Mother of the Year

Lately, I have been sifting though some of my old “mom-oir” pieces.  This one sent me into a nostalgic giggle. My son, Matthew, didn’t go through the terrible two’s until he was four.  During that tumultuous year, I learned more about the inability of men and women to communicate effectively than I did from the previous ten years of marriage.  Every conversation was about power and control, but I didn’t realize it until it was over.  I fell for it every time, like a child that is continually surprised to see the Jack in the Box explode from the can after five cranks of the handle.  A perfect example was a cloudy day in March when we went to Safeway for a few groceries…

 Mother of the Year

After circling the block three times in my navy blue mini-van, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Matthew had finally calmed himself. He gazed at the tree-lined street, one pudgy index finger tracing circles on the window as the other twirled a chunk of sweaty blonde hair into a knot.  I exhaled with relief knowing that the dreaded Phase One of Every Car Trip was complete. Weeks earlier I had resigned myself to the reality that every excursion would begin with a wrestling match that would result in my pushing against his rigid little body of steel with all of my might to get him to bend to a point that I could buckle his car seat. Without fail, it would leave us both out of sorts and screaming.

Heading toward the grocery store I put in his favorite tape, the one where his name had been electronically inserted into every song.  Both of our moods lifted as we sang together about Matthew going to the moon on a magic rocket ship, and Matthew sailing the high seas with pirates.

The third song was about to begin when he called my name.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Is stupid a bad word?”

I turned and gave him the exaggerated head nod and wide eyed stern look, “Yes!  Stupid is a terrible word. You should never call someone that.”

“What about shut up?”

“Shut up is awful!  An insult to the person you are talking to.  Never, ever say shut up.”  I saw him pondering my words, his blue eyes shifting left and right as he thought about what I was saying.  It felt so good being able to impart manners and social skills to my little guy.  Mother of the Year, that’s who I was.

“What about jerk?”

My jaw dropped with another dramatic expression of horror as I looked back at him again. “That could be one of the worst words of all time.”

“Hmmm.”

“Where are you getting these words?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’re all bad. They hurt people’s feelings, and  we don’t use them in this family.” I turned off the music for the remainder of the trip so my motherly wisdom could sink in.  Finally, he was listening to me.  I hadn’t connected with him on such a level in days.  We were forming his conscience together.  He would grow to be a fine man. A priest, or the president.

We pulled into the Safeway parking lot and he climbed into the cart without incident, an event so rare it made me grab the handle with sure hands and whistle while I pushed him up and down the aisles. I even took my time for a change, scanning the shelves for new products and the usual staples.

When I rolled the cart down the cereal aisle, I could sense a mood shift.

“Can we get Captain Crunch?”

“You know the doctor said no sugar cereals.”

His hands tightened around the cart’s handle until his knuckles and fingernails turned white.  “I want Captain Crunch.”

“We’re getting Crispix.”

His heels pounded a slow, tribal rhythm against the cart. “I-hate-Crispix.”

“You love Crispix.”

His kicking picked up speed and the sound of the vibrating metal turned heads toward us. Our empty aisle was now crowded with carts. Where did these other shoppers come from?

“I want Captain Crunch!  Captain Crunch! CAPTAIN CRUNCH!”

“WE’RE GETTING CRISPIX.”

“I WAANNT CAPTAINNN CRUUNNCH!”

Like a freeze frame in an action movie, time stood still as I looked up and down the aisle. Staring eyes to the left.  Staring eyes to the right.  Everyone was unabashedly waiting to see how Mother of the Year was going to handle this.

I took a deep breath to regroup, flashed my best fake smile to my growing audience, and dropped my voice to a gravelly whisper, “With that attitude we are not getting Captain Crunch or anything else today, Mister.  We are going home right now.”

Matthew looked me straight in the eye, and at the top of his little lungs he screamed with the utmost confidence, “SHUT UP, YOU STUPID JERK!”

My mouth dropped in unison with all of the other mothers in the aisle.  Shocked that he would string together all of the worst words he knew against me, I pulled his rigid, screaming body from the cart, and carried him over my shoulder, like a writhing sack of potatoes, toward the door.

Humiliated that all of the other mothers saw me as a failure, I gave them a final glance.  Imagine my relief when I saw them clapping with looks of sympathy and understanding as Matthew screamed unintelligible sounds and pounded his fists into my back.

“Go Mom!” were the last two words I heard as I stepped outside, thankful that my cheering section wasn’t coming with me to witness the upcoming wrestling match at the car seat.

A Letter to My Son Upon Graduation

A letter to my son upon his high school graduation. So proud of him!

Dear Matthew,

Love is not easy to put into words, especially a mother’s love, the depth of which is unfathomable.

When I look at you now, tall and strong, I don’t just see an eighteen-year-old man, I see you in all of your life’s stages at once.  I see you as a newborn in my arms in the shadows of midnight, a blur of blonde hair racing down the stairs in Barney pajamas on Christmas morning, the navy shorts and pressed white shirt of a first grader not sure why he has to go to school, the tender realization in your eight-year-old blue eyes that stealing the puck was okay in roller hockey. (Who knew that sharing with others didn’t apply in sports?)

I remember the white pooka beads and Hawaiian shirts that heralded the onset of middle school, basketball and volleyball uniforms, a well-worn back pack and a handful of snacks on trains through Europe,  the royal blue gown of an 8th grade graduate, the proud captain of your high school volleyball team, and now, a man.

As much as a mother raises her son, so does a son raise his mother.  You have taught me many things as I have watched you grow.  From you I have learned the power of a tender heart as I have witnessed your quiet kindness to others all of your life. (Though there was that rough patch when you were three and almost asked to leave Debbie’s Daycare when you knocked over the boy who kept stealing your matchbox cars )  Your teachers throughout grade school always remarked about your concern for the feelings of other children. You attract friends wherever you go, and you are loyal to them.

You taught me how to find joy in the moment. You have the gift of turning the mundane into amusement.  You see subtext and comic irony in the world around you. Your wry humor is a constant source of delight that lightens our days.  It reminds us to relax and not take everything so seriously. I will miss this tremendously when you go to college. Who will alert me to the new, must see, You tube videos?

And you taught me about courage.  Our family life has been marked by transition, and you have endured many relocations from a young age.  In your 18 years you have had seven homes and attended five schools.  Change has been constant.  Anyone who has moved knows that it is never without trial.   You have navigated these changes with elegance, courage, acceptance, and again humor, when all else failed.  It has been remarkable to watch.  You are stronger than you know.

You have a natural tenacity and ability to accept life as it unfolds.  This is a skill that will serve you well in the years to come, because life is about transformation, a decades long process of becoming. There are chapters, but no destinations. And if you are able to visualize each stage as having a beginning, middle, and end  it will be easier to recognize God’s plan for you as He chooses to reveal it.  His plan is rarely the same one that we envision for ourselves, so, in the years to come, as you are surprised or sidelined unexpectedly or sent in directions unanticipated, remember that it is unfolding as it should be.  That’s when you will appreciate your already sharpened abilities to navigate change.

Each chapter has a specific lesson that God, in His all knowing wisdom, sees that you must learn. Painful chapters draw us near to Him, and joyful chapters illuminate the glory and wonder of our world. Both are important.

Matt, I love you. You are the son that every mother dreams of having. I could not be more thankful for you and proud of the man you have become.  Your character and integrity are important to you.  You are finding your voice and moving forward in positions of leadership.  God will rely on you to use that leadership to model the qualities of a good, honest and loving man.  You have been blessed with height and people will have to look up to you during your lifetime, the important thing is to make them want to.

A faith journey is a daily one.  It is vital to see our moral choices, both grave and not, as turning points.  Your choices will lead you closer to God or further from Him.  Lead you down a path toward a peaceful heart or a troubled one.  No choice is made in secret as God is always with you.  Choose wisely and you will live without regret, because real and lasting happiness has nothing to do with material possessions, it is a result of living your values, even when it is difficult. Even when choosing to stand for what is right means that you will lose friends or perhaps a job/position.

This gift of clear sightedness, to recognize the path that supports your values is the prayer that I will pray for you every day as you move forward into the world. Sometimes it is not so easy to discern.  We live in a world that rewards bad behavior in order to boost media ratings. A world that teaches athletes and leaders that there is some private permission to behave immorally because of their position. The temptations that come with success are real. The fallout of those lifestyles ruin families and deeply scar those closest to them. The most powerful leaders, the ones who affect real change, are the ones who choose to lead their families in the ways of love that strengthen the home and thus the community.

Senior year is a year of letting go, when motherhood becomes a complicated mixture of pushing you forward and holding you back. Every day I cry a few tears as I get used to the idea of your moving on from our home, but at the same time, I am so excited for you to embrace this next phase of life.  Have fun, work hard, and enjoy every single day.

I am in your corner, your loudest cheerleader, and proudest Mother at Brophy College Prep  ~ Love, Mom

(Posted with permission!)

The Woman with All the Answers

In honor of Mother’s Day.  A gentle reminder to spend time with the people you love~

The Woman with All the Answers

As a child, I loved going to the movies and live theater with my mother.  Though neither happened often, the experiences captivated me.  The Sound of Music became an obsession, Fiddler on the Roof almost did me in. I knew that ‘Sunrise, Sunset‘ would be sung at my wedding the very first time I heard it.

I also learned other important things that have come in handy in life. Such as: there is nothing like a dame, a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, Gary, Indiana is the place where I belong, the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, Oklahoma is where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, when you’re Jet, you’re a Jet all the way, and the Phantom composes the music of the night.

I shock my family, sometimes, when I belt out a few stanzas from show tunes we might inadvertently hear on on the radio as we are searching for something more hip.  “How do you know that song?” Matt would implore as I channeled my inner Carol Channing.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped going to live theater, other than school plays.  I stopped seeking the magic of performance for no good reason other than it cost money, and I was too lazy to plan ahead. I stopped spending art filled afternoons with my mother because I was busy with important things like shopping at Walmart and Home Depot.

Yet, any time I would fill out some silly questionnaire or worksheet that would ask for my hobbies and likes, I would always include theater.  And every time I checked that box, I would smirk to myself, ‘Big Fat Liar! You used to, but who are you now?’

When the theaters in town sent out their pre-season info this time, I made a conscious decision to put this experience back on my priority list. Why do we do that? Why do we stop doing the things we loved to do when we were growing up? I met my mother for coffee and we made an afternoon of it, poring over the glossy brochures deciding which performances we’d choose.  We decided to be sophisticated and choose three dramas we had never of, wrote out checks on the spot, and sent them in before we could come up with reasons why it was an unnecessary extravagance.

We met on a Sunday at the Phoenix Art Museum where my mother had been a docent for many years and dined in their café.  An artful, fitting start  to our year of theater.  Afterwards we followed our map-quested directions further downtown to the Herberger Theater, a lovely venue in downtown Phoenix. We were seeing The Woman with All the Answers, a one woman play about Ann Landers. Okay, it wasn’t exactly Phantom of the Opera, but it was a start.

Once settled into our seats we looked around. The place was packed.

“I’m the only one younger than seventy,” I whispered.

“More proof,” she began with a knowing nod, “that older people know how to enjoy life on a Sunday afternoon.”

I had a flashback of the two of us, thirty years earlier, side by side on plush red seats in a theater on Broadway, my patent leather shoes barely scraping the floor.

“I feel like such a lady.  Don’t you?” she said as she smoothed her skirt and patted her hair into place.  Her eyes were gleaming. I did feel like a lady, dressed in my Sunday best, hands folded, waiting for the curtain to rise once more and take me on a journey.  I loved this feeling of doing something with my day other than chores and ‘getting ready’ for the week. Getting ready for what? Being busy? How many Sundays had I passed up the opportunity to feel like a lady? How many Sundays had passed in my life without taking advantage of quality time with my beautiful mother?

Suddenly, the lights dimmed and onto the stage waltzed Nancy Dussault, an award winning actress of stage, film and TV, looking every bit like the photo of Ann Landers that graced the cover of the brochure.

We were transported to her living room, June 30, 1975 as she was trying to pen her infamous column about the break-up of her thirty-six year marriage to her beloved husband, Julius.  Because she was utterly heartbroken she found all sorts of other topics to talk about rather than writing the column.  And through her humor and the reading of letters and conversation with the audience, we learned about Ann Landers, the woman.  Eppie Lederer, the sister of Pauline Lederer, the double-crossing identical twin who went on to become her adversary, Dear Abby.  A simple, yet complicated human story that reminded me that all of our lives hold opportunities for greatness and none of us escape sorrow.

We learned of her rise to fame, how she won a contest to take over the column after the death of the original Ann Landers, and became a trusted advisor to the public for many decades. But though her life was full and exciting, it also had its share of pain and betrayal. Though her words held great power in society at the time, she was powerless in situations that deeply plagued her.

There was one particularly moving scene in which she recalled speaking with President Johnson, personally begging him to end the Vietnam War.  To drive her point home, she traveled to the war torn country for three weeks, visiting the bedsides of wounded soldiers, a few thousand by the end of her stay.  She recalled the moments sitting by those bedsides, holding the hand of one and touching the forehead of another, asking about their homes, listening to their stories. Her mission was a powerful one, to stand in for the mother they desperately needed.

This was the moment in which I remembered why I loved the theater when I was young. It connected me to a life bigger than my own, broadened my understanding of the human experience, made me a better person. In the glow of the stage lights I could see tears glistening on the cheeks of many, cloth handkerchiefs lifted to eyes and noses; a powerful silence filled with a grief so real I could reach out and touch it. Like the whole place was afraid to exhale, afraid to unleash long buried terror.   This audience bore those memories in a deeply personal place, some of whom may have been in Vietnam themselves.

Finally Ann finished her sad letter to her fans, humbly admitting even she, the lady with all the answers, after all of her years of preaching against divorce, could not hold her own marriage together.  She asked, “How did it happen that something so good didn’t last forever?”  I could see a thousand heads nodding with her in the darkness. Acknowledging that good things in our lives do end, and it hurts.  Living proof that memories do not stand all alone in the moonlight.

When the curtain came down, I did not want to move. I wanted that feeling of human connection to last. I wanted to think about the reasons why we let things that are important to us slip away.  Why is it always a shock when the very things we stop paying attention to end?

“Maybe we should sign up for a few more of these,” I said as we searched for our purses and waited for the majority of people to file out.

“I was thinking the same thing,” my mother said as she buttoned her jacket and adjusted her grey silk scarf.  “That was wonderful.  I didn’t want it to be over.”

“Me, neither.”
“Let’s make sure that these Sunday outings together continue.”

“Well, you’ve already convinced me that older people know how to have more fun on the weekend,” I began as I looped my arm through hers and walked slowly out of the theater.

This Finishing the Last Piece Thing

Most mornings I have coffee for breakfast, but today I felt like cereal so I opened the kitchen cupboard and saw three boxes of it, shoulder to shoulder like soldiers in the war against hunger.

 

I grabbed the box of Frosted Mini Wheats and gave it shake.  Urrgh, empty.  I peered inside to see three lonely bite sized morsels in a sea of crumbs.  Not one to be wasteful, I poured it into a bowl and finished them off.

 

Next, I grabbed the box of Honey Graham O’s and gave that box a shake.  Urrgh, empty. I pulled out the inner bag and held it up.  More than a handful, I decided, so I poured them into my bowl and splashed on some milk.  As I crunched away, I eyed the box of Total Raisin Bran now standing vulnerable and alone.  I didn’t have to shake that box to know what I was going to find next.

 

Fifteen bran flakes and four raisins later, I was both full and teary eyed.  My adventures in fiber, sweetness and crunch did nothing but remind me that my days of polishing off the last of the cereal were numbered. One year from now the house will be quiet and the cereal boxes full. I am thinking of switching to eggs.

 

It starts when they are babies, this finishing the last piece thing that mothers do.  It becomes one of our jobs.  We eat the crusts of the grilled cheese sandwiches, the last bite of ice cream melting in the dish, and the pieces of steak they just learned to cut for themselves.  We clean up the last of the toys before nap time, read the last few sentences of the storybook, and sneak in the last few math problems of homework so they can get their weary bodies to bed on time.  Even now, as I insist that he learn to do his own laundry before life in a dorm, I find myself pulling his clothes from the dryer and folding them. Finishing the task for him.

 

It’s a sacred dance. The child starts and the mother completes, the startings and endings woven in layers so complex that I barely notice anymore the fine line where his starting ends and my endings start.

 

But I am painfully aware of this one.  The chapter that started eighteen years ago is ending.  I still have ten months, though, and I will chew those slowly and cherish the adventures in laughter and sweetness and crunch, because this last year is an important one.  The dance changes after this, and I am not looking forward to learning the new steps.