The Lunch on the Couch

While other parents are kept busy wondering where to put the "elf on the shelf" this season, I've faced a placement dilemma of my own, though it was a lot less cute (or creepy).

I called it the "Lunch on the Couch."

That's right. This morning Huckle forgot his lunch. Here it is, sitting on the couch like a plump, little, self-satisfied cushion, right beside his guitar (which he forgot to put away last night after practicing).

I noticed Lunch on the Couch soon after Huckle left for school -- that is, after he ran out the door, then ran back in for his almost-forgotten backpack and gym clothes, and then ran back out and was gone.

And that little flurry of activity happened 7 minutes after the following exchange at 7:40am --
t minus 5 minutes before the car pool was due to arrive:

Me, yelling up the stairs: Huckle, is everything okay? Are you going to be ready to go in five minutes?

(I asked because his lunch was still perched, half packed, on the kitchen countertop. And his backpack had a stray paper resting on it. And three minutes before that, he was still in his pajamas, eating Cheerios and staring out the family room window. Besides, it was awfully quiet upstairs, considering that departure was imminent...)

Huckle, in his most exasperated tone: Mo-ooooom! Of course I'm going to be ready. 

You can probably hear the implied, "aren't I always?" But everyone in our house knows he isn't always -- yes, he's always frustrated that I ask but, no, he's not always ready on time.

So then my dilemma:  
Do I deliver his forgotten lunch to school, or not?

On one hand, I've heard stories of the helicopter parents still circling anxiously when their 20-something-year-old kids lose a college term paper or haven't heard back after a job interview. Obviously, I don't want to follow that trajectory. Besides, I'm still steamed from our morning exchange, in which I could feel Huckle's moms-are-so-annoying eye-roll all the way from the bottom of the stairs. If he had been paying attention to the time, or had said he needed help getting out the door, his lunch wouldn't still be sitting here. And then there's his pattern of scatterbrained forgetfulness. "Consequences!" I lecture myself. "There must be consequences to reverse this pattern!" Okay, I definitely shouldn't deliver his lunch, right? It's tough love and learning from one's mistakes and all those other good, strong parenting practices I support in theory.

Ah, yes, in theory. But there's also a flip side. First, not taking Huckle his lunch goes against my maternal instincts, honed since the dawn of humankind:  if a mom has food and knows her offspring will be hungry, how could she not provide food for said offspring? Second, I technically have the time. I don't have any strict deadlines today. In the half-hour it takes me to write this post, I could drive to the school and run his lunch into the lunch room -- I could even written him a nice little note. (Or a snarky little note. No, wait. I'm resisting the urge to include a side dish of guilt, a mom version of the eye roll he gave me this morning.) More importantly, I'm trying to teach Huckle to be merciful and forgiving -- he likes things fair and done according to the rules. This inclination is admirable but tends toward legalism. I want him to not only practice justice but also to love mercy. Okay, so I should definitely deliver the lunch, right? It's the merciful thing to do. Besides, Huckle is entering the teen years with all the upcoming emotional upheaval and unmooredness and self-questioning. He's always been a solitary kid, but now he's starting to notice the popular/not-popular divisions among his peers. He says things like, "I won't mind too much if I don't have any friends when I get to high school. It's only four years." I breaks my heart. And so what I really, really want Huckle to know as he faces the teen years is that I'm 100% on his side. And if delivering his lunch is what it would take to tangibly demonstrate this, then I would deliver his lunch 50 times in one day, uphill both ways, grape by grape, on hands and knees, and all that mushy, maudlin mom stuff.

Or would that just teach him that his mom is here to serve him and clean up after him and that learning responsibility isn't actually so urgent after all?

Argh!! If only the decision would be made for me! If only I were facing a tight work deadline so I definitely couldn't get his lunch to school. Or if only I was already planning to drive right past the school, so I definitely could get his lunch to school. (And if only I didn't sound so much like Vizzini in The Princess Bride: "So I can clearly not chose the wine in front of me...")

All I really wanted to do was the right thing.

So what did I finally do, after all this neurotic waffling? Well, first I prayed one of those sheepish prayers that you don't really expect to get answered but you know is the right place to start: God, I know I'm probably over-thinking this, as always. I just want to do the right thing. Would you mind giving me a clear answer, one way or the other?Thanks.

And then the phone rang. It was my friend Connie.

Connie: Hey. Do you mind if I stop by your house in ten minutes? I'm going right past on my way to school to drop off my son's gym shoes. He forgot them in our hurry to get out the door this morning.
Me: Seriously? You're THAT kind of mom?
Just kidding. What I really said was more like: Seriously? Um. Since you'll be there anyway, would you mind delivering something to the school for me, too?
Connie: No problem. I'll be right there. 

Seriously. It couldn't have been clearer. Or more convenient. Or more perfectly timed. Or more delightful in that way God has of surprising me over and over again by giving me the very thing I so timidly, sheepishly requested. And then he throws in the bonus of showing me that I'm not the only mom dealing with the Lunch-on-the-Couch variety of parenting dilemmas.

And so Huckle's lunch is now sitting smugly on a counter top in the school lunch room. And maybe it will seem as mysterious and wonderful to him as that elf on the shelf is to other people's kids. But, unlike the elf, Huckle's lunch didn't move as a consequence of good behavior. It was a direct act of mercy.

And that's no surprise answer when you ask God to weigh in on your parenting dilemma. It's one of His favorite moves.

Modeling

Later this week, Sally and I are going to be fashion show models!

I started out with all sorts of reasons to participate:

• The most virtuous reason was to raise money for a worthy cause -- 100% of the proceeds benefit the local YWCA Breast Cancer Resource Center
• The most frivolous reason was to try out being a model. I mean, when else will I get the opportunity?
• Some minor justifications were: 
• because other cancer survivors had described it as fun
• because what could be better inducement to get serious about exercising than knowing a ballroom full of people will be looking at you?
• because I could write a totally rocking blog post about it

Sally has her own reason for participating: money. That's right, I'm bribing her. For reasons I can't fully explain (probably one of those misty-eyed mother-daughter meaningful-time-together fantasies replete with schmaltzy music and fuzzy-edged images), I really want my daughter beside me on the runway. And it's costing me $35 in cold, hard cash, paid out in 5 installments: $5 per practice and $15 for the gig.

Sally is content with her reason. This is a real cash cow for an 8-year-old.
But me? All those reasons for participating went up in smoke during the first practice.

Here's a play-by-play leading up to my "What Am I Doing Here" moment (which then nicely resolves into a cathartic Moment of Realization With Important Life Lesson. That's the standard structure of a parenting blog post, in case you haven't noticed).

The First Practice
The first fashion show practice took place in a high school cafeteria. The only way I found the cafeteria was by joining forces with a middle-aged African American woman who was hanging around the school entrance worrying that her frail elderly mother -- another cancer survivor and fashion show model -- wouldn't be able to find the right door. When we figured out where we were supposed to go, she said "Well, praise the Lord!"

I took a seat beside a tiny Hispanic woman with a hazy fuzz of hair just starting to grow back after chemotherapy. We chatted about our treatment experiences and our 8-year-old daughters. Hers, all sweet smiles and twirling energy, was thrilled to be in the show. Mine, meanwhile, sat sullenly doing her spelling homework and only looked up when she heard an organizer say, "Everybody help yourself to a doughnut."

Never mind, I told myself. This will be a Good Experience for both of us.  

The organizers marked out a "runway" with masking tape, and we models -- about 30 survivors, family members, oncologists, surgeons, radiology nurses -- were told to strut down it. I took my place in line, and the music started pumping...

Doubt hit me the moment I hit the masking tape runway. It might have been the music (not my style); it might have been the mental image of me strutting (not my method of locomotion) on a runway (not my scene; my idea of dressed up is changing out of my PJs).  

That's when I asked myself that horrible question, What was I thinking?? I hate having people stare at me! It's every introvert's nightmare. Egad, I had to take valium to make it down the aisle at my wedding without freaking out about everyone turning around to watch me. In grad school, I did fine as long as I had a PowerPoint presentation, a laser pointer, and decent data. But without those props, I'd feel... exposed. This is not what I want, I thought in a panic.

But it gets worse. As I looked back to see how Sally was coping with the loud music and command to strut, I realized, this is not what I want for my daughter.

Why, oh why, did I bribe her to be in a fashion show? That's completely counter-productive when trying to be counter-cultural in my parenting. Fashion shows are Superficial Central, right? They're where our culture's unrealistic, unattainable ideals for physical beauty leach out of the world of high fashion and latch onto the psyche of women everywhere, leaving them dissatisfied and self conscious, never feeling well-dressed enough or accessorized enough or thin enough or tall enough or curvy enough or slinky enough or whatever enough.

I don't want that for my daughter. I've done what I can to protect her from questioning how she measures up to culture's anorexic concept of beauty. In fact, I've probably gone a little extreme in the other direction, since I don't even take her clothes shopping.

The Cathartic Moment of Realization
Let's cut to the cathartic part. I beat myself up for a few days about putting Sally in a fashion show; then I talked it over with my wise friend Genna, and she helped me realize something important:  at my daughter's first-ever fashion show, she will not see a parade of unrealistic, unattainable physical ideals of beauty. She will see a tiny Hispanic woman with fuzzy baby hair and a frail, elderly African-American mother with the wire glasses. She will share the runway with my super-smart, Korean-American (male) oncologist who laughingly told me it's hard to cut back on desserts when your wife is a great cook. She'll meet the soft-spoken, idealistic, young African-American school teacher who lost her mother to cancer, and the brave, chemo-bald Indian-American woman who only wears her wig half the time, and the super-star local surgeon who wore warm-up pants to practice and runs marathons in her spare time.

At my daughter's first fashion show, she will see real beauty that comes in all skin colors and ages, all body shapes and sizes, none of them perfect but all of them beautiful. She will also see that fashion modeling isn't the most lauded type of modeling at this event. The doctors and nurses and other care providers are modeling lives of compassion and service. The volunteers and donors at the show are modeling lives of activism and selfless giving. The survivors and their families are modeling lives of gratitude and courage and joy. And we are all there to celebrate life, something those affected by cancer don't take for granted.

And I think to myself: Yes! This is exactly what I want for my daughter. I am proud to be a part of this.

Writing about Blogging about Parenting

I have a love-hate relationship with this blog. That's the main reason I rarely add new posts.

The love part:  I love to write. I love my kids. Ergo, I love to write about my kids. You write what you know, you know?

The hate part:  Sometimes it feels wrong to write about my kids for public consumption. I worry about exposing them to scrutiny in the everlasting cyber-world. I worry about coming across as self-promoting or self-aggrandizing.

So I've done a lot of thinking lately about why I blog (as well as, should I blog). This questioning shows up in a short story I wrote this spring called "Moby Squirrel" (you can read it here! Helloooo, self promotion) that spoofs parenting blogs.

It's from a series of stories about the little, fictional town of Morris Mill. (Another published Morris Mill story can be found here!) Inexplicably, every story is about squirrels, even the ones still in my head.

"Moby Squirrel" -- with a wink toward Melville's classic --  is narrated by a mother who uses her blog to brag about her children and her over-the-top parenting methods, all under the guise of offering valuable advice. She also thinks quite highly of her blog-ability, saying "Some day my blog might put Morris Mill on the map."

And of course there's a white squirrel in the story.

I wrote this snarky, little story to laugh at myself and to come to terms with the extreme of who I don't want to be and what I don't want to do with this blog. I'm still working out what I do want from blogging.

So far, my answer is this:  For someone like me who sees life as a narrative, the world is full of stories. And a story is meant to be shared. 

My urge to write stems from that same impulse that drives you to share an anecdote. You can probably think of a time when something funny or interesting or inspiring happened to you, and you were near bursting to tell it. Maybe you called a friend or told the first person you saw or shared it with everyone you ran into that week or still embellish it at dinner parties. Sometimes a story -- whether fiction or non-fiction -- simply needs to be told and is going to throttle you until you let it out.

Sometimes you even need to tell a story despite considerable risk to yourself, your subject, and your audience. About five years ago, I attended the funeral of a beloved friend -- a World War 2 vet who had lived exuberantly and died in the full confidence of the Christian faith. The mourners were invited to stand up during the church service and share stories about Stan. Many described through their tears how they had been touched by his generosity, friendliness, or conviction. Then one mutual friend made his way up to the pulpit and told a hilarious story about joining Stan for a beer at Hooters and how Stan chatted up the beautiful waitress and invited her to church. The story was risky -- this was church and this was a funeral. But it was also exactly right -- a mood-lightener that illustrated so many of the things we loved about Stan.
It was a risk well taken.

That's what I hope this blog will be:  every story a risk well taken.

And may present readers and future readers (including my children) forgive me when I fall short of that aim.

(Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lensjockey/761639596/)

Defense Against the Dark Arts: Or, Why I Send My Children to A Christian School

This summer, our family is reading aloud the first three books of the Harry Potter series. Sally, who began the summer POSITIVE that she did not want to hear these potentially scary stories, has become so enthralled that she reads and re-reads the books we've finished and even quotes favorite passages (her favorite character is Peeves the Poltergeist). She's not-so-secretly convinced that she will receive a Hogwarts acceptance letter on her 11th birthday.

(Her proof that she is magic: "Once I was mad at Mom and then a mosquito bit her." Nice.)

Meanwhile, Huckle, who has read the whole series, is under strict orders not to reveal the plot twists and outcomes. A summer of such restraint is very difficult for his Hermione-ish knows-everything-and-must-share side. It's all very "Huckle Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" around here.

At the same time, my personal summer reading includes a steady stream of books about raising adolescents. Sigh. It's a new reality becoming more real as I order Huckle's middle school uniform (his first "real" tie and blazer) and fill out the middle school forms for the Christian school he attends.

Reading about adolescence sometimes makes my heart sink: raging hormones, emotional distance from parents, tremendous peer pressure, rampant drug use, girls & body image, and the toll pornography is taking on our internet savvy sons. Stories I have heard from and about students at our local public high school only serve to underscore the dark side of the teen years in this environment of privilege and entitlement.

It's enough to make me daydream about signing my children up for their own Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons a la Hogwarts. Except, of course, my children don't need to worry about hinkypunks, hobgoblins, and hippogriffs. No. They'll face much worse.

And then I realized it -- I HAVE signed my children up for Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons. That's the whole point of sending them to a Christian school, right? They're learning the most powerful defenses available against the most powerful dark arts in the universe.

Expecto Patronum!

Lunch Box Haiku

It's that time of year, when the lunches I pack for Huckle and Sally are boring compromises between what they want to eat and what I want them to eat. In other words, I end up packing the same foods over and over again. Why did these uninspired lunches inspire me to write haiku? I don't know. Too bad they don't inspire me to go grocery shopping instead.

A lunch half eaten?
I hand-picked those grapes for you!

Each a flawless gem.

She comes home cranky.
Famished! Her lunch is untouched
(except those cookies).

He comes home cranky.
No crumb remains from his lunch.
Another growth spurt!

Yes, it’s grapes again.
And they’ll keep coming until
you like other fruits.

Where is our thermos?
Of course — it was left at school.
Check the “lost and found.”

Purple grapes again.
Or are they? Pry off that lid…
Surprise! They’re olives!

Remember the time
I put root beer in your lunch?
Ha, ha! Me neither.

Well, hallelujah!

She wants to pack her own lunch.

(My "boring" trick worked...)

 

{image from: http://sweet-station.com/blog/2010/10/sandwich-lunch-box/}

Integrity

Sweet Huckle,
You, like every child, were born with a unique set of natural abilities. These are gifts. They provide a boost in life and help define us.

One of your gifts that has shone brightly since you were old enough to communicate is your integrity. This is a precious, precious gift that the world desperately needs. It probably won't earn you success writ in dollars and fame, but it might some day bless a parched world.

For, a gift is not meant only for personal gain; it's entrusted to one individual for the benefit of others. As G.K. Chesterton said,

Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on the earth. Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.

A natural ability also needs exercise. Someone gifted at football doesn't become a professional by sitting on the couch all day eating cheez doodles. Even professionals practice every day to maintain and improve and hone their abilities. Exercising a gift means never seeing it as a shortcut, never accepting good-enough, and never giving yourself a break this time because you know you can do better next time.

My sweet Huckle, that is why your Latin test make me proud. I didn't hug you tight for getting a perfect score. Rather, I was proud of your admission, written above one answer, that you had seen a classmate's paper and only knew the correct answer from doing so. You didn't compromised your integrity; you demanded accuracy and precision from your gift.

That must have been a hard thing to admit. Others might have justified it:
- "I couldn't help seeing the answer."
- "I usually get 100%, so it's no big deal."
- "It's only 1 small answer on the whole test."
- "I'll let it by this time as long as I make sure it doesn't happen again."

But you admitted it up front and right away. That's huge, My Love. 

As a mother, I recognize that this isn't something I can do for you; it's up to you to keep your integrity in training. Proof that you are doing so makes me very proud.

I pray that you continue to not accept good-enough, that you keep your integrity sharp. This will be hard. Life throws little rocks at us all day long that blunt our resolve and form those gray areas that make us doubt our abilities and make it harder to judge right from wrong.

Most of all, I pray that you have the courage to value your integrity more than your reputation for integrity. To protect a reputation for integrity would be to compromise integrity -- you will make mistakes. And maintaining your integrity will get harder as you get bigger. Bigger people make even bigger mistakes and care even more about what others think.

Huckle, if you read this some day, ask yourself:  how am I doing? Is my integrity still sharp? Am I using it to bless those around me?

I love you, my dear son!

Mom's Gonna Lose It!

Before having kids, I would have described myself as patient, non-threatening, and accommodating.

Not anymore! Now I'm a mom.

Almost every day I find myself near-bursting with impatience, making all manner of threats, and/or refusing to accommodate (“No! Absolutely NO pet larvae in this house.”).

I might have never known I had a Rapid Ignite Button if I hadn’t given birth to little Button Pushers. 

I take responsibility for this temper, and I'm working hard to be the patient mama I envisioned myself to be pre-kids. But – at the same time – the kids needn’t look so surprised when I lose my temper. I lose it over the same issues again and again. 

Like spilled milk. 

A sure way to make me lose it is to set your glass of milk on the edge of the table and then bump it with your elbow, so it tips over and the milk spreads in a wide fan-shape across the table and runs down all sides and soaks into the upholstered dining room chairs and the area rug. And, while this is happening, be sure you just sit there, fascinated, and stare at it instead of running to grab a dishcloth. Agh! Even thinking about it raises my blood pressure. 

(Deep, cleansing breath.) 

If I lose my temper over the same issues again and again, why can’t the kids anticipate it and run for cover or – better yet – run for a dishcloth? That's what I often wonder.

BUT, wonder no more! Thanks to this great new algorithm I just invented, the loss of my temper need never be a mystery again.

This handy little tool can be taped to the refrigerator and used over and over again to determine when Mom’s Gonna Lose It. I call it My Patented Mom’s Gonna Lose It™ Algorithm. When the points add up to at least 20, mom’s gonna lose it, plain and simple. This great little tool can be customized to meet any parent’s unique set of breaking points!

My Patented Mom’s Gonna Lose It™ Algorithm

To use: Add all relevant points as you proceed from top to bottom. 

Did you reach 20 points? Bingo! Mom’s gonna lose it!