Happy Mommy Moments, 27 May 2014

Today I'm a happy mama.

Nothing particularly huge happened today--unless we count G giving his first-ever speech in front of his 2nd grade class--but I felt delighted at a number of little moments.

I arrived at the kids' school early enough to catch G's oral report on the common hippo (I'll refrain from quoting the whole thing right here, although I could probably do it from memory myself), and as I walked through the center common room on my way to his classroom, a little Kindergartner from Z's class walked past me on the way back from the restroom.  His face lit up in recognition when he saw me.  "Hi, Z's Mom!" he grinned.  At that moment I realized I love being known as Z's Mom.

And known as G's Mom too, as the 2nd grade kids refer to me!  I'm not gonna lie, I burst a few buttons as my darling 7 year old presented his research on the animal he'd chosen for his year-end project.  He remembered everything we'd practiced!  Deep breath to start, feet rooted to the floor, talk slowly, glance down at the cue cards and then look up and speak to the class with eye contact.  For this project, which included a multi-page written report, a diorama, and the speech, we were handed blank grading rubrics along with the assignment.  When I saw those, I gulped.  We're in the big leagues now, I thought, with rubrics and bibliographies and clay-baked sculptures.

G insisted on reading through the rubrics ahead of time to see what he'd need to do for the full 4 points per element.  He didn't want to mess around with 2- or 3-point quality work.  "Mommy, I want to get 4 points on everything," he declared.  We haven't gotten his grade for the written report or the diorama yet, but immediately after finishing his speech today, he turned to his teacher and asked, "Do I get 4 points??"

She chuckled, and that's all the grade he's gotten so-far.

But it sure seemed like a 4-point presentation to me!  His diorama is pretty cute too, and I'm especially proud because it's the the first time we've done baked clay for anything.

Presenting a common hippo and her calf wading somewhere in Central Africa.  I should have photographed this before taping the plastic wrap on it.  G told his class he'd used "assilic" paint.

Another absolutely precious little thing warmed my heart today.  I'll be revealing something about my age when I say that I grew up on the show Reading Rainbow, hosted by LeVar Burton, and I recently discovered that our instant-streaming video provider carries the old episodes.  Naturally, I have been eager to watch through every episode myself share the show with my kids.  It turns out that Z's Kindergarten teacher has shown his class a couple of episodes too, so he's already a little familiar with it.  (I have to admit, it takes the wind out of my sails a bit to hear, "Oh, I've seen this one.")

As the two boys and I sat on the couch tonight, taking an inside-tour of the Library of Congress and getting up close and personal with the Statue of Liberty, I couldn't have been more full of warm fuzzies.  That is, I thought I didn't have room for more fuzzies...until the final credits and the reprise of the theme song--when Z started signing along.

My sweet little boy in his wandering soprano voice, singing a theme song that was heard in my childhood home almost every school day?  That is a happy feeling.

While we're on the subject of nostalgia combined with literacy, I recently brought out my copy of Heidi, on which is penned the inscription, "To Rachel, on her 7th birthday.  With love, Mom and Dad."  I could have handed the book to G to read, but I love reading aloud to my kids.  (Plus, I don't want him to crinkle the pages.)  Reading aloud, I get to use my college drama skills which don't see the light of day very often!  So for the last couple weeks, whenever the boys and I have some downtime, we sit together and I read about the little Swiss girl in the Alps who eats toasted cheese on bread (Z's new favorite breakfast) and delights in the beauty she finds in wildflowers, goats, glaciers, fir trees, and old grandmothers.

P.S. I'm ready to move to Switzerland.  Now.

Both boys love the story, although I think Z enjoyed The Secret Garden (which I read a few months ago) more.  Maybe something to do with the ratio of girl:boy characters?  [Teacher Note: It is way cool to do a compare/contrast with Heidi and The Secret Garden.  I hadn't realized how many similar themes they have until re-reading them so close together.  The kids and I had a great conversation about this during breakfast at a buffet this weekend.  SPOILER ALERT  And we haven't even gotten to the part where Klara starts walking yet!]

A couple days ago I finished reading a couple chapters and left the room to go work on something.  Thirty minutes later, I noticed it was still pretty quiet in the living room.  I could hear Z talking to himself a bit as he played with toys, but G seemed to have dropped out of sight.  Did he fall asleep? I wondered incredulously.  But his bed was empty.  Not seeing his fuzzy head peeping over the back of the couch either, I walked around to the front of it to see if he had lied down.  He hadn't.  He was kneeling on the floor, Heidi spread out on the couch in front of him, reading ahead from where we'd left off.

Talk about simultaneous horror of "He'll find out what's coming!!" and immense gratitude of "He cares about this story enough to read it himself!!"

The latter feeling has definitely won out.  And--thanks to those drama skills coming in handy--he's not bored listening to me read the parts he's already seen.

I'm not bored either.  In fact, reading this story again as an adult, I'm astounded to rediscover the incredibly strong theme of redemption in this story.  I choked up, right on the living room couch, reading the Grandfather's break-through moments after hearing Heidi tell him the story of the Prodigal Son.  And I again had to clear mist from my eyes when the story revealed that the darkness Heidi had experienced during a hard period of her life directly brought light to the heart of the Grandmother--a woman whose blind eyes saw nothing but blackness.

It's a good book, people.

But I've digressed from refraining to give you a report on the common hippo to giving you a report on Heidi.  That wasn't my intent!  I just wanted to take some time tonight to share a few ways that I'm loving being Mom to my boys.  There's been so much sadness and darkness in my adult life...I'm so thankful for these beautiful moments of recognition that all is not dark.  There can be light in my heart.

With that, in the iconic words of LeVar, I'll see ya' next time!

Sitting Close to Mom, 11 May 2014

Apparently, 1:00 in the afternoon on Mothers' Day is rush hour at the cemetery.  In the past thirty minutes, five families—not counting me—have come to lay flowers and balloons at the gravestones of their loved ones, their mothers and grandmothers.  Oddly enough, disproportionate to the county demographic, four of the families have been Asian, and I realized today that up until this afternoon I've only heard one other Asian woman cry.  Sonya, my dear Korean friend from church who has cried with me as we've mourned our respective losses, also happens to be the one who loaned me the beach chair I've planted myself in next to my mom's grave marker.

Today, I'm spending Mothers' Day with my mom.  Okay, technically I'm spending Mothers' Day in a chair on a grassy knoll next to a piece of rock with her name on it, under which sits an unremarkable can of precious dust, but I feel closer to her here.  Her remains (how clinical that sounds!) are buried in a little cemetery not one mile from where I grew up;  a plot of grass surrounded by non-irrigated fields browned by the sun, shaded by a cluster of old pines and flanked by a range of brown and blue mountains in the near distance.  [Eew, gross!  Did you have to hack up a spit-wad, O giggling teen visitor?  I was just starting to feel poetic.]

Mom used to love wandering through cemeteries.  I think she liked the quiet—and a mother of six certainly would—and she was fascinated by the history behind old grave stones.  She liked to wander around and see what the earliest dates were.  Honestly, it seemed kinda weird to me, although the history part of it was cool.  We weren't a family with traditions of visiting family plots, though.  I think I've been to my paternal grandfather's site once, as a child, and I'm not even sure which cemetery it's in.  I've seen the site of my maternal great-grandparents a few times, but only while attending the burials of other ancient relatives.  So it definitely feels a little out of character to have driven two hours from my home just to sit in a beach chair next to a rock.

[The other visitors have all gone and a resident killdeer couple has made peace with my presence and stopped scolding me with their plaintive calls.  I see a squirrel sunning himself on the bordering chain-link fence; a blue scrub-jay hops around under a tree while a green hummingbird hovers in front of it.  I can tune out the occasional whoosh of passing cars on the country highway, and the gentle breeze breathes peace.]

But this rock has my mom's name carved into it: Constance.  A beautiful name, full of swirls and curves, with such a soothing meaning, “constant.”  One thing's for sure: Mom was constant.  When she committed to something, she saw it through—and saw it through excellently.

• She saw six children through homeschooling from Kindergarten through high school graduation, and she was able to watch the first four graduate with degrees from universities.

• She started dating my dad at 16, married him at 19, and nourished and cherished their beautiful marriage through thin and thick, sickness and health, until her passing out of the arms of her husband into the arms of her Savior, just eight days after her 33rd wedding anniversary.

• She and my dad bought five acres of empty, wild oat-strewn land three hours from their city home, not knowing when or if they would ever build.  The next year, they decided to go for it and put their house up for sale.  They had five little children (one a newborn) and my dad didn't have a job to relocate to, but no matter!  Mom and Dad felt God wanted them to move, so they did.  Mom watched God provide for them as they designed a new home, transitioned my dad into the—surprise!—new job he'd gotten, while she homeschooled three of the five kids and carried a sixth in her womb.  Over the next two decades, she spearheaded landscaping, gardening, sheep-raising, treehouse building, orchard planting, wallpapering, home library collecting, fruit canning (and even a foray into meat canning and food stockpiling before the threatening approach of Y2K), the occasional needlepoint, and so many other projects.

• She played organ, her instrument of choice, for countless church services, playing with tenderness and passion.  Receiving her Master's degree in music at the age of 45 (a year before I got my Bachelor's in music), she took great joy and care in choosing music and playing it with love and skill.  She had many disparaging things to say about electric organs, reed organs, and organs played all “mushy” with tremolo.  She liked crisp, clean, open, beautiful sound.  One of her greatest joys was trying out pipe organs in historical churches.

• While my youngest four siblings were still in high school, Mom and Dad bought a mountain lot and designed and built a beautiful rustic-looking home as a rental investment.  For months, Mom scoured city thrift stores and yard sales for furniture and decor to fill each of the mountain home's eight or so rooms.  Books, paintings on rough-hewn boards, distressed-wood chairs and dressers, quaint bed posts, fishing poles, even a little pump organ--every detail needed to outfit the rental home with care and style.  Oh, and did I mention that these were the first years she was undergoing intensive care for her newly-diagnosed polymyositis?  Talk about dedication.

Her canned peaches were always colorful and the right sweetness to tart ratio.  Her landscaping design was always a wonderful balance between the manicured and the barely-tamed.  Her interior decorating was always homey and welcoming.  Her music was always well thought-out.  Her children were well-educated and her husband well-loved and her whole life well-lived.  Yes, my mom was constant.

And I constantly miss her.

So being at this middle-of-nowhere cemetery surrounded by granite signs of people's losses, I sit, feeling close to Mom.  And isn't it the height of irony and beauty that the scolding killdeer has made her nest on a grave marker?  Level with the ground, in an unremarkable can empty of decoration, she sits on four speckled eggs, waiting for life to hatch out.  I’m sitting near a grave right now, too.  How long am I going to sit next to the dead, waiting for new life and joy to “hatch” in my life?  I don't know.

But I do know that today I needed to sit.  To warm myself with memories of Mom and care for my fragile heart by letting the calm of the countryside caress me.  I can be like the killdeer.  I can sit, and I can tend the nest of my heart, and I can wait for joy and breaths hungry for life to hatch.

It's coming.

Missing Out? 8 May 2014

Today would have been my mom's 57th birthday.

Mom (and Essie) blows out candles on the cake I made for her 38th birthday

This year, it comes three days before the now-dreaded Hallmark Holiday called "Mothers' Day," which after my four years of grief would be better named "Rub It in Your Face That You're Sad Day."  Rub it in your face that not only I, but also my husband, no longer have a mom.  Rub it in your face that my friend was supposed to celebrate Mother's Day as a mom this year, but because her baby died, she won't.  Rub it in your face that the little boy across the street has a mother who only comes by his house every couple of weeks to raid the frig...and he doesn't even really notice when she's gone.  Rub it in your face that my dear friend longs to be a mother, to be married, to be cherished by her own little family, but yet-again this year she hasn't met Mr. Right.

So I make a wide berth around greeting card aisles this time of year, ignore advertisements that glibly invite "Celebrate Mom!" and wrestle with whether to attempt attending church on Mother's Day.  And I feel sad.  And angry.

And I've been feeling sad and angry on various levels for four years--ever since I discovered that "bad stuff" can happen to me and to those I love.  Now I'm more aware of bad stuff happening all over the world, too, and the weight of grief and anger for the injustices and brokenness of the world is heavy.  Which brings me to a realization I started having while lying in bed at 11 p.m. last night.

I think I've been clinging to my right to be angry.

In my quest to break free from my culture's stifling you-have-three-days-of-allowed-bereavement and don't-cry-in-public and you're-not-over-that-yet? attitudes, I've tried to be open about my feelings, embrace the reality of pain, and encourage others to be honest with God about their anger and sadness.  Just look at this blog!  Over 1/3 of my posts since beginning two years ago are labeled with grief, sadness, crying, or death.

This has been--and is--important.  But am I now so focused on the need to work through grief that I've lost focus on the greater need to be whole?

"Gee Rachel," you might be thinking, "it's been over a month since you blogged last and this is what you show up to write about?  We want to hear about your music job!  How are Jay, G, and Z?  Made any ridiculously-large batches of food lately?  Why so philosophical today?  Oh, it must be because it's your mom's birthday."  Actually, that's only partially true.  The real answer to this morning's frame of mind has to do with those other questions you asked, so let me back up a bit. 

April 28th was the last day of my wage-earning job as a church music director.  The very next day, Z got the flu.  Three days after that, G got the flu.  (Thanks for waiting for me, guys.)  So I came off four months of being absolutely in my element in an office outside my house with adults away from Mom Duty to a week and a half of being glued to my house with sick kids.  Moreover, their school class schedule is different this week, so we've been given extra homeschooling work.  From half-time professional to full-time mom/nurse/homeschool teacher.  Brutal.  I'm not making light of this; it's been rough.

Yesterday evening, wandering listlessly around the house after a day of homeschooling, washing sheets, doing dishes, finding food that would tempt an indisposed child, and being sick of trying to pass any remaining downtime with Facebook and television, I picked up a book that had been sitting untouched on my nightstand for months.  I'm not even sure how it showed up there.  (If you loaned it to me, speak up and I'll return it to you when I'm done reading it.)

Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts looks boring on the cover, honestly, and it's a pretty generic title.  I only picked it up last night because I was tired of muttering to myself, "I'm bored."  Turns out, the book isn't boring.  It's about the journey of a stay-at-home mom with grief skeletons in her closet, struggling to get out of bed every day, and sick and tired of not having a full, whole, joyous life.

It sounded a little too familiar.

When I put the book down at 11 p.m. and Jay turned off the lamp, I had a lot of questions for myself in the dark.  What do I want?  Am I letting my right to grieve hold me back from joy in the present?  Are daydreams of Someday Success cheating me out of Today?  Are there wholeness and health in the daily doldrums?  What if I make peace with the pain?  Will I just be given more pain and more humdrum, or could making peace make more space for goodness?  At least if I'm braced for pain I'm not caught off-guard when it happens.  But am I watching out more for blows than I am on the lookout for beauty?

I fell asleep and dreamed that my mom had decorated the house for Christmas in October and that I was practicing a fantastic soprano part for a women's quartet.  I woke up five hours later, feeling surprisingly rested, but with the night's questions still swirling in my mind.

Now the sun is up; the boys are getting out cereal and I need to pour milk in bowls and get started on their homework and sort the laundry.  Life is happening, whether I'm geared up for it or not.  Today, I miss my mom--I miss our moms; and I'm starting to ask myself, What else am I missing?