Why I Stink At Mother's Day (and Father's Day and birthdays)

Today is Mother's Day and it is not a day I love.

I am a happy mother of four.  I have the best kids in the world.  I love them more than chocolate.  It's not the mothering part that messes w/ me.  It's the expectations.

Sunday!  SUNDAY!  Sunday!  Make sure you have flowers or some jewelry or reservations at some restaurant!  Barring all that, make sure you have at least stood in a crowded grocery store aisle w/ a bunch of other strangers selecting, reading and replacing card after card after card attempting to summarize in curly writing and a shimmery image of flowers OR comic sans and some cartoonish race-neutral scene of animals, the relationship between your mother and you.  If you miss it, you're toast b/c you only have TWO DAYS EVERY YEAR to tell your mom that you appreciate what she is in your life.  (The other being her birthday.)

That is the pressure I feel.  I stink at doing that.  I cannot just go buy another sun catcher or wind chime.  My mother doesn't need another statuette and neither do I.  No more clutter.  Too many people are allergic to perfume so it feels dangerous to wear it or to give it.

As little kids, we just made cards at school out of construction paper.  Now the poor teachers have to come up w/ gift-worthy crafts.  I'm not gonna lie: I love the frame my son brought home for me.  The decoupaged tissue paper makes it look like sea glass and the sentiment he wrote inside is 100% from his 11 yr. old heart.  (I know b/c I *know* his heart.)  I just wonder if the teachers have enough to worry about w/ out having to be responsible for 30 little potted plants that have to go into 30 little paper lunch sacks still looking good and alive by the Friday before Mother's Day.  Please.  I'm okay w/ you handling teaching my kid how to do long division.  That's what my husband pays you for.  Also, I have a black thumb and I kill every plant that enters my home and then I feel guilty.  Really.  I've already done it twice this spring.  It's gotten to the point where I feel panic when one of my children arrives home w/ a plant in a foggy little bag.  I wonder if the plant feels it too.

What's the day really supposed to entail anyway?  Am I supposed to sleep in and feel good if I hear my husband out in the living room breaking up arguments and answering 143 crazy questions?  It only feels like peace for a little while and then it begins to feel like loneliness and like I'm shirking my responsibilities.  There are lots of comics and funny articles out there saying that moms want breakfast in bed and then someone else to clean it up -- but what if the family doesn't deliver?  Then is it resentment for not getting breakfast in bed?  Resentment for having to clean up the kitchen?  Resentment toward my husband for not "orchestrating" all that?  

My husband is sort of a "wary" cook.  He doesn't like to attempt recipes unless he's sure he can master them.  So for me, that either means cooking or having tacos or takeout for the big day.  Again, am I supposed to distance myself from my family as they struggle to achieve something in what is, essentially, "my department"?  My husband doesn't expect me to mow the lawn, coach the team, fix the car and go be a metrologist on Father's Day.  Why would I expect him to do all the things I do as a mom?  Do I want Mother's Day for him to be wrought w/ anxiety and expectations?  No, see, that's what I'm trying to avoid.

My brother said to me once that he thought the perfect day for a mom would be a day w/ out her kids.  I told him that I love my kids to pieces.  I don't want to be separated from them.  They are my joy.  They're also a lot of work.  I said the perfect day would be getting to be a mom w/ out having to do the work but the truth is, it doesn't work that way.  When you say, 'yes' to mothering, you say 'yes' to everything that goes w/ it.  You get those legendary stinky diapers.  You get the whining.  You get sleepless nights filled w/ a vomiting kid.  You get to clean up the vomit when they miss the bucket.  You get TOILET TRAINING!  This is not the AKC where you own something beautiful but don't do the handling.  If someone else is doing that stuff, they are parenting your child and they deserve credit for parenting.

Now that I have 13+ years of parenting under my belt (which only means I have 13+ years of experience and DOES NOT make me an expert by any means), I have some idea of what my mom had to endure and to put it bluntly, I don't feel like a card or a bunch of cut flowers is good enough.  For ME, that sort of feels like a cop out.  As if I could ever buy or give something that adequately expresses gratitude for what I put her through.  The bigger problem w/ that is that instead of settling for mediocre, I freeze and do nothing.  I do this at birthdays too.  I don't know what to do so I do nothing.

When I think back to the days and gifts that have touched my heart, they weren't necessarily on a special day.  In fact, my birthday falls two days into rifle season in our state and so has gone largely unnoticed most years b/c my husband is at deer camp and it's just me at home w/ the kids who have often been too little to put on some big celebration.  Additionally, my practical side has screamed, "Don't spend money on something I don't need!" which makes the gift thing, admittedly, difficult for others.  Things w/ my family get busy and frantic and I mean nothing dramatic when I say that cards and even gifts have arrived and I've puzzled at the reason until I've noticed that, indeed, I have lived another year and someone deemed me worthy of their remembrance.  (Imagine someone handing you a cute little package w/ an expectant smile on their face and you thinking, "Huh.  I wonder what this is for?" and your face actually reflecting that sentiment b/c you are, in fact, clueless.  You wrack your brain trying to figure out the date and were you supposed to get THEM something too and then it dawns on you that this person remembered your birthday even if you, yourself DIDN'T!  They took time and effort and money and perhaps even craftiness and creativity and remembered you and you were just going your merry way wondering if you had enough bread to make school lunches tomorrow.  Then you get to smile and try to express that they've made you feel special, strangely enough on a day that's become so lackluster that it doesn't even pop up on your emotional calendar.)  So if you forgot my birthday, don't worry about it b/c I forgot it too.

It sort of works both ways.  Do you know that if I know it, your birthday is probably on my calendar?  I see it.  I notice it on that day.  I think of you all day long.  I'm serious.  I pray for you.  I wonder what you're doing.  I will most likely forget to call you or even post anything on your facebook page but you have been dancing through my mind all day long.  Really.  Between making the coffee, picking up the kids, starting dinner and making the bed, I've been thinking of you.  I just stink at letting you know.  

These special days just get in my way.  If I see something online that I think would make you smile, I want to send you the link and not wait for a special day.  I want to have ice cream or coffee w/ you on a random Tuesday.  Do I have to wait for a day w/ a title?  As for Mother's Day, even if I bought my mother a mansion in God's Country complete w/ servants and birds trained to sing her favorite songs, I could never repay her for the hell I provided while I was her ward.  Yay for guilt?  My family isn't going to become psychic and give me a work-free Mother's Day (and let's face it, I can't compete w/ deer camp) but I refuse to live my remaining Mother's Days and birthdays holding a grudge b/c my life isn't like something in a fairy tale.  I don't need more baggage, emotional or otherwise.   How 'bout I just love you every day?

Today, I will be happy if my kids play outdoors.  We'll probably have leftovers and whatever I cook.  I'm going to fold laundry and help my son w/ his state report.  I need to look at the summer dance schedule and see what day my daughter will be in classes.  It's not like the world stops spinning.

Yeah.  That's why Mother's Day and birthdays are hard for me.  

He Is the Light of the World - Christmas 2013

Christmastime is traditionally full of joy and warmth and light.  I foolishly thought this one might not be.

It began in the early hours of Sunday, three days before Christmas.  We were awakened by a loud crash.  The kind that makes you think a tree must have fallen on your house.  Tes came into our room and said the power was out.  Jason looked out the window and saw some fallen branches.  We went back to sleep.  These things never last.

The house began to cool down.  As it got lighter outdoors, we saw just how much ice there was and how many branches had fallen.  (A tree had not fallen ON our house but many limbs had bounced off our roof and were the cause of the crash we’d heard earlier.)  The Christmas tree lights were out and the house was silent – which was eerie.  We are a plugged in family.  Nearly everything in our home is electric so we had no news of what was going on.  We turned on our battery powered police scanner and the gravity of the situation started to hit home.  Almost the entire city was without power.  Traffic lights and street lights were out.  Police and emergency workers were doing damage control.  Power lines were down everywhere.  Hundreds of them.  We heard the names of streets on which our friends lived, some twenty miles out of town.  Several times we heard the words, “arcing and sparking” and “add it to the list” when yet another street or intersection was mentioned to have a downed power line.  Nursing homes were evacuating because the residents needed power for heat and medical equipment.  I began to worry just a little.  We were scheduled to light the four candles on the Advent wreath that morning at Mass.  I was afraid to walk out my front door.

So.  No cooking (electric range, electric microwave oven).  No television, internet or mobile phone for me (of course, mine hadn't charged all night because of the power outage) and no wi-fi for Tes’ iPod.  Fortunately, Jason’s old-school phone was still charged up.  I told the kids to eat whatever they wanted out of the fridge because eating it up is better than having it sit and spoil.  The pantry was also fair game so Paul attacked the saltines, a favorite of his.  I broke out the chocolate chips I’d been saving for Christmas baking.  We seriously had saltines and chocolate chips for lunch.  We set the gallon of milk out on the deck.

Jason went outdoors to clear branches and I took my camera to capture some memories.  I knew this was one of the things that Caleb wouldn't remember in five years.  I wanted photographic evidence of what we’d survived.  I moved around photographing the piles of icy branches and every now and then I'd hear a crack and a crash from a distance away.  Trees and branches were still falling.  Jason told me to stay out from under the bigger trees.  The neighbor was on his porch, making breakfast on a camp stove.  Everything was sparkling with ice and the smell of bacon and eggs was in the air.  It was an odd contrast.  The Dog-Walking Man was nowhere to be seen.

Now in no way do I enjoy disaster but I will confess that it’s times like these that my husband really shines.  He’s smart.  He knows how things work and he knows the steps to take to keep us safe and cared for.  He reminded us that we had hot water since the water heater is heated by gas and our gas supply was fine.  He turned the water heater thermostat up and he and I had showers.  We left the door open so some of the steamy air would warm the house.  The family commenced snuggling.  Jason did crosswords.  The kids all put on layers of clothes.  Paul did word searches.  We watched the numbers drop on our digital thermostat.  Sixty-four degrees.  Not the end of the world.  Jason took the giant water jug we use for drinking water when we go camping and filled it with hot water.  He placed it in the middle of the living room and said, “There.  Put your hands on that.”  It worked like a giant hot water bottle.  The kids laughed, put their stocking feet on it and the little boys hugged it.  We stayed in.  Nobody complained.

Grammy called.  They didn't have power but they had the wood stove going and their house was plenty warm.  She was boiling eggs and potatoes on the wood stove and our Christmas Eve dinner was to include potato salad and brisket that Grampy was smoking in his new smoker.  Alas, no Christmas cookies even though her fridge was full of four kinds of dough, ready to go.

Dinner time came and we decided to venture out.  After picnicking all day, we needed some hot food in our bellies.  We drove down dim streets, swerving to avoid branches in the road, looking for anyplace that had lights on.  Even McDonald’s was dark.  As we neared the edge of town, we found Steak ‘n Shake.  It was lit and packed.  Not good news for a family of six.  The service was terrible but I kind of expected that considering the number of customers in the restaurant.  Our table was overlooked twice as smaller families that came in after us were served.  I finally caught the eye of a young waitress who rushed right over surprised that we’d been ignored.  She turned out to be a gem.  She and Tes got talking about fangirling and Tumblr and their favorite shows.  Before we left, Tes shared her Tumblr address and the waitress promised to follow her.  It made Tes’ day.

It was still early and we needed a few groceries.  I also had to finish some Christmas shopping.  Target run!  We split up, girls and boys, with Jason in charge of groceries and me in charge of Christmas necessities.  It took a few hours but it was warm and it killed time.  It was a bit of a game as Tesia and I filled our cart w/ Christmas while trying to avoid the boys elsewhere in the store.  A couple of times we would spot them and then have to double back and hide for a minute until we felt safe moving on.  By the time we finished, everybody was tired enough that we were ready to go back to what we expected might be a cold, dark house just so we could go to bed.  

The drive home was a little scary.  We'd pass some stores and homes that were alive with power and then another street over, everything would be suddenly dark.  What would be waiting for us at home?  We drove through the brightly lit intersection near our home and then – utter darkness.  No drama here.  It was really dark.  The only light in the streets was from the headlights of cars.  When we pulled into the driveway, Jason asked if I had some candles in the house.  This is the part of the story that brought me a silly little spark of joy…  Last year, while shopping at Target (of course) I found a lovely scented candle called “White Sand Oasis”.  It was a little pricey but I really loved the scent and so I bought one of the large jar candles knowing that every time I placed it on my candle warmer, the scent would fill the house and it would be a little piece of *happy* in my day.  Toward the end of the season, the same candle went on clearance!  I bought another large jar candle and four smaller ones at half price and stashed them away, a little treat for me to pull out on days when I needed a pick-me-up.  Now Jason was asking me if I had candles.  I did.  Lots of little White Sand Oasis candles!  We lit them in the house and that wonderful scent was everywhere.  It was freezing but we had steakburgers in our tummies, milk on the deck, Christmas in the trunk of my SUV and one of my favorite scents floating through the house courtesy of the little glowing candles in each room.  It wasn't so bad.

Jason pulled out the camping sleeping bags and Erick and Paul got cozied up in their room.  Tes and Caleb took the couch in the living room and got bundled up in another sleeping bag and four blankets.  We settled in for the night.

In the morning, nothing had changed except that the house was colder.  It felt like mornings at the lake in the spring and fall except that there was nothing hot to drink.  I gulped down a bottle of Starbucks frappuccino – a little fuel for Mommy.  I started to unpack the dry goods Jason had purchased and had a little laugh at some of the “junk” I wouldn't normally buy:  sandwich cookies, graham crackers, Cheez-its, animal crackers and breakfast cereal.  I never buy breakfast cereal.  He’d also chosen a 1 lb. “barrel” of cheese balls and all of the remaining Land o’ Lakes mint flavored cocoa in the store (six packets).  I had been lamenting earlier in the season that the new variety pack lacked this flavor.  Talk about first world problems.

Tonight the boys would be going to Grammy’s to spend the night but we still had to get through the day “power-free”.  We took hot showers and for the first time in anyone’s memory, Erick remembered to close the door when Jason was in the shower and Jason hollered at him to leave it open so the warmth would spread a little through the house.  The water heater was producing steaming hot water so I made hot cocoa for the kids straight from the tap.  After showers, Jason left the water running and attempted to fan warm air into the rest of the house.  We stood in front of the thermostat and cheered as we watched the numbers go from 52 to 53 to 54 degrees.  We played Apples to Apples and Caleb took turns being on someone’s team.  It’s always fun to play to the dealer and I had a small victory when I chose “meatballs” for the green apple card labeled “silky” just because I knew Paul really likes meatballs.  Tes gave us an impromptu “power outage fashion show”.  She was wearing a hoodie, over another hoodie, over a sweater along with three pair of socks, fleece pants, boots and a beanie.  She was still able to strut her stuff.  Every single one of us unthinkingly tried to switch on the light in the bathroom at least once that day.

We packed the boys and went to Grammy’s.  A battery powered radio was playing in the kitchen and an analog clock had been moved to the counter.  She told us about how the living room had been too hot the night before.  They “suffered” the mixed blessing of no electricity but plenty of heat from their wood stove.  On the way home, we stopped to shop for one last gift that had eluded us and found it.  Yay!  A pearl of anxiety sat in my belly as we headed home – and found that our power was back on!  A mere 44 hours (give or take) and we were glowing again!  I immediately put my phone on the charger and ran the (stinky) dishwasher.  I’d been holding out and praying that the power would be restored before I’d had to resort to hand washing.  Tes got to work taking care of some last minute Christmas details by electric light.

The next morning, Tes and I sneaked out to pick up a forgotten purchase at Target (I know, I know!) and get the groceries we’d need for Christmas breakfast and dinner.  We went home to a nice, warm house that we no longer took for granted.  I showered and started browning the sausage for tomorrow’s breakfast.  The plan was to spend Christmas morning in the living room with my family instead of alone in the kitchen.  I unloaded the dishwasher, brewed a delicious, hot pot of coffee, dressed and started packing up the gifts to go to Grammy’s house.  Jason was shaving when the lights flickered and went out and power was gone.  Again.  At least the sausage was cooked.  I poured the coffee into three thermal cups (one for Grampy) and we went over to celebrate Christmas Eve.

The happy ending to the story is that we had power again when we came home after the vigil Mass on Christmas Eve.  Christmas day, I was able to use the oven to bake cinnamon rolls and breakfast enchiladas and the Crock-Pot to make meatball subs.  The day was merry and warm in more ways than one.

Some of our friends and family weren't so fortunate.  My parents were without power for nine days which caused some serious issues with my mom’s home business.  Lots of people without power joined others who did have power but that meant hosting or spending Christmas with unexpected guests – which can be uncomfortable for some.  A friend of ours lost all of his tropical fish.  There were stories in the paper of people driving for miles to buy generators only to have them stolen right out of their driveways.  Police and other emergency workers were overwhelmed and there was at least one report of a utility worker being hospitalized after sustaining injuries resulting from a fall while repairing a downed power line.

This kind of occurrence always puts things in perspective.  I started to think and remembered to be very grateful for my fantastic family who didn't complain and stuck it out.  I started writing down everything that had happened from Tes’ power outage fashion show and Paul’s “silky meatballs” to the giant hot water bottle and hot cocoa made fresh from the tap.  Jason had, again, secured his family.  He never fails us.  The kids hadn't whined even once and Tes even made a new friend.  I don’t know if we would have been as chipper after nine days in the dark but I’d like to think we would have found a way.  Someone at Christmas Eve Mass said, “there was no power when Jesus was born either” and I had a mom moment when I looked at my family and felt so much joy at just having them in my life.  I thought about the crazy chaos the Blessed Virgin endured during her pregnancy and childbirth – the journey, the dirt, the accommodations (historical inaccuracies aside) – and she still got that divine little Son out of the deal.  Just like the first Christmas, we truly recognized how our dark lives needed light and what a difference it made when that Light came.

Happy New Year.