Tag Archives: motherhood

Sometimes

22 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in In the Moment, love, parenthood

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Sometimes, your two year old spills an entire bag of Splenda, makes it snow all over your kitchen.

Sometimes, your four year old helps make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, smeared with enough jelly to make a half dozen PB&Js.

Lunch Time

Sometimes, the same two year old, fresh from her post-Splenda Blizzard bath, dips her fingers directly into the jelly jar and you realize you’re thankful that you hadn’t yet drained that bath water.

Jelly Fingers

Sometimes, you wander around the war zone of your home and realize that at any moment you could be starring on a reality TV series (unfortunately, one that would air with a promo more along the lines of “Mommy’s Going to Snap!” than “Super Mom Accomplishes It All!”)

Mess

Sometimes, you spend forty-five minutes sweeping and scrubbing that sticky kitchen table and floor.

Left Behind

Sometimes, you choose instead to sit and have coffee and stare at it, wondering how you got here. (And you wonder, honestly wonder, if you’re doing a good enough job to get everyone, yourself included, out of the house happy, healthy and mentally well-adjusted enough to face the world as adults in a little over a decade.)

But then, sometimes, you realize your oldest daughter is wearing her new favorite shirt, because it reminds her of you.

Bean

And sometimes, that same daughter comes and asks if she can help give her sticky sister a bath.

And sometimes, the look on your son’s face was enough to justify the sticky disaster left behind.

Lunch!

Sometimes, while reaching over the mess on your kitchen counter to pour yourself (another) cup of coffee, you see the flowers that your eight-year old brought in yesterday while delivering you the mail from the box.

Simply Mella Photography-07693

Sometimes, you catch a glimpse of the beauty in your disaster.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

Rest

16 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in In the Moment, Myself

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

My daughter is two and we still have our daily mid-morning routine of laying her down for a nap. The process is similar from day to day. She grows crabby, rubs her eyes, runs away howling, searches for her blanket, her bottle (the only one remaining in our house, which she is only allowed to have when laying down to sleep.)

As she struggles against me, as I smooth her soft blankets over her and draw the curtains closed, as we together do our sing-song conversation of no, Mama…yes, Evaline, as I kneel beside her, holding her still, coaxing her to let go of all of the  what-if’s – what could she miss? What wonder will she not see? Was that a car passing by? Did the kids just start playing a game? Will they watch a movie – without her!? As she squirms and as I soothe her through this daily, I envy her.

And I wonder.

How often am I running ragged, rubbing my eyes while editing pictures, snapping at my children who want/need/can’t-live-without their one-hundredth snack of the day, and who ask for it RIGHT as I am just sitting down for the first time in two hours.

And I wonder.

How different I might approach life, if rather than distracting myself in all of the blessings I find daily at my fingertips, if instead of keeping myself busy with all of the busyness of life, what if I chose to quiet myself? To rest.

What if days, like yesterday, when I found myself overwhelmed with life, even in good and wonderful ways, what if I chose stillness over chaos?

What if, while feeling my heart racing from one busy-thing to the next happy distraction, instead of jumping on the treadmill to try and run it out of me, what if I simply let myself lay down?

What if rather than indulging my own inner voice (which lately sounds more like a toddler-spinning in a disco - Ooh! Shiny! Music! Lights! Weeee!) What if I actually listened for the still small one, the voice seeking to give me peace?

Because there is, if I let myself listen, a calming voice, one that quiets my anxieties and can settle me to rest so that I can have strength to tackle every good task set before me (perhaps without even snapping at my children when they come banging on the bathroom door demanding cheese sticks that they can’t open on their own.)

And I wonder.

Can I even let myself?

Can this phone-in-my-hand, lap-top-open-on-the-counter, calendar-booked-through-November, need to be everywhere, do everything, respond to everyone (Right. This. Instant.) life even be paused?

Shhhhhh.

But there are plans to make, curriculum to explore, portraits to shoot, clients to meet, editing and post office runs, field trip permission slips to find, houses to hunt for, houses to prepare to sell, vacations to plan, contracts to be signed, kids to clean, dogs to feed, and the washer just finished and if I don’t change it over now, I’ll forget and have to re-wash it just to get the damp stink off!

Be still.

But what if I just…

Rest.

High-Five, Mom

10 Friday May 2013

Posted by in family, Myself, parenthood

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Motherhood

It’s Mother’s Day weekend and I don’t want to do sappy, tear-jerky, Hallmark card worthy tribute to how beautiful and trans-formative Motherhood is.

Not that it isn’t. Because it is.

I just really want to send a big High-Five out to all of my fellow mother-in-the-trenches out there. To the moms I pass in Target, to the moms I see at the deli counter, at the mall, sitting on benches at the park (or chasing down their toddler, keeping him safe from the big, big slide.) To all the moms who look nothing like me, and to those who do (what’s up two-days-no-shower, ponytail and Old Navy jeans Mama?) High FIVE.

I don’t care how long you breastfed (or if you breastfed at all.) I don’t care if your kid eats only organic, or if you’re a drive-thru maven. I don’t care if your kids have matching socks and sweater-sets, or if they’re rocking a chocolate-milk-stained t-shirt with a logo that says 2009. High FIVE, Mama.

Because, you see, no matter what we all look like, how we appear to the world, either the Facebook world or the actual one, we’re all really in this together and we all deserve a solid pat on the back for the accomplishments that, to any non-parent, might seem mundane.

For surviving pregnancy. High five.

For surviving pregnancy. High five. (No really, I think that one deserves at least two high fives, in and of itself.)

For learning how to change a diaper in the dark. High five.

For mastering the ancient language of tears – understanding the delicate differences between a cry of pain, a cry of fear, a cry of pay-attention-to-me, a cry of I-need-a-nap. High five.

For cleaning. So. Much. Poop. And from places you never expected. Carpets. Bathtubs. Walls. Beneath your nails. (Wash your hands first, but yes,) High five.

For Target melt-downs. And for ever having to be that mother, walking away from a full cart, with your flailing child, screaming in your arms. (Double, high five.)

For soothing fevers, teething babies, children with boo-boos.

For leaving the nightlight on.

For every hour you spend at a playground, when you have a thousand other things YOU would rather be doing.

High five, high five, high five.

For the moms who work outside the home.

For the moms who don’t.

Give each other a high five.

For ever having to play the what on earth made that so sticky??? game while cleaning.  High five.

For learning how to talk on the phone while stirring dinner on the stove, with a toddler attached to your leg. High five.

For quartering a million oranges and bringing them to soccer “games” (where children basically just run amok, occasionally bumping into a ball, perhaps while bending down to pick the most beautiful dandelion.)

For cheering, encouraging, nurturing. High five.

For literally combing your carpet with a fork to dig up every dried bit of Play’doh. High five.

For helping new mothers out with good advice based on your experience – when asked. (And for keeping your opinions to yourself, when not) High five.

For the drawer full of marker-scribbled construction paper crafts and “art” that you just can’t seem to let go. (And for the piles and piles that you secretly sneak into the trash after the kids go to bed.) High five.

For learning to laugh off just about everything, because at some point, you just have to. High five.

For every, rare and wonderful, uninterrupted trip the bathroom. High five.

For every time you find yourself sounding JUST like your mom, and then thinking that it’s a good thing.

For realizing that you really need to call her more often. (If only, dinner wasn’t on the stove and your toddler wasn’t attached to your leg. Then again, if anyone understands, it’s her.)

High Five, Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you Moms out there.  Spread the love this weekend. Do a little less glaring when you see a kid who’s screeching in the grocery store carriage. Do a little more nodding and smiling. Maybe even do a little more high-fiving, because, we all deserve it.

Can You Relate?

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by in In the Moment, love, Myself, parenthood

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

So, do you learn how to relate to them?

She meant kids, as they grow. Like, is it a natural thing, to relate to your child as s/he goes through every awkward, annoying, emotional, dramatic, temporary stage?

She asked after Alex came over with a self-made puzzle for us to solve, then marched back to create the next “level” upon our completion.

She has a two year old and a newborn, both daughters, and this eight year old boy is about a universe apart from where her life is at right now.

I wanted to tell her, Oh, sure, of course. Motherhood is just that magical, that somehow I get every knock-knock joke that leaves him doubled over on the floor in nonsensical laughter, or that his need to draw and explain pictures in vivid detail (including the conversation bubbles, which I could very well read myself) is just as endearing now as it was the first 5,000 times he has presented them to me.

I wanted to tell her that, thanks to motherhood, my patience and understanding has grown and multiplied with each year and that, yes, unequivocally, I relate to my children right where they are.

But I couldn’t.

I don’t.

And the truth is, not only do I not relate to where they are now, I sometimes find myself looking past where they are and longing for them to just get to the other side already. Why can’t they just skip ahead and be rational human beings who get my sarcasm without looking at me like a wounded bird every time I try to be a little funny, at their expense, and fail.

And the truth is, as much as I write about my trials with my daughter, it’s my perfect-in-school, wants-to-please-everyone, child I’ve had the longest, my sweet, soulful Alexander, who I have the hardest time relating to (at this exact moment in our family life, that is – which is always subject to change, as we all do.)

In the moments before we left for a short two nights away, Alex was in a panic over not being able to find his favorite blanket. In the rush, with the other kids already packed into the car and my eagerness to get on the road, we went back and forth for a moment. When he finally did find his blanket, he made some small remark, a slight against me, pointing out how he had been right and I had been wrong, spoken in uncharacteristically disrespectful tone for him.

In an oh-no-you-did-not huff, I snatched the blanket from him and told him to go get in the car. I put the sad little blanket on the counter and marched out the door behind him.

He sniffled and wept as he buckled himself in the back of the van.

I started the engine and silently reassured myself, over-and-over, as I drove away from our house. You were not out of line. He cannot be disrespectful. He needs to set an example as the oldest. He needs to learn about actions and consequences. He needed to learn that being humble is more important than being right. Besides, he’s too big for a baby blanket anyhow. He needs to grow up.

In the back, he stopped sniffling. He thanked me for his breakfast sandwich. And as I pumped gas, I realized that I had forgotten something of my own at home. I would have to drive back.

And I, of course, would retrieve the boy’s blanket. (What was it I wanted him to learn again? Being humble is better than being right? Something like that?)

You see, at this moment, Alex is eight, heading toward nine, and I sense the coming of the moment when his first footfall out of Neverland, out of all of the innocent magic of childhood, is going to rattle my world.

Will we relate to each other better then? Both of us on this side of the glass, co-conspirators in the magic that will continue for his siblings – will we see one another more clearly? Will he suddenly get my humor and I his? Will we understand?

I do not know.

Just as I did not have an answer for my friend yesterday.

Turns out all that I do understand, so far, is that this whole motherhood thing is just blind love and devotion. It’s laughing when jokes aren’t funny. It’s kissing when you know that boo-boos aren’t so bad. It’s listening to endless tales of mysteries that you know are not real and pretending with wide-eyed wonder each Christmas and Easter morning, no matter how groggy and sleepless you are. And sometimes, it’s turning back home to let your child hold onto the unraveling blanket that has covered him since birth.

It’s remembering that every phase, even every painfully un-relatable phase, is fleeting (and hoping, with every new morning, that the relationship we’re building, is not.)

Before It Passes

18 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by in In the Moment, parenthood

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

We wake up in the morning, every morning, to a mad dash. Squirt mustard on bread, start coffee, fumble through the deli drawer for lunch meat, fight with plastic wrapping around the box of juice boxes, find lunch boxes, see incomplete homework on the table (now dotted with milk drippings and soggy Cheerios), and shoes! Why don’t you have your shoes on yet? Lila, your hair! Grab a brush, bring it to the car, Backpacks! Go, go, go, now, now, now, mooooove!

Our lives are divided by bus routines, cluttered by paperwork, by needing to pass our parenting decisions through the proper channels (I’m sorry, but no, Alex will not be in school today. Why? Because I said so. That ought to be good enough, seeing as I am his mother.)

Thing is, I have always had a beef with public school, or with the powers that be forcing me to conform their ways. I resented having to go to school for such long hours, when most of what I felt like I was ever doing was staring out the windows, watching cars drive past and wondering what the world was actually like.

I tested well. I collected my honor roll rewards from my parents. I received praise on my report cards.

But, the truth is, I have retained approximately zero of what I was supposed to have learned in high school. Sad to say, I believe I have retained very little of what I learned in college either. My brain doesn’t hold information for very long if it is only processed via lectures and notes and test-taking.

I know this, because I cannot tell you much of what I learned in AP American History, but I can tell you, in detail (and even some broken Romanian) about Romanian culture and the country where I spent a semester in college. You see, I did not sit in classrooms, I worked with people, I spoke with people, and I learned out of a true desire and need. As it turns out, I need to live, to learn.

And now, as a parent, I find myself again being asked to conform our very busy, very family-centric lives into this small one-size fits all box that doesn’t seem to have changed at all (for the better) since they first put me in it years ago.

There’s a scene in the movie My Best Friend’s Wedding when Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney are on a ferry where she feels the weight of a moment as it’s passing. On one side of the bridge is possibility, the other, a closed door. The moment opened, presented itself, then closed.

I’m feeling this weight more and more so these past few weeks, though not in terms of a lost romance or missed relationship (still quite happy with Vinnie, and expect to stay that way), but in terms of my children.

This coming year feels like a bridge moment for us. We are hoping to be moving and will most likely be leaving this town. Pulling our kids from one school system to another mid-school year doesn’t seem very fair.

And their ages now seem to be perfectly aligned to start. At eight, Alex is responsible, a good learner and a good teacher for his siblings. At six, Lila has the basics down and does well when working with Alex. Asher is four and will just be starting preschool, he pulls himself up to the table whenever the kids do their homework, curious and wanting to participate himself. And Evaline, well, she could do with some more structured family time as well.

To have more control over our family, over how and when and where they learn, would be wonderful. That they could learn more in a few hours here than in the seven that they spend away from home, that they could still participate in any social clubs or sports teams, that we could structure our lives around, well, our lives, sounds perfect.

In fact, it all sounds well and good and daydreaming of the fall, being free from the strings and logistics of running on the public school’s plan, it all makes me eager to just get there. To start. To jump off into this adventure, arms wide open.

Then again, not so fast.

Because the reality is this: I am not a teacher. I do not have the skill set or the patience to do the job of a public school teacher. I am terrified of messing up. I am nervous about being forced to sit down and go head-to-head with my strong willed daughters. I am anxious about being lazy, about being busy, about all of the hundreds of thousands of ways I could make a complete mess of this entire situation.

Not to even mention that most days, I count the minutes until my husband comes home, clinging to whatever shred of sanity I have left after hours of trying to cram my full time job and mothering and general household duties into every moment of the day. As irritating as it is to get my kids onto that bus, It’s just so easy at the same time. And sometimes, let’s be honest, easy sounds pretty nice.

Yet, when this paper arrived yesterday in my son’s backpack, my heart was moved again. Best Fit?

What is the “best fit” for my child? For my children? It’s a fantastic question. It’s THE question. They are certainly not one-size-fits-all, and I believe they deserve a better, broader understanding of what life-long learning means, of what education means.

And while if we do go ahead and do this homeschool thing, I am certain we will have many, many failing moments, and that my children will be leading and educating me nearly as much as I am them, I cannot in my heart find a better answer to the question of what is the “best fit” for my child than wherever God leads.

And flawed as I am, terrified as I am, I want to be obedient to whatever it is that He places on m heart as best for my family.

Joy

22 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in family, In the Moment, Myself, Spiritual

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

My twenty-two month old is in my bedroom, standing barefoot in a mess of her own making, squealing in gibberish. With her just-woke-up-from-a-nap hair and the smudges of cereal bar on her cheeks, she looks like a homeless, uncared for, disaster. Oh, but, her smile.

Baby Goose

There are moments when I am ninety-five percent certain this is how God sees me. Babbling nonsense, barefoot in a pile of laundry, but so. Darn. Happy. No, better. Joyful.

Happiness is an emotion brought on by circumstances. Happiness is warm sun, fresh-picked blueberries, tight toddler hugs around your neck, finding a twenty-spot in your pocket. It is a sweet kiss on the cheek or an unexpected you’re beautiful.

Happiness is fleeting and human, but joy, is spiritual and sustaining and you don’t need to have anything circumstantial, or be anyone spectacular to possess it. It’s for everyone.

I don’t need to wait to survive this season of my life to claim it. I don’t need to put my joy on hold until I have a larger, cleaner house and four well-grown children and all of this chaos has burned out and refined me in the process.

No.

Joy is not the end result of an arduous journey or the reward for patient misery, joy is for us, right here, right now. Joy is for me, even here in this trailer park, in this ever-growing mess of children and clutter and clothing.

Joy is accepting grace, trusting in the creator of the path that you’re on and embracing the moment.

I am grateful for every happy moment along this journey (which seems extraordinarily long about this time of year – mid-January in New England.) I am grateful for the things that go better than expected and the little happy notes that carry me through the day. I am grateful for coffee and for friendships, for dark chocolate and cuddling by the fireplace. I am grateful for gifts of happiness.

But mostly, I am grateful for this joy that swells in my heart, regardless. Even when it’s three AM and two of my children have crawled into my bed and made it impossible to rest, or when it’s one in the afternoon and I still have sticky floors to clean and counters to wipe. Joy.

Call me crazy, but I can’t help but want to close this post with a – can I get an amen?

Because joy is good and it’s right there for the embracing, no line to wait in or journey to complete – just claim it.

So. Can I get an amen? 

Amen. Hallelujah.

Laundry, treadmill and dishes – here I come.

Words with My Daughter

28 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by in family, In the Moment, Myself, parenthood

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

I’m remembering back to the terrible twos (when I wrote this) and then to the time when everyone told me, Oh, three is WAY worse than two.

Then it was, Oh, no, no. It’s FOUR that will get you.

Followed by, Five is where the growing pains start to really hit.

Standing here with my daughter and the age six looming in the not-so-distant future, I am more certain than ever that it’s all bunk.

Every age with her is going to be difficult and I need to stop taking it all so personally.

Dinner, two nights ago. The boys came and sat, waiting to pray. Lila scowled from her bedroom and announced she did not want to eat. And I – just flat out exhausted from the circular arguments she has had me running in lately – I took a breath and held my tongue.

The boys prayed and started to eat. Lila whined back at my silence as though I had spoken, Because I just don’t want to eat,  I just want to finish with these LEGOs!

I poured the boys their milk, took more deep breaths. She moved to the door frame and huffed loudly, stomped her foot.

I just don’t WANT to.

Evaline tossed her broccoli on the ground. I bent down and scooped it into my hands. I felt the small breeze of Lila moving behind me.

FINE. I’ll EAT.

She sat. She ate. And I marveled at the energy and passion with which she had just fought – with herself alone.

It’s not about her and I. It’s not about ME at all.

It’s about a little girl figuring out how to be a bigger girl. Perhaps what she needs from me, while she’s in the trenches of this battle, is a model to look towards, not an enemy to struggle against.

Last night, as though I had learned nothing from the evening before, I heard my own words as I scolded her:

No, Lila, you are not cleaning. Whining that you ARE cleaning, while you are laying on the middle of the bedroom floor is NOT cleaning. If you were DOING more and SAYING less, we would not be arguing. 

Lila, if you were doing more and saying less, we would not be arguing.

Melanie, if you were doing more and saying less, we would not be arguing.

You see, at heart, I am still a little girl trying to figure out how to be a bigger girl, a woman trying how to figure out how to be a mother. And sometimes, I am still like her, fighting for no reason, arguing against silence, stomping my feet.

It takes time for me to learn and grow.

It takes patience for me to sit and listen.

It takes prayer for me to take a breath and hold my tongue.

It’s going to take a lifetime for me to learn to be my daughter’s mother.

And, lucky me, I have two.

Just a Blog Post

14 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by in In the Moment, Myself, parenthood, Spiritual

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Just.

It’s a word that has its place.

For example: I just had a salad for dinner, so I’m still hungry.

It suggests only, or small, or weak. It suggests lacking.

And so I’m finding myself a little confused as to why it has been circling around my heart lately, hitching a ride in conversations I’m having with friends over coffee, or online, in the expression: I’m just a mom.

The wonderful Jenny from At the Crossroads touched on this concept in a recent post, talking about how mommy is a verb.

She is right. A mom is active. A mom is passionate. A mom is busy. A mom is chaos and a mom is beauty. A mom is not something to be taken lightly.

And a mom is certainly not just anything.

I’m not even going to get into all of the (now cliche) roles that motherhood takes on- taxi driver, housekeeper, personal chef, dry cleaner, nurse, etc, etc and on and on.

A mom just carries the emotional weight of her family on her heart.

A mom just worries and prays and cares.

A mom just builds a home where her family feels safe and their needs are met.

A mom is just the most important and influential person in her child’s lives.

(And her children are just the future of this world.)

So you can just pack that little four letter word up and bring it back to the salad bar, thank you very much.

And while I’m at it, let’s just stop using that word as though we are apologizing for any of our efforts. Moms and not moms, men and women, everyone. Be who you are, accept who you are and live as who. you. are.

Jesus Christ himself was humbled before men, even to death on a cross, but I don’t recall seeing the words Oh, I’m just the son of God in any red letters. Something tells me he knew better than to suggest his creation, even in human form, was lacking.

And me? I’m just a child of God.

And you are just a child of God too.

And this, this is just a blog post – not a magazine article, and not something that too many folks will ever even read. But they are my thoughts.

Even as just a mom.

Letters to my Daughter: Ice Cream

20 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by in parenthood

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , ,

We bought ice cream today. Royal Banana Split. Three flavors with three toppings, all in one carton. It’s Neapolitan on steroids with chunks and fruit and chocolatey swirls. It smells like an ice cream parlor when you peel back the lid.

Shortly after we got home from the store, you came clamoring into the house. I was still putting away the groceries, had just tucked our dessert into the freezer, when you breathlessly begged at my hips, the ice cream truck, can we get something from the ice cream truck?

Uh, no.

You seemed a little taken aback by my rapid response. Had I not heard you? It’s the ICE CREAM TRUCK. Please, please? I have a dollar.

No, not tonight. We already have dessert waiting. What I wanted to say was: I read you the description on the ice cream carton, you chose the one you liked best, I bought it and don’t want to ruin your appetite for it with a one dollar, frostbitten, Bomb Pop.

After a heavy sigh, you ran back outside.

I put away the rest of our groceries and thought how I wish you had stayed and we could have talked more about waiting for the best and not jumping for what’s easy or fast or driving slowly down our street in a musical truck with pictures of Sponge Bob and Power Puff Girls, frozen and on sticks with bubble gumballs for eyes.

But you are only five and this is a big lesson, one that some people never learn.

You see, we are all designed for the best. Trouble is, so many of us get caught up in the here and now and the it feels good (and who is it hurting anyhow?) moments that we lose ourselves. Piece by piece, bit by bit, we leave a trail of ourselves behind until, if we’re lucky, we wake up and start the process of finding our way home again, Hansel and Gretel style.

But, Lila, that’s a whole forest of questionable memories to backtrack through and a whole lot of pieces to try and glue back together.

Be satisfied with what you have. Be thankful and be patient. Save yourself a world of hurt and heartache.

This isn’t a matter of good things coming to those who wait, it’s a matter of your God preparing good things for you – blessings, relationships, a solid future. And the joy you’ll find in what he has in store will make everything else seem, well, like a pile of Bomb Pop wrappers and Popsicle sticks – colored sugar water, trash, a mess.

Don’t be deceived by the jingle on the truck – or, someday, by the grin of the first boy to tell you you’re pretty (and certainly, not ever by the people who will try to make you feel less than worthy of goodness.)

Save your appetite, Bean. You are worth more than you understand. Don’t settle for a Bomb Pop when you have a specially chosen, Royal Banana Split Sundae waiting.

Motherhood and Technology: It’s Okay, Really

31 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in family, Myself, parenthood

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I feel as though I have been reading a lot of anti-technology, put away the smartphone, the laptop, the Kindle Fire and pick up your kid blogs as of late. And I get it. I definitely do. My children are only children for this moment and I want to be present.

I want them to remember me as being with them, not as looking past them to a smartphone, playing Draw Something while they’re trying to show me their latest hula hoop trick.

And even for me, I want to be here and now. I want to remember that hula hoop trick and the grins on their faces when the hoop finally shakes its way down to the ground and they run off to their next adventure.

This is not in defense of texting during your kid’s tee-ball games or playing Words with Friends during church – but I have to say that I don’t want to be made to feel yet another layer of Mommy-guilt for having Facebook open on my counter while I am making lunch.

So, this is a little shout out to technology, because I distinctly remember the long dark winter days when I was home – alone – with my first son. This was in the days before Tweeting, before blogging and Facebooking. He may have even preceded that glittering mecca of Myspace.

While my friends were still out there in the real world, I slowly adjusted to my new life at home, buried beneath mountains of laundry, catering to the whims of a miniature person who couldn’t even give me the courtesy of a thank you smile when I wiped his bottom for the thirtieth time in a day. Somehow an email or two from friends or a Nextel Walkie-talkie style How’s it going from my husband just wasn’t cutting it. I was in the pit, so much so that I can remember getting weepy watching VH1 Behind the Music.

Emphasis on: I was watching VH1 Behind the Music.

Sure, it could have been hormones and the bumps of adjusting from a 9-5 life to suddenly living a 24-7 life of laundry, bottles and poop, a life of financial frustration, all while starting my master’s degree remotely. But really, I think I was lonely. Being a new stay at home mother is long, lonely work.

Then, I stumbled upon blogging. Now, Alex, (or, The Boss, as I dubbed him) had a larger audience than just me. And now I had a connection to a world of other people who understood right where I was coming from, because they were there too. From late night feedings to the sweet joy of an afternoon nap beside my baby, they felt me. From laundry cluttered, kid-overrun living rooms everywhere, we united.

And so, thank you, technology, thank you internet and blogosphere, thank you Mark Zuckerberg and Flickr and WordPress. Thank you for helping me stay connected with friends I would have probably lost touch with long, long ago. And thank you for creating spaces for me to reach out with other mom’s in the battlefield and for the other artistic friends I would never have met had this creative, open space never been founded.

Thank you, for helping me forget that VH1 is even still in existence (it is, isn’t it?) because my life is too full for lame television. My life is lived here, in this house, with this family.

And also a little out there too, so that if there’s ever another lonely stay at home mom in need of a lifeline, I’m here to say, you’re not alone (and that laundry can wait. You go enjoy your baby, every single moment you have.)

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 77 other followers