Momalom - Page 3

Jen writes

April 25, 2012

Pictures (within a day)

It is morning. My son just came downstairs and is sitting one room away, on the couch with his dad. I’m in bed. Computer on lap. The birds that woke me an hour ago aren’t singing anymore. I can hear the sports news from the TV in the other room. The recap of last night’s Celtics game, which I managed to stay up too late to watch. (They won.) (I’m tired.)

Can you picture this life? My life? This small scene, where I haven’t even introduced all of the characters yet? (Two daughters, upstairs asleep. A sister an hour away in Connecticut. A brother a day-and-a-half drive away in Colorado. A mother, this morning waking up in a hotel room in the Adirondacks, a getaway to celebrate her birthday.) Where I haven’t even told you about the oversized sweatshirt I threw on over my PJ T-shirt because it’s COLD this morning? Or the white, wrinkled duvet cover that I have pulled up almost to my chin. (Very cold!)

Oh, now I hear the “beep beep” of Road Runner. (Or maybe it’s “mee-meep?”) Which brings me back to Colorado and the road trip to get there and my brother, who used to watch these cartoons 30 years ago. He, too, was the first child to get up in the house. Is there something about boys? (Sarah, help me out here.) And how is it that the sound of a cartoon coming from a TV a few feet away can bring my mind three decades back, where I see my brother sitting on the floor of our living room in Oneonta, hunched over a cereal bowl, slurping Cheerios and giggling like Woody Woodpecker himself?

This isn’t what I pictured writing today. But now it’s down to the wire. Those daughters will be awake soon. Sweetie will bring me my coffee. (Picture this: He will walk slowly into the room, my favorite coffee mug in hand. I will watch him navigate the inevitable laundry basket at the foot of the bed, the piles of books on the floor beside me. I will see the steam from the mug. He will walk around to my side of the bed and say, “Careful. It’s full.” He will grin. Yes, grin. Our eyes will meet. I will thank him. The coffee will be hot. And perfect. I will set it beside me on the coaster on the bookshelf that serves as a bedside table of sorts, too. I will read or write or just sit in bed, smelling that coffee until I get up in just a few minutes.)

The day will start in full. It is my day to make lunches, take the kids to school. I have potato leek soup to put in the Crock-Pot, bread to set out to rise. I have work to check in with and, no doubt, laundry that I should do. I have a 3-year-old to spend time with. Puzzles, maybe. Or Play-Doh. Later I will pick up the kids, let them stay at the school playground a bit to run off some energy. I will take my son to his drum lesson, and while he’s with his teacher I will take a walk around what turns out the neighborhood we lived in for a short time when he was a baby. We will run a quick errand after his lesson–a birthday present to purchase for a friend, an ingredient needed for dinner. It doesn’t matter. My son just likes to extend our time together. He never wants to go straight home after his drum lesson, and so I know to plan on a quick errand. We will end up at home, though, where we will eat dinner. The bread out of the oven, the soup turned down to low.

As I sit in bed before the day has begun in full, loud force, I can imagine the big picture in my mind but I cannot know the details until they occur. Maybe we will be out of cream, and the coffee will be milky today. Maybe there will be an argument over who knocked over the Lego supermarket, built two days ago by my daughters. Maybe there will be a note sent home from school about a field trip, or a notice from the library that a requested book is in. (Flat Stanley. We have been waiting for you for a LONG time!)

Surely there will be laughter (along with the Lego quarrel). And lots of noise. And smiles. And children competing with each other for my attention and standing in my way in the kitchen while I’m trying to fix a meal or get a snack or do the dishes.

Today is a day. Still new right now. I didn’t intend to paint you a word picture of it as I imagine it to be. And it certainly might turn out to be a different kind of day, just as this is a much different Five for Five “pictures” post than I imagined myself writing. There might be surprises. (There are always surprises.) But these are the words, and this is what came in the few minutes I left for myself to write. This will have to do. Now it’s time to get on with Wednesday.

(Oh, sitting here, having written that paragraph about coffee? I just reached for it beside me! It’s earlier than usual, though. The coffee has yet to be made. Ah, the power of imagination.)

____________________________________

Share your own pictures. We want to see (read) them!

(And if you need a reminder, here are the topics for the rest of the week.)

Enter the link to your post below.

And please do visit as many other blogs as you can. Comment. Join in the conversation.

80 comments

Read More in home, Jen Writes, three kids

Sarah writes

April 24, 2012

Words

Today I’m joining my dear friend Heather of the EO, for a little Just Write. It’s the freewrite, people; get your flow on.

Words. They change our lives. In every way. Their sound. Their meaning.

We introduce them every day to our children. Starting from the day they were born and ending…when? Perhaps never. We flood them with words, and expect them to pick up the pieces and talk to us like they know what they’re saying. Talk so we can understand them. Talk so they become a part of our world.

I took summertime walks to the soccer fields when I was a teenager. A good book, a dictionary, a journal, and a selection of pretty-colored, inky pens. There were one or two big, beautiful trees on the edge of the fields. I’d lean back into the shade and open myself up to the words. The fields were empty in July and August. No practices, no games, no sweat. Just a serene landscape of green, and the perfect spot to catch a breeze.

I played with words then. I read the dictionary and scribbled in the margins. I kept lists of favorite words on the back page of every journal I owned. I picked the vibrant ones–either in sound or in meaning–and plotted them on a page, weaving meaning and story between them. Letters and poetry, poetry and letters. I have a trunk full of them in the attic above me.

Over the years time evaporated; I couldn’t lean back into word play anymore. There were papers to write and living to do. I started to feel silly just letting the words float through me and onto the page, with no purpose or poise.

Then there were babies to raise and my words pointed to them. Speaking and teaching took over. My brain started to get very full. SO FULL. Spilling over full. The kids and the maturity and the Real Life stuff took over. Oh My! (How do we handle it all? I’m just not so sure.)

Do you have all these ideas? Because I have all these ideas. Things to say and do and write. Words flying through my head at all times of the day. I could carry a stack of index cards in my back pocket, or ask Siri to transcribe my thoughts onto my iPhone. I could grab the nearest napkin or receipt and jot them down just to get them out. But I don’t. I run and hide from the words in my brain. Stop, I scream, Just Stop! Give me some peace. A bit of silence.

When I try to write them out and make sense of them all, it seems they just come out scrambled. The things I thought were pounding at the doors of my brain, ready to burst right out of my heart, well…I open the doors and they stumble forth, kind of wandering from side to side all drunken-like. They don’t know how to play well together anymore, they don’t know where to land.

Momma says “Monkey Brain.” Yeah, that’s it, I suppose. Something about running, running all the time, even if my legs are sitting still and my Asics are parked by the back door. Is this what it’s like to be human? To be a woman? A mother? Or is it in my DNA? In my personality?

Answers don’t matter. What does is that I recognize that sometimes, just sometimes, I get it right. I listen, really listen, to what my kids are saying and I do take a quick moment to jot it down. When I find it later, all balled up in the corner of my pocket, I smile as I read and remember. Oh! how beautiful they are and how cute that day was and how much they are already starting to learn: from books and life and me.

Even if my thoughts don’t make sense, and the words I write for me don’t come together as easily as I’d like,, it’s nice to know that in between the discipline and the lessons and the pleading and the threatening and the _____ and the _____ and the _____, they are cobbling together some bit of greater meaning to their lives. And you can’t do that without words.

Ethan (4): You’re not the boss of me!
Max (5): Yes.
E: No. Jamis (9) is the boss.
M: No. Mommy is the boss.
E: No!
M: Yes. Mommy and Daddy are the boss.
E: No!
M: Actually, God is the boss.
E: No. Nobody is the boss.
M: Yes, Ethan, God is the boss.

I have some more words for y’all. And they are “HAPPY BIRTHDAY.”

Please wish my most beautiful Mama, Momalomsmom, a Very Happy Birthday! You are a light in my life, GG.

___________

Tell us about Words. We’re listening!

(And if you need a reminder, here are the topics for the rest of the week.)

Enter the link to your post below. Then head on over to The Extraordinary Ordinary. Read Heather’s words and link up with Just Write!

116 comments

Change

Welcome to Five for Five — Day One!

Yesterday I learned of some very unmannerly behavior my 9-year-old exhibited while at a friend’s house. It was embarrassing. And then my nearly 4-year-old slapped me in the face because he didn’t want to take a nap. It made me blood-boiling mad. A regular, old day here in Sarah’s world. Nothing special. Just the type of challenges you’d expect out of parenthood.

It may have been a typical scene round these parts, but it doesn’t take too much to tip me into despair these days. The kind of despair that puts me out on the pavement in a steady rain, running fast and hard for 7 miles because I just need to get away from it all.

Imagine the sound of the cars whooshing by in the rain, the sound of their tires as they approach and push the water toward me. Imagine the sound of my measured breathing, in a rhythm all its own. And the sound of my wet feet slapping the sidewalk, my heels and toes rolling into squishy socks and soles. It was exactly what I needed to do, when I needed to do it–a rare triumph.

Now listen to my thoughts, my staccato thoughts:

I want to change. I need to change. This family needs change. I’m the one who will make it happen. I’m the only one. It’s too much pressure. I can’t handle it. I have to handle it. I wish we could all start over. That I could start the family over. Start out with these new lessons I’ve learned. Implement these new changes from day One. Forget it, we can’t do that. There’s no going back. There’s only going forward.

There’s so much to change. Too much. It will be so hard.

Be kind to yourself, Sarah. You have made changes. You’ve made so many changes. Last year was the Year of Great Change. You found a faith and trust and devotion you’ve never before understood. You must be gentle and recognize your change. Allow yourself to feel each small success. But also know you cannot do it all at once. I know you want to, but you cannot. You must learn to accept that a little at a time is enough. That you are still moving forward. You will not ever be perfect–and certainly not in one day–no matter the changes that you make.

When I got to my front door I shook out the rain that had pooled by my elbows and stumbled in the door. There they were, the four of them. My family. Two boys watching Hugo, one Dad on a business call, one boy who’d given into that nap after all.

A hot shower drowned out the remains of my energy. I curled into bed and drifted into a fitful sleep.

These kinds of days and those kinds of thoughts are almost too much for me. And yet, I have them often. I get overwhelmed easily. I shut down a lot. And I get stuck looking at all that I’m not, all the wrongs in our family, all the work that it will take to make it different, make it a picture I feel some peace about. Not perfection, just some peace.

A parenting book I’ve recently read teaches that we ought to focus on the positive opposite in order to stimulate change. I try so very hard to look for the good stuff, the stuff I don’t want to change for anything in the world, the stuff that makes me Me. I can see it. It’s there. It’s there more often than I give it credit for.

And it’s in my boys, too. The ones who spit and scream and fight and tease and cry because life is unfair and they don’t get their way and because they are who they are. The good stuff is there even when it can’t be seen. I just have to remember it in the ugly moments. And I have to remember that if I focus on the good there will be more good.

____________________________________

I’m so happy that you’re here with me today, readers. I’ve been in flux for well over a year. I’m just coming out of my haze, and it’s obvious I don’t have it all figured out. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly aware I never will figure it all out, but I’m hopeful to get a firmer grip on where I want to go, who I want to be and what sort of life I want to breathe into the soul of this family. It’s a journey. A big, bumpy journey. And while I’ve been a person accustomed to change for most of my life–a girl who always managed to land on her feet–I’m still a bit thrown that the changing never stops. We just have more control over what and where and how the change happens as we age. I remind myself that it’s not a burden, no. It’s a gift that we are here to live through these changes. It’s a blessing to have the opportunity to become a better version of ourselves every day.

Tell us about Change. We’re listening!

(And if you need a reminder, here are the topics for the rest of the week.)

Enter the link to your post below.

99 comments

Read More in mind/body, parenthood, Sarah Writes

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →