Baby News

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Fruit and Nuts

A few days ago I read my dear friend Christine's blog post about Mother's day, and as I read my head was bobbling up and down in agreement and complete empathy.  You should definitely go read it, if you haven't already, but I'll sum up.  She says that this Mother's Day was bittersweet for her.  That her children still have difficulty dealing with a day to honor someone else.  Sure, they can hold their stuff together, at least until the day after.  Maybe even completely.  But why?  Well, because they know what happens when they trash a special day.  There are consequences, and they have to make repairs.  They have stuff they want to do this week.  Restitution and repair aren't on their short list.  So though it is a victory of sorts, it still has little to do with loving and honoring Mom. 

I submit that it is.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  What does that even mean?

I think about emergencies, crises, chaotic times.  These are the times that love is most necessary, yet so often absent.  We kick it into overdrive.  We do what we have to do to get through.  Sometimes survival is all we can muster the energy for. 

So what happens when you live in survival mode from the day you are born.  Children are naturally self centered, even cherished, nourished children.  They have to be taught to look beyond themselves.  It takes time and patience, and when we see it happening, we know that our children are growing to maturity. 

My first reaction to my traumatized child's survival mode is to say they are completely self centered.  They look out for number one.  They make sure they get their share.  They fight for it if need be.  But this is a superficial understanding of the situation.  My child is not loving their self, because they battle against that same self, at the same time they battle everyone else. 

My child is trapped in a place where they can only fight for themself in this very moment.  It's an emergency, a crisis.  Adrenaline is flooding, fear is consuming.  There is no tomorrow, there was no yesterday.  They cannot even have empathy for their own future self.  They do not care if their actions in this moment will cost their self dearly.  They have no compassion for their own future tears or regrets.  They don't give a damn about the loss that child of tomorrow may suffer.  I have seen them weep for their own stupidity, and cry out how much they hate that child of an hour ago, that made such a mess for them to have to deal with.

Part of growing up, part of learning to love ourselves, is learning to discipline ourselves in the moment.  The child learns to predict an outcome.  They learn to empathize with their future self, understanding how they may feel with that outcome.  They make their choices based on that understanding and empathy. 

Their world begins to expand.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Life is not an emergency.  I am not in crisis.  I can have compassion on myself.  How might it feel to have compassion on another?  I experience kindness.  Can I share it as well?  Reach inside and find that there is something there, other than fear and adrenaline.  The fruit of mature self discipline is sweet, and there is enough for myself, and plenty to share.

Learning to discipline our self for our self, is the budding of the virtue of self discipline.  Learning to discipline our self so that we may properly love others is the mature fruit.  And so while the immature, hard little fruits are still bitter in our mouths, they are there.  Given a full summer of sun and rain, I have hope that they will grow and ripen.

Of course Christine knows this as well as I do.  I am truly preaching to the choir here.  That's what we do.  We speak the truth of our situation, and our heads bobble up and down in agreement.  I know how you feel, I feel that way too.  Then we go our way, thinking about it, turning it over in our mind, probing it for more than our own emotional reaction, probing it for the truth.  My emotions tell me the fruit is a little bitter and hard yet.  I feel the urge to spit it out.  Wait a minute...what am I saying here?  That's fruit mama, that's FRUIT!

For The Working Mom

A sometimes free-form, sometimes rhyming poem by Boo, in honor of my birthday and Mother's Day.  A departure from her usual acrostic style birthday card, it was attached to a pan of rice custard pudding (one of my favorites), that she had labored over for hours, throwing away more than one failure before achieving success.  In the world of RAD, nothing is sweeter than rice custard pudding and a poem on lined notebook paper.

there are so many words i could use to describe
what you do, and how, and why 

now the what, that's most easy to explain
they are very practical things for which you need a rather large brain
cleaning, i would say, is the most heavily done
which you find can also be a lot of fun
(except for cleaning my unmentionables)
cooking you do, more often than not
and when we rave about your soups
your heart becomes softened
sewing, i would say, is your most meticulous job
which you prefer to do alone, away from your children-mob
(and sometimes even dad!)
life lessons you teach are also quite important
you've helped me out of many rough spots
and helped me get my life sorted
(dad is always there too!)

now the how
i think explaining it is a no-brainer
cleaning and cooking with your hands
i've seen nothing stranger
now, the sewing , i would say,
is done with use of your mind
and your hand-sewn jobs
as a result are one-of-a-kind
the life lessons are given with mind and mouth
which are the very same lessons
that you've gone through
with the very same how
(how, meaning solution)

now the why is much more complex
and time consuming
this definitely needs the most explaining
and the most reviewing
there are many reasons why you do what you do
but the first, and foremost
is just because you want to
from this i choose to expand very greatly
because the in-depth reason is actually very stately

the main reason you want to is simply this:
you care enough to want to
you care enough about your family
to want to keep our clothes clean
you care enough about your family
to want to give us the advice we need
and all because you choose to

and the fact that you do all this
with no complaining, whatsoever amiss
makes me carry a great respect
because of the fact that i am so thoroughly impressed
(and because i appreciate your work)

so for the working mom i have this message:
thank you
i hope you know just how much you are needed
and the simple knowledge
just how much you are wanted
for the working mom i say it again
thank you
and i hope you comprehend
the sincerity of this message.

Baby Update

Blogged here.

Pets...the Bitter and the Sweet

I have always felt sorry for folks who don't love animals.  And secretly I have suspected something might be wrong with them.  I am a true, dyed in the wool, not entirely rational animal lover.  I will labor over whether I should spend an extra twenty cents on a higher fat content gallon of milk, yet a plunk down the insane amount of cash required to buy a bottle of insulin for my cat.  My animals make me happy in a completely uncomplicated, albeit expensive way that humans have yet to aspire to.  This doesn't mean I don't complain and grouse when the poodle steals half a pound of fudge, vomits it all over my entire house, and requires emergency vet care on a holiday.  I do, and loudly.  When the elderly cat slowly claws her way up onto my bed, shredding both my quilt and my leg, I yelp.  But over all, my pets make me smile more often than anything else on this earth.  This may be directly related to the fact that I have a poodle.

Along with the sweetness comes the bitterness of losing them.  Unless you get yourself a parrot or an elephant, you will likely outlive your beloved pet.  This week was a bitter week, losing my sweet mama goat after twelve long years.  She was at least four years old when I got her, so she had achieved elderly status in goat years.  More than four years ago when our girls came to us, life was thrown into the maelstrom, and the pets were neglected in the chaos.  It was a very mild early winter, and most of December that year was more like October or early November.  The problem with livestock and mild weather is this, that when it is warm they choose to sleep outdoors on the ground.  Unfortunately, if it turns suddenly cold, they can actually freeze their limbs.  One morning Baby Boy came indoors, frantic because my mama goat had let out a horrible cry upon rising, and was struggling about her pen.  I ran outdoors in my PJs to check on her, and the girls took the opportunity to begin swinging from the chandeliers.  I was so angry at them, that I made them come outside and buckle up in the truck, and I told them I didn't care if they ate each other, but they were to stay put while I took care of the goats.

I was quickly flooded with guilt, knowing I had not been keeping a close eye on much of anything but the girls, and all of the pets (and humans) were suffering for it.  Thus began a regimen of geriatric goat pampering, that involved thawing out in a crate in my kitchen, warm bottles of water with a twist of molasses, and a blanketed crate in the barn on any night that dipped below twenty degrees.  I was acutely aware that she could have died because of my inattention.  I was also aware that every one of our animals was stressed by the chaos reigning in the house, and that I had ceased to take joy in  the pets, seeing them only as another taxing chore.  Nursing my goat back to health, and pampering her for another four and a half years was the gift of that stressful, remorse filled morning.  I was suddenly, instantly aware of how heartbroken it made me to discard my pets each day, in order to feed the endless needs of my children.  Pet care became my self care.

A few days ago, Baby Boy again alerted me to trouble, and again I ran to the goat pen in my PJs.  The news was not good.  Somehow in the space of one rainy day she had failed to the point of not being able to rise.  We gave her some warm water and vitamins, and tried to entice her to eat.  She sniffed at grain, and strawberries, and soft green hay.  She was fat from winter, and her black coat was glossy and thick with winter fleece.  She looked the picture of health, but I could tell something was very wrong, and that her old lady frame would not survive it.  She laid in her house all day, baaing quietly whenever the other goats would make noise.  She sounded fussy.  I checked on her at bedtime and she was quiet.  She died during the night.

Yesterday I cried on and off all day, and went out in the thin spring sunshine to finish mucking her pen and clean out her little house.  Beloved husband and Baby Boy took her body to the vet for disposal, and Hippie Boy helped me muck the pen.  Mark that down in history.  As we worked, he asked me what appeal all of this held for me, that it did not hold for him.  I shrugged.  I don't know why I love to clean up rotting hay and manure, or stand listening to the movements of these funny little animals.  In my mind's eye, I can see back through a dozen Springtimes, see other barns and goat pens.  I can hear those same soothing sounds, smell the same rotting hay, and see my children playing with the kids.  I can feel the hours spent sitting on a crate, brushing the raggedy fleece out of spring coats, a black head leaning in with eyes closed.  "Please brush my neck and scratch my knobby head."   The lawn is littered with giant gray balls of wool, and I tell the children that the birds will line their nests with them. With my mama goat passes the image of a petite little girl struggling to "herd" her to her pen in the morning, or sitting at the homemade milking stand, racing to finish the milking.  Long gone is that little girl, grown to a woman, and the little boys that sat in the hay to hold the wriggling kids are disappearing as well.  Even the crazed little girls buckled into the backseat of the truck are gone, replaced by quiet, composed teens.

Our pets help us mark time and places, and at no time more than when we lose them.  We remember the day we brought them home, how old were the children, what house did we live in.  Almost every day of their lives, they do the very same things.  They are, after all, beasts.  It is easy to let them blend into the background of our lives in a way that our human housemates will not tolerate.  It is easy to take for granted all the quiet delight they can add to our lives.  Then in an instant they are gone, leaving a hole we did not anticipate. 

Ode to the Queen Bee

I was suffering through enjoying a snow day with my children, when my phone chanced to ring.  It was a dear friend, who lives far enough away, that she was surprised to hear about my snow.  They were having rain.  Later I hung up the phone, and Baby Boy remarked that I had been on the phone for A LONG TIME.  Yeah so.  And it was a long time, but not nearly as long as we've talked before.  I couldn't begin to number the hours we have whiled away typing emails, chatting on the phone, talking in person, deep into the night.  We haven't known one another since we were girls, but it seems as though we should have.  Memories of childhood birthdays and slumber parties seem built in.  The fact that we grew up in different states and graduated ten years apart makes no difference.

Last year, when I went to Orlando, I wasn't sure why I was going.  Of course now I know how incredibly important my Orlando gals are to me, and how they enrich my life.  I guess I could say, I didn't know what I was missing.  But so many of them (both last year, and this year too) were doing this thing solo.  They felt so alone, isolated, craving one other person to reach out to that would understand their unconventional life.  Part of going to Orlando for me I realized, was to understand how good I had it.  I already had that one person, and they had me.  And even more amazing, we had a history that went back farther than adoption.  We had begun our adoption journeys at roughly the same time, taking different yet similar paths.  Still we knew one another before, and now in the midst, and someday we plan to be old ladies together...no children allowed.

For many years we had been friends turned to sisters.  Our children were born, one after the other, and grew together like cousins.  Our husbands were friends, often brother-like, snoozing on opposite ends of a couch, like mirror images.  We moved, they moved, we moved again.  Sometimes we have lived close together, now spread apart.  Nine or ten years ago we began our adoption journey.  Had they not begun theirs as well, no doubt ours would be a tale of yet another close friendship lost, as lives diverged and drifted apart.  I have always been grateful for this, not fully comprehending the miraculousness of it.  My Orlando girls helped me to see it for the treasure it is.  Such is true friendship.  C.S. Lewis describes this in his book "The Four Loves", and I would not presume to try and say it better.

One knows nobody so well as one's "fellow."  Every step of the common journey tests his metal; and the tests are tests we fully understand because we are undergoing them ourselves.  Hence, as he rings true time after time, our reliance, our respect, and our admiration blossom into an Appreciative love of a singularly robust and well-informed kind.  If, at the outset, we had attended more to him and less to the thing which our Friendship is "about," we should not have come to know or love him so well. You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. 

In a perfect friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest.  Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters.  He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company.  Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others....Life, natural life, has no better gift to give.  Who could have deserved it?

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