Washing Paper Flowers

I'm in spring cleaning mode.  I've taken this week off work, and, frankly, nothing in my house that's dirty or cluttery is safe or too sacred.

That goes for things I've saved and cherished for years.  Well, not all things.  But, even if something serves a functional purpose, but I've had it for decades and it's ugly and broken, it had better beware.

My stack of newspapers is gone.

The lamp that was a birthday present from my parents on the first birthday when I was married (and the only present I got that year) has been replaced.

These are scary times.

Walls are being washed.  Blinds are being scoured.  The carpet cleaner is scheduled. 

My books, which have been associating with Paul's books at random in ways very supportive of diversity have now been organized by type and ordered by greatness.  Shakespeare, of course, takes prominence on my beautiful new Christmas bookshelf, and it goes down from there.  (Don't worry--I'm not an apostate.  Scriptures are in another place.)

My children were all enlisted to clean their rooms--yes, even under the beds--before we could go out and have any spring break fun.

These are the best and worst of times.

That is why, when bustling my way through the living room yesterday, I did not hesitate much when I came to a philosophical crisis.  My vase of paper flowers.  The vase and the flowers were my first anniversary gift.  You know, the paper anniversary.  Paul had picked out twenty-four lilies, daisies, and flags made of sturdy paper for me.

I have kept them.

Fifteen years.

I've dusted them off many times, but, as I'm sure you can imagine, it is not easy to brush dust off of textured paper.  With hollows and crevices.  For fifteen years.

Dust had been embedded in them, and, over time, some of the petals had curled up.  All right, a lot of the petals had curled up.  Honestly, they were pretty unsightly.

The sentimental me lost a quick arm wrestling match with the spring cleaning me.  They went into the kitchen wastebasket, and I cleaned out and polished the vase.

I'll buy some more, I told myself.  Surely, no one else I know who keeps a clean house would keep paper flowers for over fifteen years.  Surely, Paul would understand.  Surely, I could find some more that I liked just fine at a craft store.  Surely, it would be okay.

Paul came home from work just as dusk was falling gently in the dimly-lit bedroom and I was completing my last set of abs.  "Hi," he waved at me from the door.

"Wait," I said.  "Come in."  He sat on the edge of the bed, but I could hardly look at him.  "I did something I feel bad about," I told him.

He gazed back, as unflappable as ever.  At least outwardly, Paul takes bad news like he's hearing a weather report.  He honestly believes me to be the most honest person he has ever known.  He is firmly convinced that I could never ever in a million years cheat on him.  Because of this, it's impossible to make him jealous.  Which is smart of him.  And, I'm sure he's right.  Sometimes, it has been infuriating that he believes that about me.  Also, that he is right about it.  But, I digress.

I told him I had relocated his first anniversary present from the bookcase in the living room to the kitchen wastebasket a few feet away from there.  I said it in a tone that attempted to make it sound like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  After all, who would keep dirty paper flowers?  Right?

"I noticed they were missing," he said.

Paul, whom I suspect could probably not describe what I wore that very day, had noticed they were missing.

"I kept the vase," I said.

I told him of my plan to purchase new ones to replace them with.  I talked about how dirty and crumpled they were.  Then, I showed him.  He said the right things--that he could understand the reasons why.  He was less sure about my ability to replace them.  He went to the computer to look up places to buy paper flowers and came up pretty much empty.

I told him that I could also replace them with silk flowers.  He didn't exactly say it, but I could tell from his tone that the idea of replacing paper flowers with silk ones made no sense at all to him.  It had been our paper anniversary, not our silk one--that was anniversary number twelve.

To me, the point was to have a beautiful home, and, whether the flowers in the vase were paper or silk didn't matter much, as long as they were not dirty or cluttery.  I told him I would always remember that he had given me the paper flowers.

This morning, we went shopping for lamps and paper flowers.  The lamps we found.  Paper flowers, not so much.  We went to a store that had an overwhelming supply of silk flowers.  There were many lovely options.  Too many.  I could tell that it would take me a couple of hours to sort through all of the possibilities to find the ones I wanted the most.

Also, looking at all the silk flowers they had made me sad.

None of them was like the ones I had thrown away.  Not a one.  I could see that Paul's unspoken thought was true.  What he had done for me was not replaceable.  I began to regret my action in a big way.

"Let's go," I said.  My new feelings gave me a profound sense of urgency.  "Come on!  Let's get out of here," I urged.  "I won't find what I want here."

I could hardly wait to get home.  While Paul got ready to assemble the lamps, I rushed to the wastebasket.  "They have other stuff dumped on them by now," he said, and he was right.  But I didn't care.  Why on earth had I not tried to save them before throwing them away?  If I was going to wash dust off them, I could also wash off the egg shells from the kids' breakfast and bits of the yam he had thrown away. If they were ruined, they were ruined.  I would not be any farther behind than I already was.

I gathered up all twenty-four and set them aside on a towel.  One by one, I washed their stems and let the water from the faucet run over their petals.  Lovingly, I rubbed the petals and reshaped them into the lovely flowers they had been to begin with.  It was surprisingly easy to resurrect them.  Only once did I rub one so hard that the paper started to come off the center. I quickly put it back in place and handled them more gingerly.  Only once did a petal tear.  Only one flower fell apart to the point that I might throw it away for reals.

It was amazingly easy to save and restore the paper flowers my husband gave me for our first anniversary, all those years ago.  I wish I had thought of this sooner.  So often, we think we don't want anymore something given in love, when only a little bit of thought and loving care would make it as vibrant as new. We take for granted that we can replace something unique and precious.

I think we're good for another fifteen years.

Behind that Angelic Face. . .

I received an interesting email today from my child's teacher.  We have been emailing back and forth daily for a week or so as we have been partnering to help this kid climb up to the next level, where he really needs to go.

The email started out, "Your child is working well today."  A good start if I ever saw one.

The rest of the email detailed how he had been climbing the fence (literally) and she'd had to pick him up at the principal's office, that he was swinging his arms during music class, and how he took the majority of the blame for the disruption.

I don't know how other parents would react to such an email, but I knew that I had just been handed my next blog posting.

"Which is it?" I wrote back with a smirk.  "He's working well, or he's causing problems?"  Or, I strongly suspect, as it would be quintessentially this child, ". . .both?"

This child has the face of an angel.  Behind it, he is scheming how to dash past unseen, how to break a rule, how to get out of work, and how to hide five hundred acorns under his bed--all without attracting notice.

This child is the catalyst for rising blood pressure in adults with stewardship over him as he merely passes among them.  If he knew that, though, it would break his heart.  

He is the best boy with the finest heart.  He is the one who, in pure shock, told his I-don't-want-to-go-to-church-it's boring brother, "We have to learn the gospel!"  He is the one who has requested in family prayer--for no apparent reason, that we won't go to jail, that we won't get hit by cars, that we won't get kidnapped.  He is the only one who consistently, every single time, begins each prayer--even the blessing on the food--with "We thank Thee for this day."

And he is the one who has a bad day, every day.

Observing this child in a classroom setting, you would guess that he picked up less than one thing from what was being taught.  But later discussion would reveal that he learned and remembers all of it.  How he takes it all in while doing several other things is the great mystery of his life.

This is the boy who would be the first one out there, trying everything.  And the last to let a doctor near him with a stethoscope.  He will fearlessly volunteer, then crumple.

He will boss and argue with every child, then be devastated when they won't be his friends.

On your way to his bedroom to apologize for overreacting over one of his misdeeds, you will often discover yet another one.  Still, the best reward for good behavior that he can think of is twenty minutes of your time.

His head may have taken more bonks than a football player's, but beneath that hard head, his heart is spun of fragile glass.  Under his scabbed and bruised skin, we must remember, he is a shining angel of light.

It is not possible to place a value on or even enumerate the things he teaches me.  But, here's one.

It may be exaggerated in this cherubic and impish boy, but, really, in all of us, there are such enigmas, such contradictions.  With everyone we know, we must accept the hard things with the good, and love, love, love them.

Also, ourselves.  Also, situations.  It is all we can do.

It is the only way there is.  

It may be the only work of value that there is.

Can I Just Be a Mom?

I recently read an obituary that described the deceased as having done "many years of traveling and competing" in an organization, that she was one of the original founders of a large local charity and "served on it many years," and how she had volunteered for "many years" at a hospital.

Then came the clincher.  It said, "She was always a stay-at-home mom."  

Really?  Just how big was her home?

Her obituary went on to delineate how she had always put her family first and had given them her greatest service.

This, I don't doubt.  

I don't begrudge her the many ways she benefited the community, developed herself as a person, and honed her talents.  I think it's marvelous that she did so much.  Clearly, she was someone to admire.

What I take issue with is the pride taken in and divisiveness engendered from the emotionally pregnant words, "stay-at-home mom."  Do we have to define ourselves as one or not one?

I would like to respectfully put forward that almost all moms are at home sometimes, and that almost all moms leave their homes sometimes.

I would also like to explore the likelihood that most moms put their families first and serve their families with most of their energy.

I have found, more and more, a real divisiveness between "stay-at-home" moms and moms who are employed outside of the home.  Is this really necessary?

Working moms contribute great service to their families.  Not only do they still have the kids' needs, housework, and other household chores to attend to in less time, they contribute financially.  They may be providing the bulk of the family's income, or the only health insurance.  Their work could be a stabilizing force and foundation of security like none other in the family.

Women who don't work outside of the home also contribute significantly to the well-being of their families.  Frequently, they have time and energy to contribute in ways that working moms cannot.  

And then there are MANY who form some combination of this--they have found a way to bring in some income while working from home, or have fit the puzzle pieces together in some other creative way that works for them--some years at home and some years in the workforce, for example.

To some degree, we get to make our own choices in this matter.  And that's how it should be.  All women should figure out for themselves how they want to serve and contribute to their families and communities, spend their time, and develop their talents.  That's the beauty of it.

Why does there have to be so much tension?  Why do we have to declare ourselves one or the other, dig in our heels, and make an issue of pride and judgment over it?

Many working moms don't feel they have the choice to not work.  Many non-working moms also feel the pressure to not make another choice.  I think we could do without pressure from either side and turn that energy into respect and support for one another's choices. 

This woman, it sounds like, spent almost as much time outside of her home as she spent in it.  The things she chose to do didn't bring in any income, so she didn't bless her family in that way.  Perhaps, though, she was a better mother for developing her talents.  Maybe her community service made her more compassionate, understanding, and empathetic.  If so, good for her.  

It's also possible that she could have been so devoted to outside causes that her children missed her, that they waited for dinner at times beyond the point that they were hungry, that she missed some of their birthdays or performances or I-need-this cues.

Undoubtedly, there were other positives that I haven't thought of and negatives that have been forgiven.  

I can't measure a stranger's life from a few statements made about her.

My comment is on the growing societal competition between certain choices.  I really think this is harmful. It's harmful to our relationships with each other, to our ability to understand and empathize with each other. The judgments we make have a negative impact on our capacity for charity and our ability to stand up for and with each other in hard times.  They are bad for our souls.

The impact of this divisiveness stunts the growth of our daughters who don't know which direction to turn. Do we really need to make a choice between feeling guilty for using our brains or for not using them?  For using our talents or not using them?  Are some talents okay to develop and others not okay?  Do we need guilt for providing our children with the things they need over keeping them in poverty?  Or the reverse?

Women, especially mothers, juggle many responsibilities and expectations.  I respect each woman who relies on inspiration and her own intelligence to figure out how to find balance for her family.  If women achieve a balance that is healthy for their children and themselves, the details of what they choose to do and what they sacrifice--which vary as individually as there are individual families--really don't matter.

Without pressure to join one side or the other, we could feel free to make the choices that truly are best for ourselves and our families without this silly competition as a factor. I don't believe one is right and the other is wrong.   

Honestly, I wish the term "stay-at-home mom" would just kind of disappear from our lexicon and there would just be "mom."  What are we trying to prove with it?

I was once chastised by a childless, young, and. . .well, young, church leader who reached for a simple addition fact to solve a complex calculation when he said to me, "You need to be home with your children."

"I am home with my children," I responded.  I was on my home phone with him at the time.

I knew what he meant, and the judgment stung.  He was guessing that relying on a simple solution (Mom plus not working equals perfect children) would solve a very hard and complex situation.  But I knew that my not having a job at that point in my life would do absolutely nothing to solve or soften the problem my child faced.  In fact, it would have compounded it.  

My sweet husband comforted me with these words: "You always put your children first.  You never neglect their needs. You always go to bat for this child.  You have left nothing undone that is within your power to do."

For me, working outside the home is one of the important ways I take care of my children.  Other mothers get to make the same or other choices. Each one has the responsibility to find her own balance, her own answers that make sense for her family.  I respect that.

Children of both stay-at-home moms and working mothers can all be cherished, nurtured, healthy, and well-cared for.  Children of both stay-at-home moms and working moms can be neglected.  In my humble opinion as a nobody, employment should not be where the line between good and bad mothers is drawn.

The Day You Dread All Your Life

When my mother died, I had no warning.

She wasn't old.  She wasn't sick.  Well, she had a cold, but she'd always survived those.

She herself had only about forty-five minutes of warning, and I don't think she took it very seriously for all of that time.  She was on the phone with my sisters but didn't say anything about her chest pains until it was too late.

She was getting ready to go to the hospital when she just--dropped.

My father died even faster.  He wasn't old, either, and he wasn't sick.  He'd worked a full day in the business he owned, and was just relaxing in front of the TV.  From what my mother told me, he had less than a minute to indicate something was wrong before he was gone.

There were no goodbyes.

For a long time, I felt really cheated by their sudden deaths.  I was still in my thirties, still having babies who would never know them.  I was haunted by the fact that the people we love could be there and seem fine one minute, and be gone without any warning the next.

It didn't help me relax about the possibility of crib death, for one thing. It didn't lessen my worry when my teenagers were out, driving at night.

But, amazingly, I've gotten used to my parents being gone.  I feel they still exist, on a plane I cannot access.  They were too vibrant, too real, to just. . .stop being.  I miss them, but this is ameliorated somewhat by feeling like I still have them with me.  I know them so well, I pretty much know what they would do, what they would think, what they would say.  To some extent, I can still learn from what I know of them.

And it helps to know that I am not alone in my loss.  Lots of people my age or younger have lost parents.  My mother was only five when she lost her mother.  Nine when she lost her dad.  When my mother died, I could hardly conceive of how she, then a small child, could have born the pain I was feeling.  I still can't.  I cry hardest at movies where mothers of children die.  I always have.

It sometimes hurts to see people much older than I still enjoying those familiar relationships, but, as my dad was fond of saying, life isn't fair.

When I talk to people who have lost their mothers, the story is always different, yet the same.  Some of them kept their mothers until they were nearly a hundred years old.  How I have envied them!  Some of these, though, have watched their mothers lose their grip on life one inch at a time.  Sometimes, they've lost their mothers long before their mothers actually died.  They lost them twice, which I think would be twice as hard.

My mother was starting to get feeble, but she still took care of herself in her own home.  She still drove and had full access to her wonderful mind.

Her bones broke easily, so I used to fear that she would fall in the snow and lie there for hours with no way to get help.  As it turned out, that never happened.  We lost her quickly, but we were spared, I'm sure, many horrible possibilities.

After my dad's sudden death, my mother had the presence of mind to exclaim how blessed they were that he had gone suddenly like that.  "He would have hated to be sick," she said.

I think I know what she meant.

I have come to think that, no matter if your mother is young or very old, whether you get to say goodbye or not, whether death comes for her too quickly or makes her suffer a long time, there is nothing to envy anyone about.  It doesn't matter.  The stories are different, but they end the same.  The day your mother dies is the day you dread all your life.

Toothless Wonder

When I was a little girl, it was a big deal to get a loose tooth. 

The blood!  The tears!  The angst!  The worry! 

My dad would pull our teeth out, if we asked him. 

But he meant business, so you had to make sure you were sure--really, really sure--before you ventured.  Once he got hold of you, you might get away with your life, but not with your tooth.

First, you had to hold discussion groups with other siblings.  Was the tooth really loose enough yet?  My sister was of the opinion that some teeth had hooks on them.  And she definitely taught us that the two big top teeth in the middle of your mouth would be the worst trial ever.  You didn't want to ask Dad to pull a tooth that had a hook on it, and you didn't want him to try when your teeth weren't loose enough, because it could take up to an hour of terror.  So, we let our sister and brothers wiggle our teeth and gathered their opinions. 

I would really have rather not have involved Dad, actually, and I tried sometimes other methods I'd heard of, like tying a thread around the tooth and a doorknob and slamming the door.  Those things never worked.  I would wiggle and wiggle and wiggle the tooth, trying to make it looser.  I would reach up and grasp it and try to pull it out myself so that I wouldn't have to go through Dad's vise grip on it, but that never worked either, although I would have preferred it.

Getting a tooth pulled was not something to be taken lightly.

Sure, you wanted the dime from the tooth fairy, but the quest had to be weighed.  You wanted to wait until the trial that lay ahead of you had shrunk down to be worth the reward.

Well, times have changed, it seems.

I have a child who looked up at me one morning when I went in to say goodbye and very casually informed me that he had lost a tooth.

Really?!  How did that happen? I wondered.  And, since he'd already lost his two bottom teeth, it occurred to me that it could be one of the big top teeth.  "Which one?" I asked, wanting to know and not wanting to know all at the same time.

He looked up and opened his mouth.  One of his top teeth was missing.  "It just came out in the night," he said.  He had never mentioned it was loose.  No one had ever wiggled it.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"I lost it," he shrugged.

Wow. 

We looked in his bed and found the tooth.  The tooth fairy came that night.  He was very casual about the two pieces of money he was given, even when he immediately lost one of them.  None of it seemed to be a big deal.

A few days later, it occurred to me to ask him if the other top tooth was loose yet.

"No," he said, and went on with his playing.

The next day, so I heard, he was in class in church and just reached up and pulled it out.  He showed it to me in the hall.

I looked at my toothless wonder, and he smiled.

Cuter, older, and more self-sufficient than ever.

If I wanted a baby, I'd have to have another one.

Talking to Myself. . .on the Phone

We all know people who end phone calls quickly.  Maybe too quickly.  And we all know people that trying to hang up with is like trying to extract arms and legs from quicksand.

Some people don't like to talk on the phone, or have mastered a business-only approach.  Some people love to talk, on and on and on.

For these people, we learn to develop strategies.

There are people who only need one "Well, okay, then, I'll see you later," and relationships where it takes four or five of those to make it stick.

These days, we have options.  We can avoid calling people by emailing or texting them instead.  It's hard to be really long-winded on a text.

But, how many of us have good end-the-conversation skills when talking to ourselves?

Several years ago, I had a lead worker who taught me a lot about how to do my job.  She also taught me a lot about being gracious, warm toward people, and at my best.

One thing she taught me was how to leave messages for myself at work to remind me of  things I needed to take care of. 

Let's face it: when you are a working mom, you spend most of your alert hours at work.  It was easier to schedule doctor appointments or run errands on my breaks or lunch hours than it was to try to remember to do these things after getting home and immersing myself in my children's needs again.  

And, while we're at it, let's face another fact: we think of things at the wrong moments--the middle of the night, while in the shower, or while driving from one place to another.  

Technology has given us myriad ways to tend to these issues, and it has advanced exponentially since the time I started working with this lead, but what she would do is call her work phone and leave herself a voice mail message.  She knew that she would absolutely without fail be answering her voice mail messages several times a day at work, and that she would be alert during business hours then, so this worked for her.

I tried it myself, and still do it sometimes.

I remember her describing how, when she thought of something in the middle of the night, she would grab her home phone and dial her work number, then whisper her message to herself quietly so as not to wake her husband.  Then, she said, when she would get to work, she would not be able to hear her message, and she would wonder, "Who on earth called me at 2:12 this morning!?"  

My issue when I started doing this was that I did not know how to say goodbye to myself.  Now, I've got down how to say, "Call Dr. Anderson" and then hang up.  But, at first, I was not used to calling myself on the phone.  I would say hello, then leave my message, then stumble over how to say goodbye to myself.  "So, okay, well, I'll see you later!" I might tell myself.  Then redden as I listened to that the next day.  Or, "Take care!  Bye-bye!"  

 

It is, of course, totally unnecessary to say all these pleasantries to yourself, but I was in the habit of saying them to others.  I don't think I ever went so far as to say, "Love you!  Bye!"  But I may have come close.

Interpret This

The other night, I dreamed that we went to a public building to hear someone speak. 

We sat in the kind of chairs with desks attached that are in high schools.  In fact, one of my friends from high school was there.  We waited a long, long time for something to happen.  After a while, I noticed that people were trying to sleep in those chairs, contorting their bodies this way and that, trying to get comfortable.  I noticed my high school friend had taken her dress off in order to increase her comfort as we waited.  It got darker.  We grew colder. 

About the time it seemed dawn should be breaking, nothing had happened still.  I gave up and ventured into another room, a big kitchen or cafeteria.  The yellow walls and light were bright and cheery in there, and food was being dished up.  What an improvement!  I grabbed a plate and went around the room filling it.  The food was beautiful, intricate!  Salads had foods shaped like dragonflies and butterflies.  Everything smelled and looked great.  The variety was amazing.  I filled my plate up to the edges.

But, then I noticed that some of the utensils available to take were dirty.  And then that food was actually being cheerfully dished up onto dirty plates.  I marveled that I seemed to be the only one noticing this.  Why do the people here settle for this, I wondered?  As I looked at my own plate, I realized that in the time I had taken to go around the room, my food had disintegrated, as if the cell walls of the food had melted away.  The lovely food I had taken looked hardly palatable--just a big mass of gray blobs the consistency of instant potatoes. 

I looked around at all the many other people walking around filling their plates.  The food being dished up still looked amazing, but it rapidly deteriorated once on the plates.  Yet, people were still walking around, waiting in lines, filling their plates, not noticing that it was pointless unless they wanted to eat gray slop. 

My attention was caught by the light and movements and clearly defined objects in another room.  I went in there, and there were brightly-colored and interesting objects.  My interest was caught over and over and over again by all the varied things to look at and investigate. 

Other rooms held books, puzzles, statues, toys, instruments, gems, art, tools--as if we were in some sort of museum with a room for every type of thing in the world. 

Again, everything was clear, crisp, bright, beautiful, intricate, and interesting in the beginning, but rapidly deteriorated into piles of soggy paper mache.  And still, hoards of people circled, being taken in by what seemed offered, but soon sifting through nothing but garbage.

I started to realize that, no matter what I found, this place was going to be like that, and that I needed to find my way out of it.  Never mind the puzzles I could try to solve or the books I could try to read--none of that was lasting.  I needed to read the situation and solve the true puzzle--how to overcome the entire place.

While it had taken hours for things to deteriorate enough for me to leave the first room, the rate of deterioration was increasing.  Things slipped out of my hands within moments.

I saw my husband and started sharing my insights with him.

Instead of looking for objects of interest, we started immediately looking, upon entering new rooms, for stairs, ladders, signs of natural light--anything that would help us rise out of the mulch the multitudes were slogging through and escape.

Our children were with us now, and the pace was fast.  We hurried our way through room after room, ignoring all distractions and just heading for whatever seemed to be the way out.

I was in a library where books turned to stapled packets of papers and then worse as soon as I touched them.  I climbed the bookcases, clutching at the upward-pointing arrows on the top of each book, which fell out of my hands as soon as I could grab them. 

I called out my husband's name.  "I found the way up!" I shouted to him as I climbed as fast as I could, hoping I could save myself, without really going anywhere.  Looking over my shoulder, I called out again.  But I'd lost him.  Like everyone else, he was distractedly thumbing through something, as it crumbled to dust..