on november

A year ago this week, I found out I was pregnant with Silas.

Which has brought something to my attention: this is the first November that I am not six weeks pregnant (2007), waddling through my last trimester (2006), waiting to see what direction my life would take (2005), moving to another state (2004), or getting the feel of a new city (2003) in a long time.  In other words, November normally means something big is about to happen.  This year it doesn't.  And while it feels weird - funny how stillness requires the same adjustment as transition - it is a relief.  It's the first year I've been anywhere two years consecutively in five years (got that?).  Stillness is nice.

It's given me the chance to regain some energy and interest in things that used to shape me, like spiritual disciplines and reading new books and serving others.  It has also left me incredibly grateful for ordinary life.  Every day I kiss Silas's downy little head and pray, "Thank you Lord for this healthy, happy boy."  Most of my days have no agenda except digging through the Fun Box and the occasional load of laundry.  Would this life mean as much to me if I hadn't spent so many Novembers trying to get here?  I can't imagine it would.

Thanks be to God, for November and for being still in it.

I hope all of you are fortunate enough to have good friends - not just people with whom you socialize, but people with whom you share your life. I have a few of them, and Georgia's Mom is one of them.

I am sure by now I have said at least a dozen times that Georgia's Mom was my friend before I had a sister, or even before my mom remarried. We have known one another all of our lives, and have been blessed to have the rare experience of growing in similar directions. She is a UMC Minister now, and we have children about the same age. And maybe it's because our lives have overlapped so much, for so long, or maybe it's just because we're friends, but both of us always carries a little of the other's load. I cried when her first child was born, and cried when her grandfather died. When my grandmother was dying, and Georgia's Mom and I had not spoken in months, she was the only one I wanted to see. I even cried at her son's baptism (while I was in front of a crowd, no less) - and I'm not a crier. It's just the way things are with us.

So as she's been in Africa, I have thought a good bit about her experience and the things she's written. This morning I read her last post before leaving the area (and coming home to talk on the phone with me, thank goodness) just before starting my day. Now I can't stop thinking about it. In the grocery store, making lunch, feeding Silas - everything I have done today has been a reminder of how much my life is one of luxury. Walking into a grocery store and having so many options is a luxury. The ability to feed my child as many fresh fruits and vegetables as he wants (including apples in April and watermelon in December) is an inconceivable luxury in so much of the world. Watching my infant thrive and grow out of his clothes almost as fast as I can buy them, is a luxury. Having a phone nurse to call when I'm not sure what to do ... I could go on and on. My life is incredibly comfortable, and whatever complicates it are largely things I have created.

Georgia's Mom was right about something else: as a believer, knowing how much I have been given and how much others need, my only real option is to share what I have. The condo where we stayed last week had a quote displayed that has stayed with me: We can only experience a blessing in our own lives when others are blessed by it. (It was said better than that, but that was the sentiment). Until someone else benefits from what I have, I have no benefit from it, either.

So be it.

The thing about being awake at 5 a.m. is occasionally you witness a crime.

I've mentioned before there is a thief in our midst. We have since learned that our otherwise safe street is routinely scourged by the same kid. I've seen him around, and even caught him scoping out my house once. He's thirteen, skinny, and alone, wearing oversized clothes and looking like trouble.

Saturday morning, 5:23 a.m. and the entire family is awake. We were loading up for a walk when I saw the same skinny, loping kid running down the road with a children's dirt bike. The bike looked new, and was too small for him to ride. "What do you think is happening right now?" I said to Brian. "Petty theft," Brian replied.

He called the police as he walked out the door to see which direction the kid went. Brian found where the kid stashed the bike and where he lived. The police patrolled all morning, questioning every kid on a bike in the area. I don't know if they ever found him. As the officer was leaving the vacant yard where the stolen bike was hidden, Brian explained that he really hoped the kid would be arrested. "I'm afraid he's going to look in the wrong window," Brian said. "Some of our neighbors would love to have a reason to use their gun." "Well," said the officer, "I'm not suggesting anyone break the law, but a well-placed bullet would certainly teach him a lesson."

As if he were a dog.

And this is why we won't have a gun, no matter how much I'm home alone or how often my purse is stolen. There is nothing I own that is worth a human life. He's a kid - a punk, to be sure, who needs to be arrested, needs to have the shit scared out of him, needs to spend some time in juvenile detention - but he's still a kid. Somebody's grandson, somebody's student, somebody's friend. Plus he's so skinny, I'm pretty sure I could take him if necessary.

I understand it is a right to protect your property. But against whom? And to what end?  What does it say about us as a society that we uphold the right to kill another person over belongings?  If someone was trying to harm my children, I can safely say I would die trying to save them. But to protect my cell phone and wallet? Or some kid's dirt bike? Is that really worth this child's future, however bleak it may be? Exactly what lesson would he learn from a bullet, Officer?

There is nothing I own that I value more than a life - even the life of a thief. If that makes me a bleeding heart, well, I can live with that. So long as no other blood is spilt.

on Joseph

"Poor Stephanie," my mom says from the other room.

I am sitting in the recliner, holding a pacifier to my dozing baby's mouth. I have spent the past two hours trying, unsuccessfully, to put him to bed. He would fall sound asleep in my arms, then wake up as soon as he was put down. The rest of the family is sitting around half-eaten pie, listening to my dad's stories. My dinner sits cold on the counter. I'm missing all the fun.

I have been half-listening to the dining room conversation, half-thinking about the past week. Joseph died a few days ago; I just found out today. Joseph is a little boy who has been sick since November. He is the child of a friend of a friend, and I've kept up with their story online since his diagnosis. He had been seriously ill, but his health deteriorated quickly, and he died unexpectedly. He passed away the day after his fourth birthday. Tonight, I think about his mother.

From the day I found out I was pregnant, some part of my mind has always been with my children. Whether I'm in another room, or out of town, or at work, or with a friend, some part of me is always conscious of where they are, and what they are doing in that moment. When I became their mother, they became my point of reference. I think now about Joseph's mother, how her point of reference is gone, and the enormity of her loss overwhelms me. I guess part of her will always be with him, in death as in life. It's the burden and blessing of being a mother, to always need to know where your child is.

My mom walks out of the brightly-lit dining room and into the semi-dark, where my baby is finally resting on my chest. "Poor Stephanie," she says again, softly. Some part of her, too, needs to know where I am. I listen to his even breath, feel the weight of his tiny growing body against my chest. I think about what a gift it is to hold my healthy sleeping baby tonight. "Don't say that," I say. "I'm exactly where I want to be."


* * * *

Epilogue: I wrote several posts over the weekend and have them scheduled to post throughout the week. Since Saturday night, when I wrote this, I have been the Catcher of Unexpected Poop, the Cleaner of Gross Noses, and drenched in such violent projectile vomiting that I thought Somebody Should Do Something, until I realized I was the Somebody. Also, I've slept about seven hours total in the past two nights. And we're out of coffee. But none of that compares to the moment this morning when Silas couldn't catch his breath, and I was trying to assess just how much infant CPR I remembered (he's okay. After he threw up he could breathe again). It was among the top five scariest moments of my life. In short, it's been quite a weekend.

But I still mean it. Even this weekend - especially this weekend - I am so aware of what a gift my children are. There's no where else I want to be. Except maybe when they're throwing up.

good enough

This is not an answer to the Hump Day Hmm question, but it is a response to Julie's post about Elizabeth Edwards. Read it first, if you have a minute. And you know you do.

I spent the day at Georgia's Mom's house, admiring the view (you should see her back yard), changing diapers, and talking about maternal guilt. (As an aside, old friends are like siblings without the mess. You get all the comradery of shared experience, without the stickiness of family dynamics. It's really nice.) Anyway, we were talking about guilt created by expectations, and learning to accept that sometimes "good enough" has to be good enough. Not an easy lesson to learn for either us, repentant perfectionists that we are.

Then I came home and read Julie's post, and it reminded me of something I heard recently: Others' opinions of us stick only when they confirm something we already believe about ourselves.

I have this friend who is completely put together. Her family eats only fresh and organic food, she works out every day, she's involved in several clubs and groups, she disciples other women. She's one of those people that I would love to hate, if only she wasn't so genuine and thoughtful and kind. And on my bad days, she becomes the measuring stick of everything I'm not doing right. I was saying this to my mom one day, about how I couldn't even get a shower, and here so-and-so has a week's worth of dinners prepared. My mom's response was, "Well give her a gold star."

Indeed. What do I win for being perfect? Only the chance to do it all again tomorrow. When I think of the energy I have spent trying to live up to perceived expectations, which are really only my own perfectionistic tendencies bouncing back in my face, I'm ashamed.

So when I hear Elizabeth Edwards - then Julie - say, "You don't get to say," I know that I mostly need to say that to myself. I don't get to say that my best wasn't good enough, not yet. Because in mothering, my measuring stick is not whether the floors were vacuumed (they weren't), or even if nobody cried (they did). It's in the strength of my relationship to my husband and children in ten years. It's in seeing my children internalize our family's values and faith. Toward this end my success remains to be seen. I don't get to say it didn't work, not yet. Clean floors and extracurricular activities, well, all I get for them are gold stars.

Today is August first.

A friend just passed the first anniversary of her father's death. She called the week before and said, "All week I've been angry at everyone around me, and didn't know why. Until I realized the date." Isn't that a strange thing? That our emotions respond to important dates and seasons separate from any conscious thought? That's how today has been for me.

There's no cross on the side of the road, nothing that says, a life was here, and now it's not. Everything happens within. So today there's nowhere to put flowers, to acknowledge the date and move forward.

If you were to ask, I would say I'm fine. Goodness knows my life is brimming, and I cannot imagine being needed any more than I am right now. But some part of me feels the date anyway.

Carrie said this afternoon, "Not until I was a mom did I understand the verse, 'His mercies are new every morning.'" I'm counting on that. Because friends, honestly, among weeks that involve regular old hard things (not things like death or airplanes crashing into buildings), this week has been my worst in recent memory. But now it's the weekend, Asher is sleeping and eating again, and August first is almost over.

And His mercies will be new in the morning.

We have a neighbor with a little boy almost exactly Asher's age. I'm really excited about this, both because I like our neighbor and because the older Asher gets, the more having a friend around the corner will mean to him (and me). Yesterday was the first time the boys played together, and all went well. His mom was asking what I enjoy doing besides having, teaching, or raising babies, and I was embarrassed by how many of my sentences began with, "Well, I used to ..." and "I did ..." The truth is that in this moment, 35 weeks pregnant, and 18 months into motherhood, I don't do much that doesn't involve a baby.

Then this morning I read a poem that I love and haven't heard in a while. I saw a picture that reminded me of springtime and longing. And in a rare quiet hour on a Saturday morning, I remembered how it feels to be stirred by beauty. I'm still that person, too. My mind is consumed by the tyranny of the urgent, but this is only for a season. I will think and read and do all of the things I used to love again. It felt good to remember that, that I am a whole person, not just someone's mom.

I have chosen to stay at home because I am a terrible multi-tasker. Whatever I am doing in the moment is what consumes me. It's a blessing - I don't have many regrets, and I'm not one to hold a grudge because of it - but it also means that I forget how temporary every season is, how quickly we move forward and do new things. I won't always have babies, nor will I always be consumed by them. My hope is that I will enjoy this moment completely, so that when it is over, I will not spend the future wishing I could go back. I want to do the very best in this season that I can, and when I have boys, not babies, I want to enjoy that season, too. And when I come back to the season where every Saturday morning is quiet, I want to sit on a porch and read poetry or hike and be who I am, apart from my children, once again.

Thanks be to God, for seasons and for beauty in them all.

my day, part 2, or, the gospel according to the indigo girls

Scroll down for part 1 and some great pictures.

After a few more trips down to the dock to wave at the BOPES!, feeding butter beans to his grandmother, playing with the water hose, chasing the cat for a while, walking a retired baby doll around by the hand (the same way he has been learning to walk with me), emptying a kitchen cabinet, and countless stops to bang on the piano, our trip to my parents' house came to a close. For Asher, it was better than Disney World. It was a 24-hour-party in which he was the star of the show. What kid doesn't love that?

Now, when I was 15, I was the definition of extroverted. The longer I was around people, the more energized I became. But the older I get, the more I appreciate balance. By now, I function best when I have equal parts quiet and excitement. But an hour in a car with a toddler can hardly be called quiet. Most of the time, Asher occupies himself by narrating books and noticing the scenery with what is quickly becoming a characteristic exuberance for language. I normally spend most of my travel time saying, "Yes, baby, that is a leaf." I assumed the quiet I was craving after the Asher Show Marathon would not begin until after bedtime tonight.

I was wrong.

About five minutes down the road, after remembering our day out loud (BOPES. JACK. MARMEEEEEE!), Asher asked for his blanket and pacifier. He'd already had a nap, and we normally have a strict rule about saving pacifiers for bedtime, but it was such an unusual request that I complied. He got the glazed-over look of a tired baby with a paci in his mouth, and I wondered if he was going to sleep, but he didn't. Instead, we listened to the Indigo Girls together. In between songs, he'd ask (quietly - a decibel I did not realize he was capable of using) for more music. And when he recognized a word, he'd announce it softly. "Love," he said. "Jesus!" This one was his favorite, and he repeated it a few times, smiling as he said it. "Jesus!" "Jesus!" very softly, from the back seat. "True?" "Water?" "School." And - my favorite - a word that came out of his innocent mouth as "Uck," which I am certain he thought was referring to his dad's vehicle. We let that one pass us by. This is how we rode home. Until we pulled into the driveway, Asher and I listened to the Indigo Girls, occasionally repeating the important words, and relaxed for a while.

I love the words that stood out to him. We learn language by the repetition of sounds, a thousand times over, until babble becomes associated with an object, and imitating that babble gets us what we want. How long do those little neurons have to fire before nonsense becomes substance? How many times do we hear a word before we understand it? My professor once asked it this way: "How much 'cup'ness do we really need to comprehend before we understand that c-u-p holds our drink?" It's a difficult question to answer. But the salient words for Asher, the ones that he recognized, were so sweet. I love that these are the words he's heard enough to recognize, repeat, and know that he's saying something.

Except Uck. That one was all him.

on treasures and darkness

I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. Isaiah 45:3

My pastor's family has eleven children. Have I mentioned this before? Maybe not, because I wouldn't want to give the impression that our church is as cult-like as eleven children sounds. That's a personal preference, not any sort of mandate, in case you were concerned. But my pastor's wife, as mother to eleven children, is a wealth of maternal wisdom. She has told me more than once that the best thing that could have happened to her first child was the birth of her second child. "I had too much love to give, and I was going to smother that poor girl to death if she'd stayed my only one." The phrase has stayed with me - too much love to give.

Also, lately Brian and I have been talking about cars. Both of our cars have passed 200,000 miles, and neither will fit our entire family - including the pup, stroller, and two pack and plays, not too mention guitars and the pile of what-not that is a permanent fixture in any car we own - once Silas gets here, so we're going to need another car.

Which has us talking about what exactly we need from a car, and how long we need it to last. Our conclusion: this is the wrong time to buy a good car. By good, I mean, a car that we could own and drive for several years. We don't need a car that will last that long, because we don't know what kind of car we are going to need long-term. This is the time in our lives when our needs are changing, and what's the point of spending more money than is strictly necessary on something that depreciates (for pete's sake), that may be insufficient in a few years anyway? So we're going to buy another car, but it will be our interim car. Our rebound car, if you will, to get us through. Just what we need.

Tonight I sat in the darkness, rocking Asher, breathing in his little curls, and thought about all of these phrases. Treasures of darkness. Short term cars for changing needs. Too much love to give. I thought about the blogs I read earlier - one written by a woman who knows that she will bury her baby next week, another by a friend from church who has been celebrating the anniversaries of her adoptions. And I thought about the verse above, given to me just before the miscarriage last summer. Everyone who has lived through darkness - which is to say everyone, given enough time - knows that kind of treasure isn't monetary. The fruit of suffering is good, but it cannot be rushed. It will happen in time, but all that comes in between cannot be diminished in an effort to find the silver lining. I have a sense that I am holding pieces in my hand that will someday fit together, but not yet. I don't think about my own darkness very often anymore, but it still feels incomplete to me. We have moved on, but I am still waiting to see the value of our experience. I am still waiting for the treasures of darkness. I don't know what that will be, for me or for anyone else. I don't yet know what good came from it, but I do know good will come. One of the great blessings in trusting God is letting that be enough - hope for the future and a belief in the goodness of God mean that I don't need to understand everything.

For now, I enjoy what I have - a toddling, talking, screaming, growing, thriving little person in front of me, and a healthy, squirmy one on the way. Future cars and future treasures remain in God's hands.

I have this recurring dream in which every time I use my debit card, the swiper is really an ultrasound, and I can see Silas. Only I see him as a little person, and not as the skeleton you see in normal ultrasounds. And every time I see him, he is laughing. He has an olive tone - like my mother's, not at all like Asher's, who inherited his father's ruddy complexion - and he doesn't look like either Brian or me. He just looks like Silas. He also does not resemble the baby girl that I dream about before every 20 week ultrasound, but who, so far, has not appeared as a member of our family. She has dark curls and rosy cheeks, and she's always asleep in my dream, curled up in a little pink blanket. She's about three months old. But Silas, in my dream, is a little older - maybe a year - and belly-laughing, not just smiling. My friend Halle says the baby girl may be symbolic, or may be a future child. I'm not sure. Every time I think it means I'm having a girl, and so far I've been wrong, but I still have the same dream.

Huh.