When The Stars Go Blue

It took a little longer than I had expected but my dad’s headstone was recently placed on his grave.  I drove out with my mom, brother, and sister to see it this morning.  It’s about a twenty minute drive from Maplewood to the cemetery where my dad is buried, up north.  You know how when you’re driving along, your mind is thinking of something else, and then all of a sudden you arrive to your destination, but you can’t remember how you got there?  That’s how it was today.  It’s a suitable metaphor for life really, meandering from place to place, not really focusing on being in the moment and then the next thing you know you find yourself in a cemetery. 

Today we step out of the car and it’s cold out.  We had to order a bronze marker for dad, since he is buried in the part of the cemetery that only accepts bronze, which are considerably more expensive than granite markers.  I laugh because dad is in the penthouse suite of the cemetery.  He is buried close to my grandma, so we say hello to her while we’re there.  We pass by my sister, just a few graves down, and stop for a while.  I cry every time I see her headstone which isn’t very often and today I do it again.  She was seventeen when she died.  We finally get to dad.  It’s a simple and elegant marker.  It looks like we’ve spent a lot of money on it but in reality we bought the cheapest one that we could find since my mom doesn’t have any money.  We discuss how nicely it turned out and how we were afraid it was going to look awful.  We think it’s fitting for him.  It doesn’t look like any other grave marker.  None of us have been here since dad died in June.  We just couldn’t come out and see it unmarked, especially since it takes so long for dirt to settle on top of fresh graves.  We cry.  The memories of his last months and days come rushing into my mind and I can’t take it, but I act like I can so that I’m able to comfort my mom.  Below me are the remnants of my father.  Someone I kissed and comforted and who’s hand I held not even six months ago.  My belief system tells me that I’ll see him again someday.  It doesn’t matter what you believe.  This is what I believe.  

The last couple of weeks of my dad’s life he was in and out of consciousness, but mostly out.  My brother would play the guitar next to his bed and we’d have family sing-alongs of southern gospel standards and Johnny Cash songs.  My dad’s moniker was “Cowboy Willie.”  One time he even donned his fringe jacket and cowboy hat and brought his guitar to my nephew’s school to lead his own sing along.  It was a hit with the kids and something my nephew will never forget.  At his funeral we played recorded versions of him singing “The Holy Hills” and “He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need,” old southern gospel songs.  A couple of days before he died, when everyone was out of the room, I’d take my dad’s hand and sing those songs to him, just him and me.  I know he heard me.  There was a lot of peace in that room when I sang, a lot of forgiveness and reconciling.  I know that in those moments my dad knew that his daughter loved him and would stay with him until it was time.  I promised him every time I had to leave him that I would see him on the other side, not sure if that moment was going to be the last time I’d see my dad alive. 

It’s hard standing on the grave of someone who loved life as much as my father did.  He loved to laugh.  He loved to tell stories and sing.  He was, as my husband affectionately puts it, a “crazy old hoot owl” but he was an original.  He loved holidays and always made such a big deal over them.  He was so proud of his pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving and would shove a forkful into our mouths as soon as we’d walk through the door.  “Here, I want you to try something,” he’d say.  The smell of pumpkin pie will always remind me of dad.  Thanksgiving was really tough this year.

My dad never met a stranger.  After they removed the brain tumor and before his strokes he had no social boundaries (not that he ever had many to begin with) and would talk to anyone who had ears.  They didn’t even have to pretend to listen.  He couldn’t pick up on social cues anymore anyway so even if you were rude to him it didn’t matter.  He’d smile at you and talk to you as if you were his new best friend.  That’s how he was.  He wouldn’t be rude to you, no matter how rude you were to him.  And he was never, ever rude to his kids.  He always had encouraging things to say to us.  He was so proud, it didn’t matter what we did or who we became he was just so proud that we were his.  He’d tell us that all the time, “I’m so proud of you.”  We were so embarrassed of him at times but he was always proud of us.  “Nobody has prettier girls than I do,” he’d say, embarrassingly, all the time, to anyone.  Humility was not his strong suit.  We learned it from my mother. 

My dad wasn’t perfect.  It’s a funny thing with us humans that we tend to romanticize people and turn them into saints once they’ve died.  My dad was no saint.  He had a long list of flaws.  We all do.  His just affected me a little more than anyone else’s.  He was never directly mean to me.  Ever.  One of my friends told me how she hated her dad growing up because he would say and do the meanest things to her, and now she still hates him.  They don’t even talk.  I can’t relate to that.  My dad was loving and kind and affectionate with me and my other siblings.  He was tough when he needed to be with four deviant kids, but he was pretty gentle most of the time.  When I was young he would braid my hair after my bath and I’d cuddle with him on the sofa and fall asleep in the cradle of his arm during Cardinals games. 

It’s just, and I say this as only a daughter can, a lot of his mistakes indirectly affected my view of men and of life in general.  He felt the pressures, temptations and wiles of life, just like I do now.  Only he couldn’t handle it.  He wasn't anchored to our home.  He was gone a lot.  He settled down in his later years and made peace with himself, I think.  I made peace with him too though it took me a while and by the time I did it was almost too late.  The day of his tumor removal the doctor came out afterwards and told us my dad had Stage 4 cancer and there were still “feelers” in his brain that would probably kill him in three to six months (he survived three years after that.)  I cried the entire thirty minute car ride home from the hospital.  By the time I'd gotten home, I’d forgiven my father for every mistake he had ever made. 

Six months after his surgery, sometime in August, when my dad was in his most intense cycle of oral chemotherapy, I announced that I was pregnant.  By this time, the cancer and the brain damage from removing the tumor had made my dad’s emotions and behavior a bit erratic.  He was down a lot, sleeping during the day and up at night.  We never knew what he was going to say or how he was going to react to things.  His filter was non existent.  After rounds of chemo, radiation and then eventually, the series of strokes, his spirit, that fire behind his eyes, began to wear out and change.  His personality changed.  By the end of his life he could barely work up any emotion.  He’d stare off into the distance, his beautiful blue eyes glazed over, as if the world that he used to see of fire and beauty was nothing but a landscape of dull grey. 

I did a bit of grief counseling after my father’s death.  The loss of my dad and the two hospice experiences being so close to one another understandably left me a little freaked out.  I felt like I needed to work out a few things before they took their toll on my son.  I talked to my counselor about my life, mostly about my dad and my son, and she pointed out something to me.  A lot of the words I used to describe my dad: full of life, funny, loved to laugh, sang all the time…were the same ones I used to describe my son.  The things that stood out most about my dad’s appearance were his sky blue eyes.  As a young man, my dad had black hair and baby blue eyes.  My mom used to call him, “My dark haired blue eyed man.”  My son has those same eyes.  They are beautiful and on fire.  Everyone comments on my son’s eyes just like they used to about my dad’s.  And my son laughs hard, almost like a grown man.  A friend of mine once said “I’ve never heard a baby laugh like that.”  My son also loves to sing, especially when it’s for an audience.  We had to sing “Happy Birthday” with him this year about ten times before he was satisfied.  He just has to hear a song once and he’s singing it for days.  My son loves life and life loves him. 

It’s a tangible thing, this connection of the dead to the living.  You don’t have to look far for it.  It’s our jobs to carry on and be the living reflections of those who’ve passed.  My counselor said, “Your dad lives because of you, because of your son.”  At first I thought, oh no.  I laughed at that.  It sounds so cliché.  I promise you it’s not.  When you lose your parents, and you will someday, it’s a very comforting thought that the best of them will forever be housed in you, in your children.  Yes, I know I’ll see my dad again someday.  Right now I'm satisfied with knowing that my family tree is strong and the roots that I am now standing on will last as long as skies, and eyes, are blue.

We drive out of the cemetery and back into the world of the living.  I remember that waiting for me at home is a dark-haired, blue-eyed reminder that there is so much more life to live.  He’ll meet me over at my mom’s house later today and he will burst through the door and run into my arms, “So happy see you, mama,” he’ll say.  I’ll kiss him a million times.  There is so much purpose and reason for my being alive. For generations to come my life will amount to something, and go on and on.  Driving away from a cemetery you realize that, in the simplest terms, life is a gift.  My dad’s life was a gift to me and mine to him.  I miss him now and I always will. 

I love you dad.

In Your Face

I loved my old job.  I loved going into work every day.  I always looked forward to seeing my coworkers, who were also my friends.  Looking back, they were some of the best times I’ve ever had.  I know it sounds crazy to love your job that much, but I did.  I wasn’t changing the world or researching cures for cancer, but I felt like I did my job well and I was somewhat important.  Right around this time of year I remember things really starting to pick up in the office.  I worked at a local private university and my title was “Audition Coordinator.”  I’m not making that up.  Now if you think I had any influence over the results of those auditions then my former title has misled you.  But it misled a lot of parents, who were either so upset with me that Junior didn’t get into the Theatre program that I’d hear about it for an hour, or they would try to be as nice as they could to me before the big day of his audition.  It was usually the former.  I didn’t have any say as to who was accepted into any of the Fine Arts programs.  I just did a lot of the “coordinating,” hence my job title.  January is when I’d get slammed the hardest, scheduling auditions, entering applications, compiling student files for the heads of all the Fine Arts departments and being the sole go between for incoming students and the judges of their collective fates.  I was the Ryan Seacrest of the university.  I remember working so hard that I’d actually dream of working.  Every night I had visions of flamboyantly talented students waving their jazz hands in the air and singing “Tonight, Tonight” or any of the other required numbers.  They’d point their fingers at me and sing “Let me in!  Let me in!” and I’d curl up into the fetal position doing my best Martin Blank impression, “It’s not me!  Why does everybody think it’s me?”  These were good times.  No, really, they were great times. 

My coworkers, God love them, helped me through most of those stressful times.  We were a group of young women who were constantly talking, constantly laughing, constantly pulling ridiculous pranks on one another.  For example, when a certain Justin Timberlake/Andy Samberg holiday song became popular, we took advantage of the opportunity to send one of our coworkers our very own, well, you know.  We cut out the head of a picture of Dick Cheney, put it in a box, and sent it to her.  Then we started getting stupid with it, putting a toy chick in a box, a stick in a box, a brick in a box.  Like I said, the environment was crazy fun.  Anytime I had a bad day or was dealing with more than my fair share of crap, those girls always had a million inside jokes to cheer me up.  They were, and still are, great friends.  They were, for all intents and purposes, my very own built-in social network.

I grieved that job when I left.  I did.  I missed my friends.  I missed the people I saw everyday.  Heck, I just missed seeing people everyday.  After a few months of being home alone all day with my son, I knew I needed a way to connect with people again.  I wanted friends to care about what I said everyday, to laugh with and to have inside jokes with. That’s when I discovered something powerful.  Something called “Facebook.”  Since then, my life has never been the same. 

I’m being sarcastic of course, in case you’re reading this blog for the first time.  I was so excited when I told my best friend I had joined Facebook.  She said, “God.  Why?”  At the time, I thought it was the coolest thing for me to do.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, is on Facebook.   I came up with practical excuses like, well, I wanted to get in touch with people I had lost touch with from high school and college.  I wanted extended family to see pictures of my son.  I wanted to get to know better some of my husband’s family.  If you’re looking for excuses to join Facebook, there are a million of them.  But the real reason I joined is because, and I can only admit this to you, I was just lonely.

It gets lonely at home.  Someone once told me, “No one ever told me how lonely I would be as a stay at home mom.”  I have to agree.  I get tired of baby talk.  I get tired of having all of these random thoughts throughout the day and no one caring about them.  I get tired of no one asking, “Hey where are you going and what are are you doing for lunch today?”  Or, “What’s on your mind?”  Facebook asks me every day.  What’s on your mind today Carrie?  I really appreciate that, since I always have something on my mind.

My friend who is anti-Facebook has a million reasons not to join.  She really doesn’t want to reconnect with random high school classmates.  She teaches high school and doesn’t want to get stalked by her students.  She doesn’t want to give the impression to people that she’s interested in their lives when she’s really not.  She has very strong convictions about it.  She said, and I’m summing up here, “If I’m going to be someone’s friend then I’m going to be your friend in real life.”  She said that she doesn’t want to read on Facebook that a friend of hers from college is getting married when she should be telling her the news in real time, over the phone.  That’s fair enough.  I can validate some of her points.  Truth be told, I only physically talk to about thirty percent of my Facebook friends.  I’m friends with a few people by accident because I thought they were other people, their names sounded familiar.  I admit that if some of my Facebook friends saw me in a store or at the mall they wouldn’t recognize me nor I them.  What’s worse, I’m friends with some people that if they saw me in public or even in a church they’d turn the other way to avoid me and wouldn’t even say hello to me.  It’s weird, I know.  You can judge me all you want to, but most of the people who are reading this have found my blog through my Facebook posting which proves you’re just as addicted to Facebook as I am.  So addicted that you check it not just once but multiple times throughout the day.  So addicted that you bought a phone with a Facebook app just so you could check it while you’re out and about.  So addicted to collecting friends and wanting everyone to think you’re so socially plugged in that you will friend just about any one who friends you.  It’s a rare occasion that I actually “ignore” a friend request, even rarer still that I will “unfriend” someone.  That just seems so cold and callous anyway, to unfriend someone.  I’ve only done it twice, when someone was sharing just way, way too much personal information.  Hey buddy, that’s what blogs are for. 

So what if it gives me the illusion of friends without all the comforting satisfaction of actually having friends?  Every morning I start my day with my coffee and I take five minutes to check on my page, making sure I let everyone know that I’m taking my son to the Museum of Transportation and that we’re headed to McDonald’s for lunch.  The friends who really care will always comment with a “That’s cool!” or a “Yay!  The weather’s nice!”  The best of friends will comment on the photos I post later that day and tell me how cute everyone looks.  Even better are the friends that see I've posted a new blog entry, stumble across this and see that I’ve outed them and their Facebook fetish.  Yes, I know who you are.  You are just like me.  We are the connected.  I can’t imagine giving up my Facebook addiction anymore than I could imagine giving up my coffee.  It seems like people care about me, even if they don’t.  It seems like I have three hundred friends, even if I don’t.  Until they come up with something cooler, Facebook is the place for me.  Someday soon someone will tell my son the echo of another Andy Samberg song, “Dude.  Your mom is on Facebook.”  And he will be the victim of something that is not even a proper verb in the English language.  He will be friended!

Like a Record, Baby

I woke up yesterday morning and the room was spinning so fast I thought I was Dorothy in Auntie Em’s house, right before it lands in Oz.  I even looked out the window to see if there was a green witch on a broomstick laughing at me.  I stumbled into the bathroom for some balance but the bathroom was spinning too.  I felt nauseated.  I threw up a little.  Everything was spinning.  I went in to get my son out of bed and was barely able to change his diaper.  “Well, what do you want me to do?” my husband said.  He couldn’t stay home.  His office was being moved into a new state of the art building and today was the big reveal.  All of the big wigs were coming out for it.  “I can’t stay home,” he said again, guiltily.  “I’ll see if my mom can come out,” I said.  I’ve told you a little about my mom, but what you may not know is that she has neuropathy and needs to be on pain medicine in able to function.  She has a hard time walking and I’m not elaborating when I say she’s in constant pain.  I don’t ask her to watch my son too often because of it.  It’s not that I don’t trust her, I just think any prolonged alone time with my rambunctious two year old son would finish her off.  So after much internal debate, I took the risk and called my mom to come out, which of course she did right away.  I asked my brother to come out too and drive me to Urgent Care.  Then I called my friend and told her, I’m sorry, there’s no way I can watch your son today and I secretly didn’t think my mom could manage two two-year-olds.  Then I emailed everyone in my book club letting them know that there’s no way I can host a book club tonight because I’m just too dizzy.  I had a lot going on yesterday.  It wasn’t a good day to be sick.

When I finally convinced my mom that no, I’m not pregnant, off I went to Urgent Care to find out that I have an inner ear virus.  I’ve never even heard of such a thing.  The doctor told me there was nothing he could do about the virus and it would just have to run its course, but he could give me something for the dizziness and nausea.  “It may make you drowsy,” he said.  “But it should help.  If this doesn’t work, give me a call and we can prescribe some valium which will completely relax your ear.”  Yeah, and all of my other body parts too.  Are you kidding me?  I said, “Uh.  I’m a stay at home mom.  I can’t be hopped up on valium all day.  Just give me the light stuff for now.”  I didn’t tell him that even Advil makes me a little sleepy.  As soon as I took the small yellow “light stuff” pill, it knocked me out. Light stuff, my you know where. 

I slept most of the day.  The part of the day I wasn’t sleeping I was in somewhat of a twilight phase with my eyes half open, slipping in and out of consciousness, totally hearing everything that was going on around me.  I heard my son and my mom talking and playing.  I’d sometimes slip into whatever was on  the television in the background.  I did get all of Oprah’s favorite things!  I am sponsored today by the letter W and the number 12!  Why is Judge Judy so mad at me?   Somehow my son ate lunch and dinner.  Sometime yesterday my husband showed up and took my mom home.  And somehow, I can’t even remember, I crawled my way into my bed and went back to sleep.  The whole day was sort of a blur.  I woke up this morning, about fifty percent better, with the room only slightly spinning but not the tornado it was yesterday.  I called my mom again.  She was already on her way out.  I took one look at those yellow pills and thought, forget it.  Not today I’m not.

Like I said, I’m at about fifty percent right now which means I’m lucid and well enough to write this, not well enough to drive or operate heavy machinery.  So I apologize in advance if this post in particular seems a little “yellow pilly.”  I might still be hung over from last night.

The world does not stop spinning if you get sick and are a stay at home.  I think of my friend who recently had her gall bladder removed.  She has six kids and her husband has a job that requires him to be gone a lot.  She doesn’t have readily available help from family.  I felt terrible for her.  Several people from our church took her dinners while she was recovering and a couple volunteered to baby-sit, but I thought, geeze louise.  This lady never gets a break.  They removed one of her organs, and she still has to manage her household and take care of six kids.  Now, here’s where you men might want to leave the room.  Because what I’m about to say is what I’ve heard every woman who has ever existed in the history of the world say.  Men are the biggest freaking babies.  When a man gets sick, he thinks the world shuts itself off for him.  Traffic stops.  Grocery stores close.  The Dow Jones drops.  Airplanes won’t leave the runway.  The world as he knows it comes to an end.  And who waits on him, hand and foot, runs to get his medicine, makes him soup and makes sure his children are taken care of?  That’s right.  Me.  Men have the luxury of sleeping when they’re sick, of calling into work and taking the day off so their bodies can fully recover.  They’re at home but they’re not doing anything.  They surely aren’t worried about who’s going to watch the kids when they’re sick because they know who is and who is always watching them.  When I get sick, I don’t get to call in.  I call my mommy, and sometimes mommy is available and sometimes she’s not.  I have to drag myself through the day.  I have to feed my son and I have to make sure he gets a nap, so I can get one too.  I don’t have days to give my body a chance to recover.  I have a couple of hours to reboot my system.  Viruses actually piggy back on one another in the body of a stay at home mom.  Nothing shuts down like it does for a man until we’re at the point where we’re literally unable to keep our eyes open and crawling across the floor to get to our beds. The world keeps right on spinning, and so does the room.

Now right about now if you’re thinking that this is me being crabby, you’re right.  If you think I’m feeling just a little bit sorry for myself, you’re right about that as well.  But you also need to shut it.  If you’re saying either one of those things you are clearly not a woman, or a mom, much less a stay at home mom.  You’re a big, whiny, freaking baby of a man.  So shut up.  Just.  Shut.  Up.

Sorry, that’s my little yellow pill talking. 

No Woman, No Cry

On June 9^th of this year, just one day before my birthday, my father passed away in his bedroom.  He had been on home hospice care since January, right after my grandmother died.  About a month before he died he became bedfast.  My siblings and I took turns administering the Morphine and Lorazepam required in making him comfortable.  The last couple of weeks of his life we had to take shifts, switching off days and nights to give him the medicine every hour on the hour.  We just couldn’t let our mom do it.  We were trying to alleviate some of the trauma it would have caused her after she just went through this same exact experience with her own mother.  My mom also has terrible tremors so her head and hands shake.  She couldn’t have given him the medicine anyway.  Never leaving his side, of course, I can still see my mom kissing my dad full on the lips, even when he became unresponsive. 

After the cancer and after the strokes, my dad was no longer able to function on his own and my mom had to do everything for him, help him walk, take him to the bathroom, bathe him.  At the time she was also my grandma’s caretaker.  So, with baby in tow, I took on the task of researching and visiting every nursing home this side of the Mississippi, because something in that house had to give.  We found a pretty good home down in the city, clean and reputable.  After much pleading on our parts and on the parts of her social workers, we finally and begrudgingly admitted grandma into the home.  This almost killed my mom.  My grandma didn’t make this transition any easier and constantly begged my mom to bring her home, complaining every time we would visit about the nursing staff and how horribly they had treated her.  My mom, being in fragile health and in a fragile mental state, eventually brought her home but by that time kidney failure had set in and my grandma died on January 1^st in the back bedroom of my mom’s house, with myself and my mom by her side.  She was one hundred and two years old.  I’ll sometimes hear my mom say that she wishes she could’ve been strong enough to care for both of them.  You have to know my mom to really understand this.

There were times when we thought that taking care of my grandma would kill my mom and maybe it would have if she had continued to live.  We thought that taking care of my dad would have killed her too, and who knows what would have happened if that had continued as well.  I have tried to help my mom with the care required of my grandma and dad but even I couldn’t bear the emotional weight of it.  My mom’s hands may be shaky, but they are the strongest hands that I’ve ever known. When I think about everything my mom’s been through, not just this year but in my lifetime, I feel guilty for ever feeling sorry for myself.  

Growing up, I always identified my mom as my primary caretaker.  My dad was gone a lot, and it just seemed like mom was the one who made the world spin.  I was the youngest of her four kids, her “surprise” baby.  While all of the older kids were off playing or getting into trouble, it seemed like we were always alone together.  I took notice of her early on.  With four kids on a shoestring budget, she worked her fingers to the bone.  She was tireless but faithful, even though it seemed like around every corner there was heartache.  I’ve seen my mom cry her share of tears.  She survived breast cancer in her forties, shortly after she had me.  In 1990 my seventeen year old sister died in a car accident.  This is when my mom started having heart problems.  And yet in spite of everything, even losing a daughter, she never once gave up her faith.  She still remains the most faithful person I’ve ever known.  She never became angry or bitter.  She never took her disappointments in life out on others. That’s the mark of true character, true integrity.  My mother was my first hero.  (My husband being the second.)  She has been a tried and true example of grace and selflessness to so many of her friends and family members, always opening her home to anyone who needs a place to stay.  She is the only person I know of who has never spoken an ill word against anybody.  Trying to get her to make fun of someone is a lost cause, unless it’s herself.  (I know it’s hard to believe that I could come from someone like that.  Remember, I had a father too.)  “Bless her heart” she’ll say, and she won’t even be patronizing about it.  We dubbed her “Saint Jo” because she takes in anyone who needs shelter and she loves everybody.  When my dad died, it was terrible.  It hurt me more than I thought it would and it still hurts.  His absence has been more profound than I ever could’ve dreamed.  But someday when my mom dies, I think the part of my heart that she’s always held up will collapse.  I think my world will stop spinning, at least for a while.

Tonight marks the first official night my mom will spend in her “new” house.  We’ve been renovating my grandma’s house since a couple of weeks after dad’s funeral.  I decided that enough is enough and we needed to get my mom out of her house.  The house, besides having the stigma of death attached to it, was falling in around her.  The cost of fixing up a house like that was way beyond our budget.  So we looked at my grandma’s house, got all of my cousins to agree to give it to my mom, hired a lawyer and took to the task. 

It seems like the universe has been against this renovation from its conception.  The first obstacle in our way was the house itself.  It was a smelly, terribly dark and tiny place.  After knocking down walls, uprooting carpeting, painting the walls and then painting them again to get the stink out, we had a nice clean slate to work with.  But the task still seemed overwhelming. The bathroom was deteriorating and needed to be gutted.  The kitchen was neglected and needed to be gutted too.  There were plumbing issues in the basement, sewer issues, and electrical issues.  The house seemed like a huge metaphor for every obstacle my mom has ever had to overcome. 

We needed help.  I married an Italian, and if you are familiar, family means everything to them.  So my father in law stepped up and spent days and nights working on that house with my husband.  This project could not have even been close to being accomplished without the help of my father in law.  They worked tirelessly on turning that house into a castle for my mom.  A tiny castle, but a castle nonetheless.  Our savings account shrank to half its size.  When my counselor said, “Uh, people your age don’t usually take on this much responsibility,” this is pretty much what she was referring to.  Friends and even relatives questioned our sanity.  It’s not like your mom’s ever lived in a house this nice before. Why spend all this money to make the house so nice?  Why not just do the bare minimum so that your mom can just move in right away?  I always responded to the cynics the same way.  Because if your mom went through what my mom’s been through you would do the same thing.  Or maybe you wouldn’t.  All I know is the bare minimum is just not good enough for my mom.

Although it was slow going, the house was nearing completion.  Then the unthinkable happened.  Four months into the renovation my father in law, who had run about 32 marathons in his lifetime and was in better shape than most thirty year olds I know, had a massive stroke.  The family was devastated.  My husband was crushed to see his dad unable to walk, swallow or breathe on his own.  They had grown so close, especially from working on the house so much together.  The odds of someone even surviving a stroke in the brain stem are slim.  My father in law was lucky to be alive, but there were so many complications.  He kept aspirating and having to be ventilated.  He came close to crashing multiple times. Those first few days in the ICU were one big roller coaster ride. To say that our spirits were crushed is a huge understatement.  My mother felt terrible, like her massive need somehow played a role in his stroke.  She felt extra terrible since she was on the first vacation she had taken in years visiting family when it happened.  My husband could barely bring himself to go over to the house.  Here was a project that he and his dad had started and that he so desperately wanted to finish with him.  His dad told him the night of his stroke, “Get me out of here.  We have a house to finish.”  The situation finally took its toll on my husband and he came home one night completely overwhelmed and scared for his dad’s life.  “Pray for me,” he said, as he put his head in my lap and cried.  I tried to pray, but in all honesty, in the back of my head I thought, really?  Really God, right now?  We were so close to finishing the house.  We were so emotionally drained from dealing with so much death in my family.  And my father in law was so healthy.  He was like Superman.  He could do anything.  I understood my dad being sick, he was in poor health and didn’t take care of himself, but why this, why now?  If you’ve ever had a crisis of faith, you understand that during these times it’s often too difficult to ask God for anything because you’re too busy asking Him “why?”  After I had strained to pray, my husband lifted his head.  “I wish your mom were here.  I could really use her prayers right now.” 

After that night, we started to make a plan of action.  We needed to get this house off of our plate, we needed to wrap things up and get my mom moved in.  Life was crashing in on us and we needed to relieve at least one of our stressors.  Then, one day shortly after that, our Italian connections came through.  I pulled up to grandma’s house on a Saturday and had to park across the street because there were so many cars parked in front of it.  Getting out of my car I heard a bunch of loud voices and laughter.  I walked into the house and my husband’s cousin, his three uncles, one of his aunts, and some of his uncle’s friends were installing kitchen cabinets and doors.  My husband beamed with pride.  Here was his family, doing all of this work for a woman they barely knew, my mom, because of the love they had for him and his dad. 

Tonight all of the hard work of the past six months pays off.  Tonight my mom will finally be able to rest in this house, this house that love built.  Don’t laugh.  It’s true.  The love I have for my mom, my husband’s love for me, his dad’s love for him and his family’s love for my father in law all came full circle to finish this house.  My mom will rest easy tonight.  I hope she settles in, all cozy and snug on her new sofa, opens up her Bible which she does every night, and takes it all in.  I want her to enjoy every square inch of this house.  I hope she beams with pride when she shows it off to her friends.  She deserves it.  She’s had to sacrifice so much to help those she loved.  I hope I’m half the mother she was to me, half the woman she is today.  She gave me the gift of life and now, I hope we’ve given back some of hers.  I think I will rest easy tonight too.  I hope that if she does cry tonight when she’s alone that they are the heart mending kind of tears that she so desperately needs.  The kind that signify overcoming every obstacle life can possibly throw at you.  I hope they are tears of joy.   

Panic Room

I have this tremendous feeling of great accomplishment now that my son is talking.  Everyday we explore new words and string together more phrases. You’d think that with this new development, I could relax a little now and take it easy on myself.  “Now that your son has spoken you are free to go on two weeks paid vacation.”  If only parenting were that easy.  There is no vacation when it comes to your child’s development. 

Yesterday at our play date a friend of mine announced, “Junior has gone to the big boy potty four times!”  I was so excited for her.  I asked her how she did it.  Her son is a few months younger than mine.  She casually explained that before bath time they would set him on the potty and he’d go.  Simple as that.  It’s pretty telling of the kind of year I’ve had when something like this sets me into panic mode.  But it does.  I remember that the duties of parenting stretch far beyond teaching your child to say “Let’s go other room.”  There’s something called, dreadfully enough, “potty training.”

My son is two and a half.  He’s also in pre-preschool so several of his peers have already started using the big boy potty.  Standing around talking to my mommy friends, I felt alone yet again.  Why was I the only one freaking out about potty training?  They all seemed so calm about it.  They all had great advice which I soaked in like a sponge.  I looked at my son, who was the only kid in the group with a pacifier in his mouth.  I said guiltily, “I’m going to have to work on that binky thing too.”  We call his pacifier a binky.  More casual advice came forth on how to get rid of the binky.  Again, I seemed to be the only one making a big deal out of these rites of passage.  I started confessing that there’s no way I’m ready to give up my son’s binky in public because he is too loud.  That binky plugs him up and saves me some embarrassment.  I guess it causes a different kind too, though.  One of my friends joked, “So is your son not ready to let go of the binky or you?”  “Oh, it’s me,” I admitted with only a hint of shame.  Being a first time mom, the realization hits pretty hard that I’m responsible for every stage of my son’s development.  But yesterday as I confessed in a panic to my friends, “I’ve taught my son his ABC’s, isn’t that enough?” I flash forward to my son at five years old, standing in the middle of a kindergarten classroom with a binky in his mouth saying his ABC’s in a diaper.  “He’s a genius!” I still lie. 

As a first time mom, I feel like I’m the ultimate survey taker.  I have asked my friends about everything from maternity clothes, breast pumps and formula, to what brands of diapers they like, how to get Junior to sleep through the night, how to wean him off the bottle.  Their advice is welcome even if it’s not solicited.  I collect the data, analyze it, make a database and then draw my own conclusions about what to do next.  It’s a great thing, having a circle of mommy friends.  It’s also an experiment of sorts, as the D’fferent Strokes theme song says, “What might be right for you, may not be right for some.”  It takes all kinds of methods and all kinds of mommies to “move the world, yes it does.”

This potty training thing has thrown me into a tizzy. 

A woman I know told me she just cut off her kids’ diaper supply cold turkey.  She admitted, “I’m the queen of potty training.”  I bow to the queen.  She just let her kids get wet so they would feel uncomfortable, forcing them to tell her when they had to go potty.  This sounds like a dangerous experiment to me, one that might cost me my sanity.  She’s the same person who admitted to actually taking pictures of her children’s first, uh, bathroom by-products, numbers one and two.  I can just imagine the confusion that follows any viewing of their family album.  “Isn't that cousin so-and-so?”  “No honey, that’s your first boom-boom.” 

I’ve heard friends say to not waste money on pull-ups.  Others have said they don’t know what they would’ve done without them.  I’ve heard some friends say to just put a kid seat on your potty and still others say to get them their very own potty.  Some friends have said, “You’ll know when the time is right.”  And others have said, “Your son’s not potty trained yet?  You better get to work.”  Diapers, pull-ups, undies…oh my.  I walk into the bathroom and it’s not the great place of solitude it once was.  It’s become my full on panic room.

So I tried it.  This morning I stripped my son down for his bath (which my husband conveniently forgot to give him last night) started running the water and brought in his big boy potty.  This is the Cadillac of potties, let me tell you.  My mother in law bought it for him and every time he tinkles it will sing him a song.  It has a huge smiley face on it and a little arm to hang toilet paper.  You'd think my son would love this.  It even has recorded applause for him.  He’s sat on it a couple of times before.  Granted he was fully clothed, but still, it felt like progress.  I said to him, “Look buddy, here’s your big boy potty!”  “Yes!” he said.  I said, "Here buddy, sit down on your big boy potty and try to tinkle.”  “NO!” he said.  I tried everything I could think of to get him to sit on that potty.  “Look buddy, it sings a song.  Look here, you get big boy toilet paper.  Look at that, wow!”  My enthusiasm was only creating more tension.  Now my son doesn’t want to sit on his potty and I’ve managed to make him hate the thing.  While it felt like forever, only about three minutes passed of trying on my part.  I set him in the bathtub.  I walked out of the bathroom for a second to cry.  I actually cried.  This is going to be so hard, I thought.  Why is it that the smallest defeats always overshadow our biggest victories?  Collecting myself, I went back in and sat on the toilet, fully clothed, like my son does.  “I love you baby,” I said.  “We’ll try to sit on our big boy potty some other time, okay?”  “Okay, mama,” said my sweet little boy. 

I sat down to write today and an epiphany hit me so hard it almost knocked me over.  Why did I start writing this stupid blog in the first place?  Two reasons.  The first and foremost was because I was tired of constantly apologizing for myself.  Someone on t.v. (yes, on one of those nefarious talk shows) said that his teacher told him, “Own who you are and no one can use you against you.”  I started writing this blog to tell you that, hey, this is me.  I own me.  I grew tired of feeling like I always had to apologize for myself, my inappropriate-at-times sense of humor, my weight, my inadequacies as a parent, and all of those built-in female insecurities.  Here it is, all of it.  Second, I wanted to work through this process of parenting with others, hoping that some of what I say will ring true in your life and then we can cry about it and ultimately laugh about it.  That’s it.  I forgot for a minute this morning that I’m me, not you.  Things in my home are slightly different than in yours, and that’s the way I like it.  Why should I be crying about potty training my son when I should be doing my thing, laughing about it?  This big boy potty thing will happen all in good time.  I remind myself, it will happen.  I can relax now and enjoy the ride again.  The pressure’s off, for now.

At least until it’s time to take that pacifier away.

Say What You Need To Say

My son’s speech has exploded this past week.  It started last Thursday when I picked him up out of bed and he said “So happy see you mama.”  I said, “Whaaaatttt?”  He said it again.  I kissed him a thousand times and we high-fived, which we do a lot.  I said, “Mama is so happy to see you too buddy!”  I made him say it to everyone we saw that day.  “So happy see you, Gaga.”  “So happy see you, Dada.”  “So happy see you, Pickles.”  Pickles is our cat.  Since then he’s been repeating everything I ask him to say.  I’ve worked up a frenzy of language in him.  It’s been exhilarating as a parent to watch him develop his skills, to hear word for word the daily explorations of his tiny little life.  He has understood what I’ve been saying to him for so long and now I know exactly what he wants, when he wants it.  “Let’s go other room” and “Let’s watch Super Why.”  “Let’s go mall, mama” or “Lay down with you” (he’s still a little confused on his pronouns.)  We were worried for so long that he might be behind, and now it’s as if the weight of the universe has been lifted off of our shoulders.  He’s catching up.  I breathe a huge sigh of relief.  Thank you God.  Thank you God that my son is talking.  Then reality hits.

Oh crap.  My son is talking.  

A caveat which up until now has been ignored by my husband and I, this new development means that I’m going to have to stop saying things like “Oh crap” and “Well, that sucks” around my son.  My little monkey is saying everything I ask him to say, but he also has the potential to expose me, to say things that I will never, ever want him to say.  I’m thrilled to death he’s talking.  I’m scared to death when it comes back to bite me in the…you know where.

I’m especially concerned about my son mimicking his mama’s “driving language.”  Come on now.  We all do it.  When my father passed away, he passed the mantle of his road rage on to me.  Now with a kid in the car who not only listens but talks, I’ve had to get creative.  I’m getting pretty good at making up my own “curse” words, combining seemingly non-offensive words to create one gigantic put down like boogerwompus or buttsniffer. Yeah, I have the vocabulary of a ten year old boy.  Trust me, given the opportunity I could really let it fly.  I’m not proud of it.  I inherited it.  It’s almost an involuntary reaction to call the guy in front of me a stupid idiot because he just cut someone off without even realizing it.  I have to go against my nature and calm myself down.  I especially have to do this every time I see an elderly person pull out in front of me.  (Now here’s where my husband would say that I’m being ageist and I need to have compassion on elderly people, which I do.  Don’t get me wrong.  Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be old someday.  It’s just, we have a history, myself and the elderly.  About seven years ago I was rear-ended by a ninety one year old man who passed out behind the wheel of his car. My car was totaled.  He was going about forty five miles per hour and I was completely stopped when it happened.  I hit the car in front of me, they hit the car in front of them, and oh.  It was a mess.  The accident left me with a huge scar on my forehead.  It thoroughly freaked me out, especially since my sister had died in a car accident and it took me so long to work up the courage to finally get my license.  Ever since then, every time I leave my driveway I swear the bat signal is sent up to all of the St. Louis card carrying members of the AARP to finish off the job that ninety-one year old man started. “Carrie is leaving her house.  Drive in front of her very slowly, never reaching the speed limit.  Cut her off in traffic.  Don’t turn on your signal before you change lanes.  Pull out very slowly so she has to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting you.”  Hey, do me a favor and tell your grandpa that the next time he leaves the house, to please watch out for Carrie.  She has a baby in the car and she’s trying really hard not to curse.  He might listen to you.  God knows he doesn’t listen to me when I’m shaking my fist and calling him a boogerwompus.) 

I think all children mimic their parents and it’s kind of a tell all of how creatively mommy and daddy can spin the English language.  Parents have been spinning for years.  It’s one of our instincts to turn those offensive words into cute little words for the sakes of our children and mostly for our sakes.  Think about it.  Calling it “poopie” and “tinkle” distracts us from the disgusting act of changing diapers. Calling it “spit up” is so much better than “puke.”  Having an “accident” just sounds better than “peeing your pants.”  Once you start in with the baby talk you’ll find it’s really hard to quit.  Sometimes when I’m out in public with my single friends I’ll say, “Uh-oh.  I have to go potty.”  They look at me like I’ve just peed my pants, excuse me, had an accident.

My husband was taking a bath with my son the other day and my son noticed something he’s either never noticed before or for which he’s just discovered the language.  “Dada’s winky,” he said.  I think it’s time for my son to bathe by himself.  We laughed at this, but then we remembered that we use the word “winky” about ten times a day to our son when we change him, when we bathe him, when he’s touching it too much.  Of course he’s going to use it in a sentence.  What else are we supposed to call it?  What I know for sure about most parents, if not every parent, is that we take great pains to cultivate our own euphemisms.  You know, those euphemisms.  Winky.  Hoo-haw.  Front bottoms, back bottoms.  Wee wees and pee pees.  Parents were reminded in the movie “Kindergarten Cop” the consequences of teaching anatomically correct words to children, “Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.”  That kid scared every parent from then on to only use euphemisms when describing Junior’s private parts to him.  And I can’t help it, I will always refer to a winky as a winky.  I’m pretty confident that in thirty years from now unless my genius son becomes a doctor, he will probably still be using the word winky.  I’m thirty two years old and I can’t say the “v” word.  I have to call it a cookie.  This made me the laughing stock at my former place of employment, especially during the holidays.  My sister can’t say it either.  She actually used the word “noonie” at her OBGYN’s office in regards to that very special place.  I think I’ll always be uncomfortable using the correct verbiage for, well, those places.  So, thanks mom.  But it’s not just my mom, no, it’s pretty much every mom out there.  My best friend since Junior High is an English teacher at a local urban high school, and she was actually called into the principal’s office one day after an assembly in which she addressed a group of girls and used the “v” word.  She was told that using any other word for “that” would have been more “appropriate.”  But using the word that doctors use to describe one’s womanly parts was just plain unacceptable. 

My self awareness has increased tremendously this last week.  My son began talking and now he holds a recorder up to my ears, in my face.  I’m sure that even though I have a self-censoring button, I'm afraid the batteries are going to run out every now and then.  I think this stage of development does more damage to the parents than it does to the children, anyway.  When he’s sitting in the bathtub, it’s perfectly normal for my son to talk about his winky.  I'm just waiting for the day soon when my nightmare will come true and my son combines his newfound mimicking skills with my childish euphemisms.  What I’m worried about is that the first time he does this we'll be at church and he’ll say, “Dada’s winky.  Well, that sucks.” 

Oh, I just took it there.

This Seat's Taken

As an adult, I would like to think that I’ve put aside my childish ways and have become more responsible, more adaptable and less snobbish.  I’ve even listed in several surveys on Facebook that my two biggest pet peeves are snobbishness and bigotry.  So when I am put in situations which bring out the snob in me I feel like a complete and utter hypocrite.  If you’ve ever been to the indoor play area at the mall, you will understand that what I’m about to admit to you is true.  There tends to be convergences of the most extreme forms of mothers at these play areas.  You can spot it at your local playground too, but something about the mall tends to bring out parents from every walk of life.  Maybe it’s because moms are already out shopping, or maybe because the mall is close by and since cold weather has come it’s one of the only free things to do indoors.  But sometimes when I take my son to these places it’s not difficult to figure out there are as many social groups here as the inside of a high school cafeteria.  

While mothers come in all shapes and sizes, there are two extreme types that stand out the most to me.  On any given day you can find either one or both of these moms at the mall.  The first and probably most admirable is the “Duggar” mom.  She is breastfeeding a baby while tying another child’s shoe, while disciplining the other one who is jumping on top of yet another one of her children.  She is not here to shop.  She makes her own clothes because she is broke from having so many kids.  She is a force of nature, this mom.  A third arm magically appears out of her sweater to wipe crumbs off her fifth kid’s face.  She is the type of mom who was born and raised to be a mother.  Now I am not being sarcastic when I say I respect this kind of mother more than any of the others.  She knows what her purpose in life is and it is to be a hard core mom.  She will home school her children and sew all of their clothes to stretch the family budget.  She will devote twenty four hours a day to her children and completely neglect herself.  She is capable of actually enjoying pregnancy and once she’s no longer of child bearing age, will miss those pregnancies.  While I admire her tremendously, respect her purpose and her strength, I don’t identify with her one bit.  I was never taught how to be a mom, much less a stay at home mom.  I just looked around at friends and in laws and tried to copy off of their homework.  I can’t make my own laundry detergent and I will never, ever want to.  I don’t want to make my own baby food either.  But I admire those of you who do and make it look like it is second nature, like you have absolutely no insecurities about mothering.  Be proud of yourself.  You are intimidating as heck to someone like me. 

The other extreme mom is the Juicy mom.  She wants to project that she is too cool and too sexy to be anyone's mom.  She wants you to forget that she is a mom, if she's not trying to forget it herself.  She is a fashion plate.  She has a high maintenance fake tan and is rocking Ugg boots outside of her jeans or her matching Juicy Couture sweat suit.  She wants the world to acknowledge that if Nicole Richie can look hot after having a baby then so can she.  She is texting on her Blackberry and iPhone the entire time her child is playing.  She came to the mall to shop and has the bags of trendy clothes to prove it.  Her child looks like he's just stepped out of a Baby Gap catalog.  Now if you are one of these types of moms, I have something to say to you.  Shut up.  Get off the phone and pay attention to your child.  He is sitting on my son’s head and it’s about to get ugly up in here. 

Now I admit my attitude towards those Juicy moms is a bit snobby.  I’m sorry.  I feel like I have no right to judge any mom because on some level, we are all just trying to do the best we can.  But it’s when I think someone isn’t trying that I get a little resentful. 

I know there are many, many more types of mothers out there; East Coast, West Coast, Pacific and Atlantic moms.  These two extremes just stick out the most to me living in the Midwest.  I fall somewhere in the middle, like I imagine most moms do.  Most of my friends and the mommies I know are just trying to survive, like me.  We just want to get out of the house and go to the mall and be around other moms.  Our kids are bouncing off of the walls at home and so we bring them someplace where they can run and climb, and if we’re lucky and not carrying our screaming kids like footballs out to the car by the end of it all, we get to take in a little window shopping.

I have to confess, I experienced great conviction today at the mall when a woman who was missing some teeth asked me where the closest restroom was.  I told her where it was, of course, and pointed her in the right direction and smiled.  I noticed that some of the other moms she was sitting with were missing their teeth too.  I began to make certain assumptions about them, where they lived, where they came from.  Driving back to my nice suburban home, I shamed myself for being such a supreme snob.  I remembered my own upbringing, my anxiety dreams about my teeth falling out and not having time to get them fixed.  I don’t know what this woman went through this year, just like she doesn’t know what I’ve been through.  I don’t know the sacrifices this woman has had to make just to be able to stay home and raise her daughter.  The inner snob in me recedes back to her rightful place of shame.  It’s good to remind yourself that your story isn’t the only one being told right now.  There are others out there, other moms, just getting the hang of all this stuff too.  Some are pros and some are amateurs, like me.  But no matter what they look like, or who they sit next to, you don’t know where they’ve been or what they’ve been through to get here. 

Thank God for young children, our great equalizers, who are completely unaware of the social standards enforced by adults.  Children don’t care what label is on their clothes (unless you teach them to care).  Children don’t care what their parents look like.  Children don’t care if mommy is trendy, toothless, or tired.  They just want us to be there for them.  Just ask my son.  His mama’s butt is huge.  But it comes in handy when he’s running around the living room and he falls on top of me.  It's a soft cushion for him to land on. 

...Find Out What It Means To Me

Yesterday at lunch a good friend of mine’s husband told a joke.  “Why haven’t they sent a woman to the moon?”  Okay, I’m curious.  “Because it doesn’t need to be cleaned yet.”  I laughed out loud at this.  It’s a funny joke and it doesn’t offend my feminist sensibilities.  Why?  Because a long time ago I learned to not take myself too seriously.  That means that I’m not easily offended and that most things that are meant to be funny are indeed funny to me.  A lot of things that aren’t meant to be funny are also pretty funny to me.  My husband said to him, “Be careful, she’s a Woman’s Activist.”  To which I replied, “No I’m not.  I’m a stay at home mom.  I’m not on the courthouse steps holding picket signs.  I’m at home changing dirty diapers!”  My friend’s husband went on to say how much of a danger a quick witted, sharp tongued, educated woman is.  He said, “Now you just need to start a blog.”  To which I replied, “I already have!”  We laughed.  I’m such a cliché.  I know that my friend’s husband is not a misogynist.  He has a great sense of humor and he loves to laugh at himself too.  His retelling of this joke doesn’t imply that he echoes the sentiment behind it.  In fact, it showcases how ridiculous that sentiment is.  I then told him and my good friend, who’s a stay at home mom during the day but works some nights and weekends, about the time I heard a friend of a friend say that horrible thing about stay at home moms not using their brains and how I “put her in her place.”  We laughed again because the odds of that woman stumbling across my blog are slim to none.  Also unlikely is if she’d care about me and my no-brains opinions.  My friend said, “Well, sometimes it’s true.  Sometimes I don’t use my brain.”  I said, “Well, yeah, me too.  But she’s not a stay at home mom.  She doesn’t have kids.”  “Oh, then she can’t say that!” my friend said.  “That’s just plain disrespectful.”

That seemingly offensive lunchtime joke about women cleaning the moon particularly resonated with me. I had a conversation earlier that day with my group of mommy friends right before church started.  As I began talking with a few friends about the pressures of being home all day, a circle literally began to take shape in the lobby of our church as more women chimed in.  I shared my sympathies and contributed my stories, and we found ourselves on the subject of this misconception that just because you’re home all day you should be able to keep your house clean.  We commiserated about our husbands’ lack of concern and contribution to our daily chores.  One person even declared that her own mother sides with her husband.  “He’s been working all day, take it easy on him,” as if she wasn’t working all day at home, twice as hard.  My own mother has a tendency to side with my husband on certain issues and cautions me ever so often to watch my tone with him.  She is from a generation where men’s voices were significantly more important than women’s, even though she was the sole provider in our house for many years during my childhood.  I fain empathy in the area of husbandly contributions because truth be told my husband is a great contributor to our household chores.  He knew I wasn’t the tidiest of women when he married me.  We only do a deep cleaning of our house when we’re having company.  As far as daily chores go we have a system. I’ll unload the dishes and he’ll load the dishwasher, using his stint as a Denny’s dishwasher to prove he is an excellent loader.  I let him prove it anytime he wants.  “Hey, prove how good of a job you did mopping the floors too.”  My husband also does his own laundry, although, this could be because he secretly thinks I might ruin his nice work clothes since I am often distracted when I do laundry.  The only complaint I have of my husband in this area is that he’s great about doing his laundry but terrible at putting away his laundry, so we often have baskets of piled up clean clothes in our spare bedroom just waiting to be folded and put away.  There’s usually a stand off to see who will end up putting said clothes away.  And it’s usually me.

I sensed an emerging theme later that morning in church when my pastor began to preach on having the character of Christ and viewing certain circumstances through God’s eyes.  He told a story about a husband who after a hard day’s work would come home and open his garage door to find toys scattered all over the ground, blocking his entry.  He would then have to get out of his car, move the toys, get back in his car and pull into the garage.  All of the toys were in the garage, of course, because the wife grew tired of picking them up off of the floor all day, and so to minimize an inside mess she moved the kids and their toys outside to the garage.  After a few days of having to get out of his car and move toys in order to pull into the garage, the husband really tore into his wife.  This is the part of the story where I leaned over and whispered to my husband, “If you did that, I would put even more toys out in the garage…” to which he responded, “I know you would.”  After weeks of the same routine and the husband and wife bickering, the husband pulls up to the garage all ready to be upset but then gets a wake up call from God who reminds him that some of his friends would love to be able to move toys out of the way to get inside of their garage.  Some of his friends can’t have kids.  The moral of the story was to not sweat the small stuff and for the husband to learn a lesson in humility and gratitude.  I took it another way.  When you don’t want to constantly pick up your kids’ toys just put them in the garage and make your husband do it, because God will make him feel guilty if he doesn’t. 

No, I’m kidding. 

I think the moral of the story is respect.  Now, shut my mouth Gloria Steinem, but I sort of sympathize with the husband of the story.  Not that he should fight with his wife about stupid toys, but, come on.  You can only have the same fight for so long before your stand off ends up like Waco.  I joke about it with my husband but I do believe in a healthy respect when it comes to our jobs.  I know my husband is tired when he gets home from work and he knows I’m physically and emotionally drained.  I could say I’m more tired, but it’s really subjective so I will just respect the fact that we’re both tired.  When he comes home he is clocking out of one job and into another.  When he comes home I am relieved to have help but I don’t get to clock out of my job just yet either.  It’s both of our jobs to keep our home running smoothly, all day, all night.  He knows that I’ve been home alone all day with a two year old who barely speaks and who at times will only communicate with me by screaming.  He may not be perfect but my husband has always respected the work of a full time mom.  I have his mother and sisters to thank for that.  In return I have to respect the demands of his workload.  The feminist in me has to accept the fact that while I never signed on to be a cook or a housekeeper when I decided to be a full time mom here I am, cooking and cleaning in the most stereotypical way.  I realize that any person living in any house would have to cook and clean for themselves.  I’m not doing it because it’s my job.  I’m doing it because it’s life.  My husband and I are learning to navigate our roles and partner in this business of life together and unless we respect one another, our business will fail.   

As for my friend’s joke, I’d like to think that if they did send a woman to the moon, she’d take one look around and say “You guys need to pick up after your damn selves.”