornings and evenings much less stressful. My mother lives downtown, which allows Robert and me to have date night a few times a month.

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? Our family is settling into what the church calls “ordinary time.” It’s not one of the high holy seasons, such as Christmas or Easter—things are just trucking along, and that’s OK. Green is the symbolic color of this season, implying growth, so I associate ordinary time with the summer months. We’re enjoying our kids at their current delightful stages of development, we like our jobs, our house feels like “home,” et cetera.

-what season(s) preceded this one? We’ve been through a lot of transition, which I associate with spring—planting seeds, watering and weeding, et cetera. There’s a lot of beauty in the spring but a LOT of work as well (so I’m told—I don’t garden, it’s enough to keep our kids and cats alive, and I can’t handle anything else!). I’ve been at my job almost a year, and my husband recently changed jobs as well, and that creates stress. Also, our kids manage to pick up every petty illness, fever and cold that’s out there, and they are NEVER sick at the same time. One gets better and the other one catches it. So our normally well-run household has been off the rails for several months.

-what season(s) might your future hold? Even as I live in the moment and try not to speed along my kids’ growing up, I admit I’m ready to get past the constant physical exertion of having young children—dressing them, feeding them, wiping their butts when they poop. I will not miss diapers and sippy cups.

That said, I know from parenting our second grader that the needs are still there as they age; in fact these needs only get more complex (homework, juggling activities, relationships with friends, et cetera). We don’t over-program our children but I’m a little freaked out to think about how I will get them from place to place. Even one activity a week per child adds up when there are three of them! However, I love watching our kids grow more and more fully into themselves. I guess I’m doing that too.

favorite family activities: We love to go downtown to do the DC stuff: museums, the zoo, pedal boating in the Tidal Basin next to the Jefferson Memorial. This summer we lived at the pool. We’ve started doing more hiking, with a recent trip to Shenandoah National Park. We eat dinner together most nights, but Sunday night is family night, which for us means a pizza “picnic” in the basement while watching a TV show everyone likes (currently Mythbusters). 

favorite solo activities: Reading, lunch with friends, blogging, wandering around downtown DC, visiting a museum, getting a massage or pedicure. My morning walk is really important to me. I’ve recently gotten into the online courses through the Abbey of the Arts which is a great outlet and something I can manage with my schedule.

source(s) of inspiration: I am inspired by artists whose lives and work speak of simplicity, wholeness and authenticity. David Wilcox’s music never ceases to inspire me, and Carrie Newcomer has provided my life’s soundtrack for almost 15 years. Mary Oliver’s poetry is a great inspiration, especially “The Journey,” which is a personal mission statement of sorts.

best MakeShift moment: Parenting is one big improvisation, no? I call it parenting parkour. There have been many MakeShift moments, but the first one I thought of was seven years ago, when I was being approved for ordination. I had to attend a big meeting of the presbytery (local district of Presbyterian churches) and give a short speech and answer any questions. Caroline was six weeks old, and I knew she would get hungry right when I was supposed to be “on,” so I ended up pumping in the backseat of the car while Robert drove us down the Capital Beltway. I always wondered whether the truck drivers said anything to one another about me on their CB radios…

find maryann on the web at http://theblueroomblog.org/ 

[if you or someone you know would make a good “mother of invention,” please check out the nomination process and questionnaire located on the sidebar to your right.]

there are many common narratives in the collective story bank of motherhood, each with its own familiar plot and phrases. who hasn’t told or heard a “stuck child” story, complete with words such as

“…and then i realized that [fill in name of small child] had accidentally locked himself/herself in the bathroom.”?

and now, in an age when  modern mothers are increasingly appreciated and accomplished in the workplace, the “vocational turning point” story is becoming a collective throng. it often goes something like this:

“that day, when [insert chaotic clash of work and home life] happened, i knew i needed to change the way i was working.”

as it happens, these two prototypes converged for me last friday night. the bird was singing his own familiar tearful chorus as i showered and got ready to be the liturgist at the final montreat women’s connection worship service. after learning that it is virtually impossible to simultaneously hold a child and don a dress, i allowed him to use my leg as a teething biscuit as i hurriedly applied my makeup.

just as i was feeling smug about the fact that i would have a whole fifteen minutes to go over my part in the service after i dropped the kids off at my mom’s house, the monkey declared that he needed to tee tee. he did his business, and then, so as not to be outdone by his brother, he instantly deteriorated into a fitful rage that reportedly rendered him completely incapable of pulling up his own pants. i calmly closed the bathroom door and told them that he was welcome to come out once his pants were no longer around his ankles.

in his tornadic attempt to liberate himself from captivity, the monkey accidentally turned the tarnished brass lever above the knob on the old mountain house bathroom door. he was locked inside, and getting more panicky by the second.

my friends and temporary roommates calmed the (now hysterical) bird and hovered outside the locked bathroom door with these  necessary tools:

• a knife
• a spatula
• a phillips head screwdriver

meanwhile, i finished buttoning my dress as i walked outside and scaled a bear-proof garbage bin to get a look inside of the window. a neighbor strolled by and inquired as to why i was five feet above the ground, wearing a towel on my head, leaning at a 45 degree angle, peering into a window, and scaling the house’s exterior wall. he reported that in all of his 30 years of living across the street, he has never seen a person exhibit such behavior.

five minutes later, the monkey, who is apparently remarkably stellar at following my directions (when he feels like it), unlocked the door and waltzed out of the bathroom *with* his pants pulled up. i hopped down from my perch, shuttled the kids to my mom’s house, proceeded to the service, did my part without any major incedents, and moved on.

except that i haven’t really moved on. though i am new at telling the “stuck child” story, there are a zillion other stories that coincide with my attempts to maintain my identity as a person who works, albeit part-time, outside of the home. i’ll spare you the details of the “calling poison control” story, the “writing on the walls” story, and the “submerging daddy’s shoes in the bathtub” story. just know that all three of these plots unfolded while i was trying to fulfill obligations pertaining to my job as a minister.

i don’t know what sorts of shifts i will make in the way i structure my work life, but there will be some. and to the neighbor, who marveled at the site of a young mother living out the particulars of her own “stuck child” story, i have this to say:

if you look closely, you will find that mothers all around you are desperately trying to climb “the wall”. they can be heard pumping during conference calls. they can be found supervising third grade math homework while working on their own coursework. many are simply trying to shower for work in relative peace. women’s roles have changed during the last 30 years, but “the wall” is still there. when old challenges crumble away, they are quickly replaced by new ones.

i might be the first person you have seen shouting instructions to a three-year-old from a lofty perch. but i am by no means the first woman to employ flexibility, strength, and a sense of humor while creatively solving a problem and wearing a cute dress!

eight years ago, and after much contemplation, i slipped away from the house on a saturday and went alone to a nearby tattoo parlor to get my nosed pierced. my reasoning was informed, in part, by my own self-perception and my assumptions about how others perceived me, even as i knew that my accuracy on both accounts was probably questionable. but i was in the process of entering the ministry, a vocation that includes hazards such as inevitable affiliation with the church, an institution that simultaneously surprises me with goodness and makes me want to rip my hair out. in the deep south, surrounded by bible thumpers and those still reeling from subjection to this thumping, i was afraid to let my label as a minister define me. i wanted for people to look at my face — my nose, specifically — and think, “she’s not your ordinary minister.” i can’t say that the nosering has rescued me from eight years of stereotypes, as planned. what i know for sure is that i just like it.

the reaction to my new facial addition varied. my in-laws called me dennis rodman, which in my opinion, was hilarious! a friend cautiously asked me if i would still be wearing it once i became a mother. i answered her with an enthusiastic yes. the prospect of being a mom with a nose ring thrilled me almost as much as being a minister with a nosering.

but little did i know then that one day (in december of ’09, to be exact), my youngest child would close in on my face for a gummy-mouthed kiss and EAT my nosering. when my friend asked me if i would be a “nosering mama,” i did not forsee that such a designation would lead to utterances such as,

“hello… laurelwood pediatrics… we’ve got a bit of a problem here. you see, the bird has consumed a piece of facial jewelry.”

but eight years into this commitment, i pressed on. i never again saw that particular custom-made nosering, despite my best archaeological efforts. i resigned myself to wearing the cheap mall boutique noserings that lose their “stones” every two weeks. and then, as luck would have it, my friend and yoga teacher, margot, heard the “bird ate my nosering” story at a party and offered me her retired piece of bling — a beautiful rose gold beveled stud, custom made by the same jeweler who made my old one.

she gave it to me last night, and the new ring fits tightly, so as not to be gobbled up in fits of toddler affection.

the moral of the story is this: if you’re going to be a “nosering mama,” you’re going to have to babyproof your face.

i am a mother and a minister, and it struck me yesterday that these are two vocations in which one is often expected to be superhuman. and by “superhuman,” i mean not human at all; above being human; perfect. an interesting facet of this expectation of superhuman-ness is that in both cases, it includes a sort of disembodied existance. the body will get you every time, with its animal ways and love of gravity! my world is marked by clerical robes and nursing covers, both of which i am usually happy to hide behind out of fear that my body might be objectified or labeled as shameful and inappropriate.

meanwhile, young mothers in every profession are experiencing their bodies as the main event. it is difficult to ignore the body when it expands to carry another life, acts as a one-woman-catering-service for a little one, and contracts (usually in all the wrong areas) before it’s time to start the cycle again. perhaps this is why i love the kind of honesty about the body found in ayelet waldman’s bad mother:

“how well i remember [my] rack! those perky breasts that hovered just below my chin. those pert nipples. that swelling cleavage. after four children and a full seventy-two months of breast-feeding, the last six of which were spent with my nipples clamped in the death vise of a breast pump, it is only by dint of foundation garments designed by teams of MIT professors who otherwise spend their days drawing up plans for the world’s longest suspension bridges that my breasts achieve a shape even approximating round. when i undo the clasps, buckles, straps, and hoists of these miraculous feats of engineering, my boobs tumble to the ground like boulders falling off a cliff. i could polish my shoes with my nipples” (28). 

it is my job, as a minister, to talk about miracles. turning water into wine, walking on water, and raising people from the dead are common topics of conversation for me. so why, for the love of god, should i refrain from talking about the miracle-working powers of a good bra?

on the list of things that have transformed my life are things like martin buber’s i and thou, viktor frankl’s man’s search for meaning, marcus borg’s concept of jesus, and now this:

this is the SPANX bra-llelujah full-coverage, front-closureunderwire bra. yes, it is expensive, but is it really possible to put a price on comfort and this carefully-engineered, non-surgical restoration of one’s pre-kid shape?

friends, hear the good news! we do not have to super-human. we simply have to invest in super-human undergarments.

brallelujah!

[the source for this post can be found on the bibligraphy page located on the sidebar to your right.]