I was sitting at the table tonight with my family and we were laughing and smiling so huge that it felt like heaven opened up and swallowed us into it’s embrace. I immediately felt my eyes fill with tears and my throat tighten as it dawned on me the significance of this moment and the impact that it was making on my heart. Thankfulness for my husband, his smile, his heart. Thankfulness for my kids, their laugh, their unique sense of humor. And thankfulness for my place in this family, my role of mom, wife, and friend… the thankfulness overwhelmed me to the core. The truth that this moment would fade away all to soon was not lost on me, for even now reflecting on it and trying to find words to tell of it, seem to diminish its heart affect. I am so deeply thankful and so deeply grateful, that mere words cannot express…. but if I were to try to describe it… if I could pull the words together into some order, it would be:

Love love love came swirling around me today like a soft whisper wind, and joy laughed at my cheeks and echoed in my ears that my spirit had to try to grasp the tail of this helium balloon moment that was floating and dancing away and taking my heart up with it into it’s fruition in a chorus of a song in loud Braille with a melody full of effortless love that was imprinting itself inside my heart.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My son Alec hums.  When he’s playing legos or drawing pictures, he has to hum.  Adair hums to, but her tune is more random and artist inspired, while Alec’s on the other hand is intentional, and has to “be something” as in, from something.  It was the theme song from Harry Potter for a little while, then it was Star Wars for a while longer, but recently with the new movie release in the theatres of Indiana Jones, we thought we’d rent those older ones to watch as a family (with the finger on the remote’s ’skip’ button for the more graphic parts).  So we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark first, then we watched the Temple of Doom (much more use of the remote’s ’skip’ button for that one), and of course, everyone clearly remembers the theme song….

da-da-da-daaaa
da-daa-daaaaa
da-da-daaa
daa-da-da-da-daaaaaaa
da-da-da-daaaa
da-da-daaaaaa
da-da-daaaa-da-daa-daaaaa-da-da-da-da-da-da-da…
you get the idea..

or… for those of you who simply can’t figure out my singing in the “da-da format”, let me attempt to imbed a youtube illustration of it to really let it sink in:

So, Alec will hum this over and over, over and over, over and over.  And, it’s not like he hums the whole song, just the intro… just the part I hummed for you above.   Over and over, over and over.  Louder, softer, over and over.  Again and again.  Repeat, repeat.  Echo, echo.  Sometimes Adair joins in, but she gets creative with it an starts putting in words for each musical note… she’ll say “In-di-ana-Jo-o-ones, In-di-anaaaaaa-Jo-jo-jo-o-onnnneesssss” etc.  And Alec still hums the repetition without change.

What is the cutest to me about this is that every now and then Alec will forget how this tune goes.  It simply leaves his brain after he goes and does something else and has some space from the theme music.  And what does he do then?  Well… then, he asks me, “Mommy? How does the song go?”  not needing to refer to it by name, because of course I obviously know what song he’s referring to because it’s been the only song he’s hummed for the last week and a half.    So, what do I do?  The loving, devoted mother that I am?  I smile hugely, and start giggling like a little kid being tickled and I start to hum it…  o n e   s i n g l e   n o t e   a t   a   t i m e.  

S L 0 W L Y.

da

daaaaaaaa….

waiting to see if he gets it yet….
not yet? still slowly… dragging it out, one note at a time… while he’s grinning from ear to ear, waiting to hear it, waiting for it to “click”…

da

daaaaaa

then he gets it and finishes… and walks away the happiest kid on earth feeling so at home that he’s finally gotten the tune of it again in his head and all is right with the world. He doesn’t think I’m torturing him, holding one note at a time… I mean my face is about to crack open because I can’t smile any bigger as I lead him on his musical mystery with one note in “da format” waiting to see when it is exactly that he gets it. A “da” on it’s own is a little hard to get, but it’s when you string some of them together with the longer “daaa’s” that the song becomes more alive. Try it, you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, yesterday he asked me twice what the theme song was, so I treasured the moment with abandon. I hope he asks me again today…. “Mommy? How does it go?”…. Please God, let him ask me today.

Well… the baby kitten, Torpedo, has been growing quite well and has learned what his litter box is for.  BUT, last night I noticed him having some shallow and quick breathing.  In the past we had the really unfortunate experience of adopting a kitten who ended up having FIP, which is fatal, and that poor kitten (named Einstein) we had to put to sleep and he was only 7 or 8 weeks old, as he had only 25% lung capacity because the disease cause the lungs to fill with fluid.

So, needless to say, with that previous experience, I’m quite alarmed.  We brought Torpedo to the Vet this morning, with the hopes that it could just be a respritory infection which is common in orphanned kittens.  The Vet called and did say that it is possible that the kitten has either aspirated some fluid in his lungs (from bottle feeding), or that it could have an infection.  They are beginning an antibiotic treatment as I type, and they will also treat for worms, which are also common in kittens from a ferrel mother.

I’m hoping for the best here… truly praying for this precious little life who we have connected to.  Hoping that he is strong enough to respond to these antibiotics and rebound and live up to the strong name Alec has chosen for him.

Some days reading this really speaks to my soul…

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look ‘em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any
you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you’ll head straight out of town.

It’s opener there
in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen,
don’t worry. Don’t stew.
Just go right along.
You’ll start happening too.

OH!
THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’ t
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so
but, sadly, it’s true
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.

You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…

…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That’s not for you!

Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,
once more you’ll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. there are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t.
Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times
you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win
’cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance
you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go
though the weather be foul
On you will go
though your enemies prowl
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike
and I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3 / 4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So…
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea,
you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

—Dr. Seuss

Stay-at-Home- Mom’s work found to be worth $134,121.

So… will this period in my life look good on my resume or what?