Tag Archives: parenting

I Tiptoe Into Your Room at Night

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November 8, 2014

November 8, 2014

I tiptoe into your room every night, and it’s never to whisper, “For the last time, untangle your underwear from your pants legs before you put them in the laundry basket.”

Just before midnight, I stand beside your bed and not once have I come there to say, “Did you put something down the toilet again? Because it is clogging up and I sweartogod if I have to replace another toilet it is coming out of your college fund.”

In the soft glow of your night light, my finger reaches out to trace the perfect curve of your cheek and I don’t ask, “Why are you so sticky?”

I tuck the covers around you without saying, “You’re not even supposed to have Go-gurts in your room. We don’t want ants.”

I push the dark curls off your forehead and it’s never crossed my mind to take this opportunity to say, “Cough into your elbow!”

And every night, every single night of your life, I stand there in the dark and whisper, “I love you sooooo much.”

Every day I tell you that too. But at night, I tiptoe into your room to remind myself what a miracle you are. And how lucky I am to be your mother.

But honestly, what is that smell?

Jumping Monkeys

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In a parenting group, a very funny mother posted this commentary about the ridiculous nature of parenting groups (yes, IRONY. But we’re totally different, super cool and laid back):

Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed,
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama asked the mom group and the mom group said:
Have you tried essential oils? I hear hyperactivity is a vaccine injury. I’m calling CPS.

RIGHT?

After I had my laugh, I rubbed some Vitamin-E on that scar Carlos has on his cheek from the time he slid in his own pee dribbles while getting off the toilet and cut his face on the rim of the trashcan. I felt like the World’s Horriblest Mother after that accident. Yet somehow, the cut gave him a dimple. Who else could turn a pee slip into a beauty mark? That boy is MAGIC.

Trauma induced dimple. (Yes, I know that is not the proper way to secure a helmet. It was corrected before he started juggling machetes.)

Trauma induced dimple. (Yes, I know that is not the proper way to secure a helmet. It was corrected before he started juggling machetes.)

Anywho, now that you’ve been blessed with a photo of The Cutest Little Boy In the ENTIRE WORLD, let me get back to nutjobs who think their kids are the specialist snowflakes of all the special snowflakes.

When I was still pregnant with Vivi, my stepdaughter Victoria sorted through her books and picked a few to pass along to the baby. One of the books was a bright yellow copy of “Ten Little Monkeys” with fingerpuppets for the monkey heads. “I loved that song!” I cried. She and I started reading it together.

Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head.

Called up the doctor and the doctor said,

“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”

 

I blurted, “That’s not how it goes.” Victoria showed me the page. I even flipped a few pages ahead–they were all like that. I figured it was some knock-off Montessori book or something G had picked up in an airport in a foreign land, because every kid born in my generation knows how that rhyme REALLY goes:

Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell over and broke his head.

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,

“THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR JUMPING ON THE BED.”

Walk it off, monkey. Gravity always wins. Here, bite this stick while we flush it out with Bactine then you can get back to carousing.

Trampoline with no safety cage, no padding. And the ground is littered with dirt.

Trampoline with no safety cage, no padding. And the ground is littered with dirt.

Now that I’ve been parenting actual children for almost a decade, I think the shift in the nursery rhyme reflects the shift in how we parent our kids. The current trend is to shield them from harm–by order of the Department of Health, no more monkeys will be allowed to jump on the bed.

Back in MY day, we were raised with less bubble wrap and more natural consequences–that’s what you get for…fill in the blank. Even the doctor knew it was your own damn fault if you broke your head falling off the bed after your mama had told you 100 times not to be doing that in the first place.

I had every intention of being the kind of mother who can lord it over the others in on-line mothering groups. While I was still percolating my first baby I was already reading hand-me-down copies of Mothering magazine about the proper way to grow, preserve, pulverize and compost my own organic food for my child. I tied myself up in a ring sling and smeared medical grade lanolin on my nipples and it wasn’t even Valentines Day. My kids would be raised with every bit of Mother Henning I could muster. They would suffer no trauma, not even a mild inconvenience.

Then some actual parenting hit and I find myself letting my kids teach themselves more and more of those lessons that only make it into our brains the hard way.

So what about you? Were you taught no more monkeys jumping on the bed or that’s what you get for jumping on the bed? Or did your mom rub some essential oils on your head and file a lawsuit against the mattress manufacturer?

Hang on tight buddy. That ground is hard.

Hang on tight buddy. That ground is hard.

The Meanest Thing I’ve Said to My Daughter, So Far

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Sunday night, just before bath time, my last nerve ran out into the street and threw itself under a car. About 45 seconds after that, I made a simple request of my daughter. About a minute after that, I said the meanest thing I’ve said to her….so far.

Image courtesy morguefile.com

Image courtesy morguefile.com

Vivi was supposed to be getting ready for her bath. I looked over and saw a stack of orange peels and other snack detritus on the coffee table in the den. From the couch, I hollered down the hall, “Come get your dishes and put them in the sink!”

She thundered down the hall, running wide open through the den and straight into the kitchen, right past me. Then she wandered back into the den.

“What are you DOING?” I asked.

“Seeing if I could outrun the cat.”

“Dishes.”

She meandered over to the coffee table, picked up a book that had been left open there earlier in the afternoon, and started to read. I gave it a few seconds then said, “DISHES.”

“Oh, right!” She came very very very close to the dishes, but then the cat walked by again and she pounced on him.

“Leave the cat alone and just take the dishes to the sink!” By now, she had the cat draped across her left arm like a dish towel and ignored me when I repeated, “Put the cat down!” With the cat wiggling to get free, she stacked her water cup on top of her plate. Teeter totter sway and wobble…y’all can see where this is going, right? I’m not sure if the cat knocked the cup over or the cup fell over and the water landed on the cat, but all of that happened at once and now we had a bigger mess and water all over everywhere.

And that’s when I blurted: “Why can’t you just……BE NORMAL….for one minute?”

I meant to say, “Why can’t you focus on this? Why will you not listen to me? Why can you not leave the goddam cat alone? Why can you not remember to clean up after yourself? When will you learn to respect the laws of physics? Especially where cats and water are concerned???”

Instead, I said “Why can’t you be normal?” And I’m still beating myself up for that.

She paused for a moment but didn’t answer me. I hope she was too busy dealing with the mess to register what I had said,

After the mess was sopped up and thrown away and Rufus had escaped to the backyard to recover his dignity, I should have apologized to Vivi for that word. She was already giggling in the tub. “Normal” is the last thing I want her to be. I want her to be clever and kind and free and confident and courageous and content. I want her to be herself, authentically and unapologetically. I also want her to put her own damn orange peels in the kitchen trash can. Not the wastebasket under the desk that only gets emptied every few weeks–the KITCHEN trashcan. And I want her to do that the first time she is asked, while bearing in mind that cats and water and gravity are all fickle fellows. I want her to be a centered individual who knows how to live in the world with other people.

Normal. Ugh. My daughter isn’t normal. But I didn’t need to remind her of that.

I’m beating myself up about this slip of the tongue. Worrying that this one thing will become the inner voice that she hears. Wondering if this was the straw that broke the daughter’s back.

The mom guilt is strong on this one. Was this my big mistake that wipes out every positive thing I’ve ever done for my girl? That’s what I worry about with EVERY mothering decision. I guess that’s….oh what’s the word?

NORMAL.

Making Pie From Pumpkin Guts

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I made my first homemade pumpkin pie today. It seemed like the most effcient way to put away Halloween decorations, since I didn’t feel like climbing the ladder into the attic. I took a couple of the small pumpkins off the front steps and roasted them.

Scooping out the seeds and stringy guts of the pumpkins reminded me of a story my friend Edna told 20 years ago. The first time she decided to make a pumpkin pie from scratch, she cut open the pumpkin and all she found inside was that stringy mess…so she picked all the seeds out and used that stuff my kids call the “pumpkin guts” to make her pie. I wish y’all could hear Edna tell this story in her Glenville, Georgia accent. She said, “Welllll, I just kept adding more seasoning and blending it and blending it. It turned out OK, I guess, not too bad.” I think it was one of her sisters who explained to her how you have to cook the pumpkin to get to the part that actually makes the pie. She was trying to make pie out of the part you’re supposed to throw away.

Edna’s story made me smile today, but it also taught me a little lesson. Sometimes we get in a rut and just assume that life is supposed to be THIS hard. That we’re supposed to be making the most out of the stringy guts. That this really is as good as it gets. At the beginning of this year, when I was having so much trouble getting Carlos into an after school program, it turned out that the root of the problem was one person had said one thing to me that was incorrect. When I asked the nice lady behind the desk if after school could make accommodations for my son’s IEP (special ed plan), she said, “Oh, we don’t take kids with special needs. We just don’t have the staff.” Instead of saying, “That can’t be right,” and taking things up a level to her manager, I just assumed that life is supposed to be this difficult when it comes to my boy. And that’s wrong-headed. That’s trying to make pie out of pumpkin guts.

We put so much effort into turning that piddly stuff into a sweet and savory dessert, when the real stuff is so close, right there waiting to be used. Then a friend comes along and says, “Oh, honey! Let me show you a trick.” And you finally learn how pumpkin pie out of pumpkin instead of pumpkin guts. In my case, that whole problem got sorted out because I happened to bump into the principal at the school where Carlos was supposed to be and when she asked me in passing, “How are you today?” I told her the truth–not too good and a little pissed off. She stopped in her tracks and asked if there was any way she could help. I explained that one of her employees had told me that the after school program didn’t take kids with IEPs. She immediately apologized and figured out the employee’s mistake–that student worker had misunderstood. The after school program can’t make accommodations for kids with IEPs, like no student aides or special equipment, but they certainly TAKE kids with IEPs. We got it sorted out in a few minutes and Carlos loves his after school time.

I learned how to make pumpkin pie with PUMPKIN instead of pumpkin guts. I needed a little help with figuring it out, just like Edna. And just like Edna, I was doing my best to make something out of the stringy parts, something that looked like my goal.

Anywho. Vivi decided we should make pumpkin tarts instead of one big pie. I told her to put pecans on top of a few of them. She made faces. I hooted when we pulled them from the oven because they really look like how I feel sometimes:

pies

At Loose Ends

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We had a kindergarten tradition at Flint River Academy. Every fall, Mrs. Nina Lemmon (yes, with two ems…and it’s a long i in her first name, not a short i) taught her students to tie their shoes.

shoe lace practiceShe cut out dozens of little shoes from yellow construction paper. You end up with a lot of yellow construction paper when you are a school teacher named Mrs. Lemmon. She wove one white shoelace through each, and labelled them with the names of her new students. The shoes hung on the wall inside her kindergarten classroom with their laces loose and dangling.

Every few days, Mrs. Lemmon, who was an angel of patience, gave us a chance to practice tying our shoes. If you did it right, your shoe was moved out into the hallway under construction paper letters that shouted: “I CAN TIE MY SHOE!” If you couldn’t get it to work, your shoe stayed in the classroom and waited for you to solve the magic puzzle that brought the loose ends together into a neat bow.

I wasn’t the first to get my tied shoe moved out to the hallway. Or the second. Or third. Each day, as we walked in a rambling line to the lunchroom or the library, we passed the parade of neatly tied shoes outside Mrs. Lemmon’s classroom.

It had started to worry me–yes, my neurotic little five-year-old self was already worried about measuring up. What if mine was the last shoe added to the line? What if I never managed to make the rabbit go around the stump and into the hole?

No kid got out of Mrs. Nina Lemmon’s kindergarten class without learning how to tie her shoes. NOT A ONE. I should have known that she wouldn’t let me miss out on this important piece of knowledge, but I wanted to be done with the hard part of learning and on to the celebrating. I wanted my shoe in that hallway for everyone to see. So they would know that I was smart. That I was capable. That I was OK.

One crisp October morning before sunrise, I sat on the living room floor in our trailer and I worked on tying my shoes. It wasn’t happening. I remember my dad’s boots stopping near me (boots–that could be my Plan B if I never figured out the laces!). He squatted down and showed me again. Maybe it was the angle or maybe something clicked or maybe I was just ready, but IT WORKED. I tied one shoe and then I tied the other. I couldn’t wait for Mrs. Tigner to pull up in the driveway and honk the horn on her brown station wagon so that I could get to school and show Mrs. Lemmon that I knew how to tie my shoes!

A couple of weeks ago, G took the kids shoe shopping. Vivi came home with a powder blue pair of sneakers…with laces. Oh boy. That’s when it hit me. My kid is in third grade (gifted, no less!) and still doesn’t know how to tie her shoes. Thanks, Velcro. What would Mrs. Lemmon think?

Every morning, when I had to tie her shoes for her, I added “teach Vivi how to tie her shoes” to the running list of things in my head that I have to do or someone will find out that I’m an incompetent mother. It’s overwhelming, that feeling. That dark gray shadow in my mind that says, “What have you forgotten?”

loose ends

We sat down last night after dinner with no distractions. I took one blue shoe and held it in my lap while Vivi sat across from me with the other.

“OK. Before we ever start, let me just tell you–you’re going to mess this up about 20 times before it makes sense…OK?”

She got it after seven.

After she tied the laces correctly a couple of times, she was ready to quit and go watch Pokemon on Netflix. When I insisted that she sit there on the rug and tie her shoes at least 20 times, she moaned and groaned.

“Hey, Viv. Watch this.” I closed my eyes tight and tied the shoe. She marveled. I took the shoe with loose laces, put it behind my back, then brought it back tied neatly.

“Whoa! You’re a magician!” she laughed and grabbed for the shoe to try it herself.

“No, it’s just that I’ve practiced this since I was in kindergarten. Once you’ve practiced it enough, you won’t even have to think about it. You won’t even be able to remember the time when you couldn’t tie your shoes.”

Ah. When I find myself at loose ends, I have to remember to keep on practicing. Even with mothering, or forgiving myself or breathing through the hard stuff. Eventually, it gets easier. Eventually, I won’t even remember that there was a time when I didn’t know how to do this.

You Saw Me

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crying graffitiOne day, I walked into Carlos’ classroom with him. A little girl I hadn’t seen before was sitting all by herself in the book nook. She wore a pink plaid sundress, white sandals, and a big white ribbon in her hair. She was crying so hard that the bow bounced up and down with each shake of her little body.

The teachers and the rest of the class were going about their business. I’ve seen kids sitting alone like that before at the Calm Table, where they go to get away from the bustle of the classroom when they need to regroup. But this little girl wasn’t just sniveling or glowering–she hiccupped with each little sob.

I’m lucky to have a job that doesn’t mind if I’m 15 minutes late…later, so I sat down next to her on one of those tiny chairs. “Hey, are you OK?” I asked with my hand on her back.

She snurfled out a, “I…want…mommy.”

“Oh, sugar. I bet you do. Well, I’m Carlos’s mommy. Would you like a hug?” She bobbed her dripping little chin and slid over onto my lap.

“Is this your first day?” She nodded. I asked her name and she told me. I patted her back and rocked her a little bit while the rest of the kids thundered around us.

I asked Carlos to come over and say hello and he did. I told her the names of the other kids but she shrank up against me when they got too close. She wasn’t ready for them.

She held a Barbie picture book in her hand so I asked her about it. For a few minutes, we talked about books and what kind of shoes we like and how purple is her favorite color.

When it was time for me to go, she wobbled a bit but held up. I hoped she would be there in the afternoon when I picked up Carlos so I could congratulate her for being brave. But she was already gone by the time I got there.

It took a few more days before we crossed paths again at drop off time. I walked Carlos out to the playground to join his class and a bright shiny girl waved across the distance. I waved back and called her name. She ran up to me and stopped about a foot away. Just beaming.

I said, “Hey! I know you!”

She giggled and said, “You saw me when I was crying!”

We’ve been friends ever since. Her choice of words has stayed with me–“You saw me when I was crying.” She could have said, “You gave me a hug” or “I sat on your lap.” But she experienced that moment as “you saw me.” I was struggling and you saw me.

Isn’t that what we’re all crying out for? To be seen.

Sometimes it’s easy for the mean voice in my head to convince me that I am The Invisible Girl. That I could sit right down in the center of the big spinning world and cry my eyes out, but the world would whirl right past me. It’s not true, but that mean voice is an inveterate liar.

To see someone. To walk up and say, “I see you there.” It’s the simplest of gifts.

your light

The Space Between Things

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Last weekend, the Cool Kids were hanging out in the deep end of my pool. Floating there on foam noodles and drinking wine out of plastic cups with girlfriends–a little hour in heaven. Wise Heather shared the news that her new job was pretty much a done deal. Good for her, but sad for us who were hoping that she would work someplace close enough to meet for lunch.

I asked, “Is the drive going to bother you?” and she dropped a truth bomb: “It’s nice to have 30 minutes in between BAM and BA BOOM to think my own thoughts.” Ain’t that the truth?

She got me to thinking about the space between things, the moment when we’re going from Point A to Point B (and if you’re like me, using that time to anticipate out all possible problems that might arise between Points C – ZZ). I think my days have left me short of breath lately because I’ve shoved more and more work and worry into the space between things.

This little gem floated into my Facebook feed last week: tumblr_n74fyou6W81r0sn0fo1_1280

Well, hell. I haven’t observed Items 1-4 since my kids were born. Trying to, but…damn. I pride myself on answering emails while I’m on the phone and checking Facebook while I’m walking the long way to a meeting so that my Fitbit will approve of me. Multitasking is supposed to be a good thing, right?

Not so much. Not when it’s ALL THE TIME.

Today at 4:55 p.m., while I adjusted user permissions on a site and posted news stories and sent an optimization idea to the developer and questioned the life choices that have led me to use words like “optimization,” I also texted G to see who was picking up Vivi from day camp. Ding! He was already on the way. OK, I could get a feeeeeeew more things done before fetching Carlos.

But I made the mistake of glancing at my desk calendar and seeing BLOGHER in big yellow letters next week. NEXT WEEK? Shit, I need business cards. So I flip over to a website to design and order something fresh and amazing that’s going to be The Ticket To Next….but the logo I want to use isn’t the right dimension and the website warns me that my design will have “possible white space.” No worries. I can fix it with some clever cropping in this other application over here…

Next thing I knew, I looked up and it was 5:25 p.m. and the Mom Guilt kicked in. “Please don’t let my baby be the last one waiting in the room, sitting over in the book corner while the teacher mops the floor.” I grabbed phone off the charger, chugged down the last of my 100 oz of filtered water, slapped the Fitbit to see how many blinky dots I racked up, sighed in disappointment, shoved the stack of bills that I meant to pay on my lunch break back in my purse for another day, I turned to the whiteboard behind my desk and crossed of ONE DAMN THING from the long list, even though I kept the hammer down for the last seven hours, since I got to work after my early morning dentist appointment for a filling.

I turned out the lights and locked up the office, Mom Guilt squeezing my chest until there’s no room for breath. Turned left to take the stairs and walked past the scale that stands in the hall. Checked the Fitbit again. In the stairwell, I held on to the railing because no one would find me there if I slipped and fell. Last one leaving. Then the “You’re going to die alone!” fears stop in to say hello because why not? All my kids will remember is that they were the last ones picked up from daycare and the smell of mop water will trigger depression for the rest of their lives. As I stepped out into the sunlight, I tallied all the phone calls I need to make…that I never seem to have time to do. Like to check on my own parents.

Two minute walk to the car. Just enough time to catalog all the things I meant to achieve between last year’s BlogHer and this year’s. And I forgot to lose fifty pounds. AGAIN.

Got in the car and the gas light came on. I need to find a way tomorrow to drive across town to the place where I can save 50 cents a gallon on gas with my fuel points. That’s like eight bucks. That matters.

It’s a three minute drive to get Carlos. The first thing I see is a note taped on his cubby, and it’s not just a note, it’s a note with a STAPLE in the corner, a multi-page record of his transgressions. He’s been fine for months…now this shit AGAIN in the last month before he starts Pre-K.

pebbles-796943_1280

He beams to see me and gives me a gigantic hug. Four other kids line up to get hugs, because I make time for that. As we make our way to the car, the weight of the note makes me think that I should start the “Good Choice/Bad Choice” speech and break it to Carlos that he’s not going to have screen time tonight, but part of me just wants to have a few minutes of happy with my happy kid while he’s actually happy instead of immediately talking about that time six hours ago when he was angry.

Where is the space between things for a working mother? In music, it’s called a rest. In painting, it’s the negative space. In graphic design, white space. Where is the space between things that gives me room to breathe? That, in its emptiness, gives the heart a place to stand in order to see the life as I’m living it?

Sometimes when I find myself standing in front of the refrigerator, foraging for junk, I realize that what I’m really hungry for is a big gulp of breath. A heaping plate of rest. A space. A pause.

Know what I’m saying? What do you do to maintain the space between things?

IRONIC POST SCRIPT: I looked up the principle of “the space between things” in art. The Japanese have a word for it, and that word is…………..”Ma.” I guess my kids have been yelling at me about theories of Japanese spatial design for all these years.

Mom Haiku

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Pack three lunches at

midnight. Smile to think of them

crunching fresh carrots.

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Pick up this and that

Put it there and here and there

Then do it again.

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Peek in dark bedroom

Pull covers up to his chin

Tuck Hulk in tight too

kitten-488667_1280

A Blue Slip

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Due to my ‘advanced maternal age,’ I got to go to the high-risk doctor for special tests and lots of ultrasounds with his super high tech machine. Like if a regular ultrasound can show you the sex of the baby, Dr. Rosmond’s machine could tell you if the baby was going to have good hair. Serious testing. We used to call Dr. Rosmond “the geriatric uterologist.”

And all that testing meant that we got to find out the sex of the baby a few weeks earlier than most. G couldn’t make it to the visit that would reveal whether Baby #2 was going to be a Carlos or a Lucretia. When I told the ultrasound tech about our dilemma, she told me that she would write the sex on a piece of paper and seal it up for me, so that G and I could open it together.

He called just as I was leaving the doctor’s office. We agreed to meet at my friend Marti’s restaurant next door. I ordered a huge blueberry muffin and took it out onto the patio to wait for G. I remember being nervous as a cat–jangly nerves and swooping stomach. By the time G got there, I felt like an overcooked noodle. We set the envelope on the table and looked at each other.

We had two girls. We knew what to do with girls. We talked about “the girls.” We had lots of girl clothes and girl curtains and girl…everything.

I opened the envelope slowly. Slid out the folded white paper inside. Unfolded the crease.

A blue slip.

G cried. He always cries. We knew right away that we would name our son Carlos after G’s late father. We had already decided on that the first go-round.

I admitted it then and I’ll still confess it now–I felt the least little bit of disappointment when that blue slip fluttered out of the envelope. A boy? What were we going to do with a boy? A boy?? I didn’t know anything about boys (except for the five nephews, of course). A boy seemed so different. How do you raise a child for a life that you have never experienced yourself? I felt like I would be starting all over again with the learning curve. I knew how to mother a girl…now a boy?

My friend, Libby, and I were laughing about this the other day. She remembers me being dumbfounded at the idea of mothering a BOY.

But y’all. This boy? This boy is my whole heart. Big Gay always said, “You will NEVER understand how much your parents love you until you have children of your own.” Damn if she wasn’t right.

As much as I’ve worried over his development the last year or so, he astonishes me every day. I looked down on the carpet where he was playing with puzzle pieces to see this:

My boy knows how to spell.

My boy knows how to spell.

He can spell. And he spelled “MOM.”

At work, we call the form that you fill out for a job change a “blue slip.” Even though it’s been many years since it was an actual form or actually blue. I feel like Carlos gave me my blue slip into a different kind of mothering. Mothering someone who isn’t like me, who won’t live in the same world as me. I know it’s projection–this idea I have that Vivi is more similar to me because she is the same sex. But as a woman who was a girl, mothering a girl seemed like one less degree of separation. Mothering a boy taught me that degrees of separation don’t matter when it comes to the ones we love. With him, I am learning to mother the person-ness of him, not the girlness or the boyness. And that has made me a better mother to Vivi’s person-ness and Victoria’s person-ness.

My son’s differences are few compared to our samenesses. When I’m in the hammock with a book, he climbs in beside me…even if he uses his feet to turn the pages.

c2

Oh, Beths–I Get It Now

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toddler-655541_1280

Tonight, when I was on my knees shoving a plastic knife up into the roller thingy of my carpet steamer in order to extract wet globs of dog hair…I had a moment. A good moment. A laughy kind of moment.

I thought back to a Sunday morning about fourteen years ago. Sun streamed through the French doors of my bedroom. Moxie and Zoe, the dachshunds, lay in a snoozy little pile on the white carpet. The phone rang–it was my friend, Beth.

She asked, “Hey! What are you doing?”

I glanced at the clock. 11:30 a.m. “Oh, a little of this, a little of that. Cleaning up a little.” I was lying like a rug. Beth had a toddler and another one on the way. I frequently lied to her about how busy I wasn’t. I didn’t want to rub it in.

A pause fell between us, a silence on the line before she screeched, “ARE YOU STILL IN THE BED??”

I snorted then confessed. “Yeah, but I’m not even sleeping any more. Just laying here with a book.” I didn’t tell her that I had been reading for three hours. That I was eating fresh cherries and orange juice that I had driven all the way in to Atlanta to get.

“Oh. My. God. It’s been YEARS since I got to do that.”

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Now Beth’s toddler is driving and on the golf team. Tempus fugit and all, y’all.

And me? The one who was lolling around in bed at lunchtime on a Sunday? I’m living the dream. I left the feverish toddler at home with G so I could go to work. Went to therapy on my lunch hour to clean out my head. Picked a logo for the new project at work. Did some moving, did some shaking. Picked up Vivi from school and took her grocery shopping, where we practiced math in the produce department and made up a song about Froot Loops. Two hundred dollars poorer, we drove through Chic-fil-a to pick up dinner. I fed the kids, talked about girl drama with the teenager, patted the sick boy, fed the dog. Got the kids in bed then cleaned blueberry smoothie barf out of the carpet. Then cleaned the steamer with a plastic knife because I should have vacuumed first. Then did two loads of laundry and addressed 25 birthday party invitations. Now it’s 11:39 and I’m sitting down to write this because I start to nut up if I go too many days without writing.

I get it Beth. I swear I do. Thank you for being patient with me back then. It’s been years for me now, too.

Another Sunday morning and a different Beth….One time, about the same thirteen years ago, I needed to call my brother’s house about something. I waited until 9 a.m. because I didn’t want to be rude. My sister-in-law, Beth, answered.

“Hey! It’s Ashley–I hope it’s not too early to call. I didn’t want to wake up the boys.”

She hooted. “OH RIGHT! Please–they’re both in time out and I’ve already had to use Liquid Stitches! What’s up with you?”

THAT is the life I’m living right now. Both Beths–I totally get you.