Today and yesterday I’ve been able to be a stay at home mom, literally. Adair hasn’t felt well enough to go to school, she’s tired and has some aches, and she’s congested, but most of all, she’s just tired. I’ve been reading up on the H1N1 and wondering if she has that or some other type of random virus. Interesting reading it was though, let me tell you. I learned there is a class of individuals that is known by the community of immunologists as the “superspreaders” and surprise surprise, school aged children are in that group, along with their well meaning parents or guardians. Superspreaders, sounds generous doesn’t it? Not so much if it’s talking about viruses. Another term I learned was about your “herd immunity”, which is where if the elementary school does a school-wide vaccination for all the children, then we as adults even if we haven’t been immunized would receive benefit because of us residing in the same herd as those who did get the vaccination. Interesting isn’t it? Another new thing I learned is that there is a whole subset of people who in their spare time are “flu trackers” and they study the immunology, and waves of illness. Isn’t that interesting? Did you know that the illnesses come in waves? H1N1 has. Wave 1 occurred early last spring, and we are now joyfully entering Wave 2. Fun! I hope I don’t catch the wave, I’m really not that much of a surfer.

Anyway, today there was snow, and my little girl is resting. I’m on the computer logging the moment into record so that we all know it occurred. Tuesday. Girl. Sick. Snow. Home. Love. It’s all there for you, just not necessarily in that order.

I’m home… where I feel like I was meant to be. Tomorrow though, I’ll find the courage to return to work, knowing at least that it means if I do, that my little girl feels all better.

Today I was describing a part of my day to my daughter, specifically about the “Blood Battle” that is going on between our school and a rival.  Not blood per say as in fighting each other to a bloody pulp, but more in the shape of a blood drive with the American Red Cross at the center.  So, knowing that my daughter is a sponge for all things scientific and cool, I shared my experience of how I donated blood.  I told her about how I learned of a new way to do donate blood besides just the traditional way where donors give whole blood (consisting of red cells, plasma and platelets).  I’d never heard of the a new automated process that I got to do called “double red cell donation,” where donors like myself can give just the red cells, and not just my red cells, but two units of red cells, which is the component of blood that is in the greatest demand!  How cool is that!?  So, being that this was so awesome, and that I got a great t-shirt for this experience, I described to her this fantastic process and how it makes my heart feel comfort knowing that something from within me can be shared, and shared with someone in need, and even help to heal!

Imagine my heart stop as I neared the end of my description and saw my daughter’s eyes enlarge and fill quickly with tears as she searched with her hand for the arm of the couch where she was sitting, as if she had to steady herself from this barrage of too much information!  My immediate thought, Oh no… what have I done?! Too late to wonder that now, it was obvious that I had crossed a border of assuming she was going to think the science part of it was cool.  She… in. no. way. shape. or. form. thought. that. AT. ALL!!!  I, Mrs. O-positive-blood-donor-super-mommy had missed the mark, big time.

All my daughter thought was apparently something so big, that she couldn’t verbalize it. After I stopped talking and tried to back peddle to fix where ever it was that I went wrong, and to get her to communicate what she was feeling other than the visible panic, all she said was that she felt like she had something rise from inside her stomach, leaving itself “sitting heavy on her chest,” and that something was “so hard inside, something as hard as an eraser,” and that it felt like “a net was grabbing it and cinching it tight” into her chest and that it “couldn’t move.”

As a parent, here I was trying to describe this cool thing (to me alone obviously!), and I somehow assumed that because she is a bookworm, and loves technology and science, and that she told me the other day, without a hint of worry or concern in her voice that her fourth grade teacher fed the class boa constrictor snake a white mouse, and the snake constricted it, suffocated it, then ate the mouse tail first.  She seemed fine telling me that, saying it as if she was telling me that the sky was blue or that the grass was green.  Yet, somehow from all that, and other stuff in between, I missed that she just wasn’t ready to hear about the b word.

The more we talked about it, I came to learn of her fears, and that it’s not just the word blood, or the description of blood that makes her chest feel heavy and tight causing alarm which demands tears, it extends to thought of what germs do to the inside of you – they can kill you, or what snake venom can do inside your body – like paralyze you, and what cancer cells divide and how they can’t be stopped.  She went on and on crying and mumbling things I couldn’t even understand through her sobbing.  What caught me most was that I had witnessed her eyes open the widest I have ever seen them, and I saw the torrent of sobs she unleashed, which was unlike anything that had come out of her before.  It all underscored a fear that had been lurking under her surface waiting for this moment, and my saying the trigger word!  I opened my big mouth, and brought on the panic!  Me!  Talking about the cool centrifuge that spun my blood to make it into two parts, bla, bla, bla…. it created a vortex of uncontrolled chaos within my daughter.

So strange in looking at it from an afternoon’s distance that something on one side, so life giving – donating blood to someone who could die if they don’t get it, while on the other side, sharing it with my daughter who I had to talk down off a ledge of fear for about an hour because it was too much information, which ignited all the other things that were connected to it.

I sat with her in my arms trying to comfort her and listen to her heart and fear, and I asked many questions to try to understand better her inner turmoil.  And, to be brutally honest, I find it sad knowing that I still gave one cliché or churchy response to her fear, in saying the verse “Perfect love casts out fear.”  Really now, what does that mean to young girl in this situation mama?!  *sigh, note to self:  next time just shut up and listen*  Anyway, in the end, her near hyperventilating stopped and she settled and we talked about ways that she could express what is building up within her that said she doesn’t know how to talk about.  We talked about how she could use her artistic gift to illustrate her concerns or to journal out words that provoke thoughts in her so that they don’t threaten to overwhelm her.

It’s been a busy summer, with working full time and all… I feel like I’m missing out on so much with my kids, but then again… I notice that when I’m home, they are off and away doing their own thing… their independence is growing, which is a good thing in the long run, but in this moment of reflection it’s bittersweet.

So much growing I have yet to do… so much perspective I have yet to gain… all in time I know… all in time. Funny how when I feel like I’ve just been granted insight into something, I get a bigger glimpse that shows me I have so much of a vast expanse yet to travel…

all in good time I’m reassured, all in good time.

Thinking ahead to summer, I am needing to figure out what to do for child care for my kids now that I am working.  I’m not quite sure how this will all work out, but it’s January, so if I start planning now, hopefully it will be covered.  In the past I’ve paid $35/day for a sitter to come and watch the kids in my home… from when the rooster crows at 7:30am until Mike gets home from work at 4pm.  That’s a really long day, and honestly not that much pay in my opinion, but for a 13 yr. old, maybe it is better than nothing.

Possibilities include my mom coming for bits of time, for the kids to go stay at Rolf & Eve’s for bits of time, and or for Mike to go to swing shift for the summer months.

Wondering how this will work… have never had to consider this in the past.

I am thinking of how I discuss negative emotions with my children… grief, sadness, fear, failure, worry, regret, pain, disappointment, etc., etc.  I think I have some significant areas where I can grow when it comes to this.  Overall, a learning experience from this evening has taught me that I can practice much in this area…

Tonight Adair was reading on the couch and I mentioned “ice skating” to her, in that it will be so fun for her to go next week for her field trip!  She and her class are going to get a lesson and then some free time!  How fun!!!  I thought.  Mmmmm, apparently NOT.  She shook her head with the look of “Oh NOooo.  That’s not me.  You are incorrect mother.” to which I replied in an encouraging and vigorous head nod of my own accompanied with a wide and excited smile.  Of course you know what that produced in my daughter… even more confusion and dismay on the face of my sweet child, which was then followed quickly by an aggressive head shake in the NO NO NO NEVER GONNA HAPPEN YOU CAN’T AND WON’T MAKE ME OR YOU’LL BE THE MOST HORRIBLE MOTHER ON THE PLANET direction.  All I could do was stare at her with an encouraging smile, and apparently I must have kept nodding my head yes, because then her cute aggressive no-no-no-head shake gave way to a slowed down version, which e v e r s o g r a d u a l l y melted, and lead to her sweet little head giving way to a slump as it fell forward to do a faceplant into her awaiting cupped hands.  This of course, was where her tears and incoherent speech became evident.

This is when a light bulb went off.  Instead of continuing on with what I normally would do… a cheer leading crazy thing where I try to put a positive spin on whatever the problem is, I instead opted to slow down with her and literally feel her anxiety.  And although I never reached out to touch her, and instead only moved closer to her and sat next to the couch on the floor near her, I could still FEEL her dismay, her frustration, her shock, her betrayal, and her fear. Now, I realize I am probably the last person on the planet to get this, and that every other mother out there in the world is perfect with a capital P. Forgive my honesty here, forgive my hiding in plain sight moment. I know I have practiced this before, maybe with friends, but it seems it’s been a while since I have done this with my children.

I sat with her tonight and let her cry out and babble her rational, and I let her try to get to the bottom of the fear… with the open ended questions… and somehow she magically just came to a point where she said “Is all of my class going to be there?!!?!” and I replied “I think so…” which lead to her responding with a huff, “Well, if they are all going to go, I will go!” And although she said it, I could tell she wasn’t that happy about it, but nonetheless, that was the apparent end.

I don’t know exactly what lead her to that place, but she got there, and in that moment I heard the quiet voice that advised me not to be a cheerleader, and instead to acknowledge.

Sometimes I’m so thick, I think I miss those subtle cues, but thankfully today, I heard it, I listened, and I felt.  I didn’t fix… I didn’t try to cheer… I didn’t spin…  I didn’t try to construct a new reality that seemed better to believe… I just let her be temporarily grieved, and a magical outcome occurred.

My understanding learned from this?  Talk less, listen more.  Be ok with the negative emotions, whoever they belong to.  Not everything is on the sunny positive side…. and that’s ok.  Learn to deal with negative emotions, not by sweeping them away and ignoring their presence, but instead by acknowledging them and being ok to let them take up whatever space they need in that moment.

I don’t know why at times we turn into that person who has to have all the answers, and feels the privilage or duty to convey such.  I don’t know why at times it seems like we need to look like we’ve either been there and done that, or heaven forbid that we act like we are smarter than that and have never felt this or that given emotion, or worse yet, that we invalidate the acutal emotion itself.

Pause.
Step in.
Join.
Go alongside.
Journey with.
Talk less.
Listen more.

Adair has this endearing way that she talks to the ever growing kitten Torpedo… she has a melody of words that she strings together in a song to the kitty… and its interesting when it comes out… she’ll be busily involved in something, and she’ll stop all of the sudden to get up and go over to the kitten sleeping in his bed and she’ll give him all the love and song she can, burying her nose in his cheek and calling him the “little chiga, the little buff-a… the little ti-ny…”, then its as if she gets her fill after a moment or two of cuddles and kisses and nose implants into the kitty’s soft fur, that she gets up and goes back to what she was previously engrossed in.

So fascinating and filling to watch her heart reach out and soak in…

In the words of Nemo,“FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!” My kids couldn’t be more happy.  They are taking the bus to and from school for the first time, and Alec feels like such a big boy because he’s going to be in big first grade.  What an amazing thing… my little Bubba… in first grade.  Just minutes ago I swear he was only a baby…  not anymore.

Then there is my sweet sweet Adair… entering the big world of 3rd grade.  I REMEMBER THIRD GRADE!  Everything that she does now is being locked inside her brain!!!  Just yesterday she was my baby… my punktin… my sweetie…

Wow… being a mom is like watching a caterpiller turn into a butterfly every single day…

It may not look that sunny in this photo, because the sun was hiding behind a rather large cloud for a little while, but eventually the cloud moved aside while we spent the day at Bear Lake last Sunday.  Here are my little bumpkins, Adair and Alec, all floaty on Mike’s float tube out in the water… we had a good time wrapping up the last little bit of summer before school starts NEXT WEEK.

My word…. I said that out loud… NEXT WEEK!  I know, I know… I just said it again!  To be exact, back to school night is on Wednesday evening, and then school starts promptly on Thursday morning.  I cannot believe how quickly time flew…. it’s quite possible that the time itself got kidnapped by some magical force and completely and totally stolen away.  I bet that’s exactly what happened!  One minute it was there, and the next minute…. POOF…. GONE.  It left no trail, no whereabouts as to it’s disappeance, it just simply vanished in the span of a second.  I know I should have seen it coming, because I know that’s EXACTLY what happened last summer… but I guess I got dulled by all the Otterpops and late nights.  We have to get back on a schedule again!  Bedtime for the kids by 8:30pm.  Breakfast first thing in the morning!  Getting ready for school!   Homework after school!  ACK!  Oh, and making lunch!  *sigh*  I’m getting dizzy.

Well, here is my new start of the Wiehenburg Quaker Mystery 2008, stitching on 32 ct. Ivory Belfast linen, with one over two, using Gentle Arts Hyacinth.  I have had to frog the upper right triangles and boxes twice, and the lower right triangles and boxes once.  RRGH.  I am now seeing the light at the end of the motif and will be happy to be done of it and move onto a different and happy little motif where I vow to count better so that I won’t have to frog any stitching.  RRGH.

Let’s see… today was the beginning day of the Cache Valley Fair… I took the kids and was alarmed at the cost of things.
Fair Entrance: Free
Cost of tickets for three rides: $20
Two funnel cakes with powdered sugar: $8
Little package of candied almonds: $3
Seeing my kids think it was fun: Priceless

When Adair was about four or five, she’d tell me “I want to be a mermaid when I grow up…” and you could see in her eyes how she was picturing what it would be like.  Just looking at her you could see her eyes swim and you could see her think of flicking her tail as she propelled herself through the water.

Mike has asked me from time to time, “What do you want to do when you go back to work?”  because my youngest, Alec, will start first grade next year and be in school all day along with Adair as she will enter third grade.  All I have been able to muster when my husband has asked this is the thought in my head of “I want to be a mermaid….” and my mind swims off.