Look at my book I wrote! See my byline?! I am actually smart—it says so right there!

It’s an indulgent fantasy since most of my life is better than I imagined—Greg and my boys for example. There aren’t daydreams enough to equal the love I feel for them. And yet.

There are times that I’ve called Toby a big fat crybaby, or I’m annoyed at Greg for loving our cat more than I do, or I’m just feeling especially carnal for no immediate reason, and all I can do is compare myself to the nearest friend who seems to be doing things better. The friend is always sweeter, more genuine, more humble, more spiritual, more motherly, more likeable, more loved. When I resent her, I feel even worse about myself for being the villainous wretch in the fairy tale whom everyone despises.

If I were an alcoholic I would slosh down glass after glass of red wine to drown out my jealousy and disappointment. Since I’m not, I eat spoonfuls of Nutella right out of the jar and post something pithy on twitter to steal a few handfuls of admiration.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott describes the literary life: “As a writer, one will have over the years many experiences that stimulate and nourish the spirit. These will be quiet and deep inside, however, unaccompanied by thunder and tremulous angels.” That statement could be written a thousand different ways. “As a mother…”  “As a runner…” “As a human…”  

Why aren’t the quietly nourishing experiences enough? Certain corners of my soul are satisfied without pomp. Like when I run, I set one foot in front of the other, one mile at a time, day after day. I don’t care that I will never be Paula Radcliffe, because I’m running to hear my own heart beat, and the effort is its own reward. Other parts of me are more vulnerable, less sure of their own intrinsic worth. They need to be stoked and coddled and assured. If I’m being honest, that really bothers me.

On my desk is a picture of four Indian children from a balwadi in Mumbai. When I feel especially introspective, I look them in the eye and ask them, “What do you need from me?” My pulse stops when they speak because I know it is God. Love us, they say. And that’s all.

They don’t need my importance. They don’t need my self-esteem. They don’t need my trophies. Neither do my friends, my husband, or my own children. The more perfect I am, the less I am useful to them. My fragile self takes their place in my heart.

Someone sent me a beautiful prayer yesterday, written by Father Larry Hein, mentor to Brennen Manning:

May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, if it proves necessary for you to experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is Father, Son and Spirit.

That is my hope—yield to the things that rub the shine off my penny, because those are the very things making me great. I’m not seven anymore, so I don’t have to think like I did then. I can put my head down, one patch of road at a time, and run past my insecurity to the place where nothing remains. No trophies. No thunder. No tremulous angels.

And then there’s room enough for love.

This article originally published in the Feb.-Mar. 2010 issue of Deeper. For more articles on faith and family or to subscribe via e-mail to the Mom’s Moments and Deeper Newsletters, go here.

My son, Toby, turned five on January 12^th. Our family laughed over pizza at his favorite restaurant just as the whole of Port Au Prince crumbled to the ground. We didn’t learn the news until the next day when the pictures spilled from our T.V. along with a painful realization. During the chaos and death, we were celebrating life. The irony felt like a stone in my heart.

I wanted to shield Toby from Haiti’s devastation– tuck him in bed, kiss his unharmed head to sleep unburdened. But instead of peace, the thought gave me shame. I remembered Everson, a five-year-old-boy, pictured lying on a piece of cardboard in the Haitian dirt. If Everson could survive the horror in Port Au Prince, my son was strong enough to know about it. He could fight for Everson. He could fight for Haiti.

I copied a few pictures of the rubble and the one of Everson, and sat down with Toby to explain earthquakes and tragedy. It was short and simple- nothing to paralyze him in fear. He listened, awed by the extreme destruction. I prayed aloud, thanking God for the safety and comfort we enjoyed and asking Him to help the people in Haiti who had neither. Toby listened, and then ran off to play. That was that.

Before bed, we performed our usual nighttime ritual, each family member praying in turn. When we got to Toby, he thanked God for his favorite things: trash trucks and his family. Then he added “God, You know that ‘earthcrank’ in Haiti? I’m gonna need you to clean that up.” It was completely un-elegant, utterly simple. The kind of prayer that penetrates the heart of God.

A few days later, we bought aspirin and cold medicine and added it to the large collection boxes in our church lobby, bound for the under-supplied Haitian hospitals. Toby and his younger brother, Charlie, dropped our gifts into the bins with pride. Later in the car, I saw Toby’s face looking thoughtful in the rear view mirror. “What are you thinking buddy?”

“I’m praying for Haiti in my mind,” he said. My heart skipped a beat.

Like every parent, I am familiar with protecting my kids. Nothing feels better than burying their faces in my chest against any sign of doom. Only I don’t want to raise children who bury their faces when trouble comes. I want to raise children who will stand. Children who see disaster, hunger, or pain, and storm the gates of heaven like mighty warriors.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14 (NIV)

I love the groaning engine, the hissing brakes, the smack of the bin against the hungry chomping mouth. I love the way it gobbles the trash like a gloriously ravenous beast.

I want to be a trash man. No, no that’s not it. I want to be a trash truck. I wander the house all day with my arms cocked to one side, squeezing the life out of anything in my path before dumping it upside down. My bin of Lincoln Logs, my case of racecars, my baby brother… No NOT your brother my mom says quickly.

I hear it. I think I hear it. Hurry! Let’s go to the driveway and watch. Get a chair, mom. Put Charlie in the stroller with a bottle. We can sit together and wait for him to come around the corner.

But I can’t sit. I want to see. I am giggling and straining my eyes far down the street. Now here it comes. Janie’s house. Todd’s house. Mom, its here! Look it has our trash! Watch it lifting the blue bin into the air like an angry monster. I cannot contain my excitement!

The trash man waves at me as our trash can falls limply to the curb, happily empty, with its lid flopping open. The trash truck poofs out a smoggy snort from its rear and drives away. I watch it go. I watch until it is just a gentle rumble in the distance.

Trash truck, I love you.

He held nothing back. Her eight year old self floated gracefully up on a light purple Schwinn. Something inside him said Toby, she is special. Let her know you are a big kid. So after pointing out that her bike was “pwitty“, he reached for the all-time greatest pick-up line anyone under five ever attempted…

“Lexi, do you need to poop? Because I know how to poop in the potty.”

Bold move, little buddy. Very bold.

I can’t remember exchanging Toby’s personality from pleasantly compliant charmer to compulsively opinionated dictator. Yet here I am with snot streaming down my nose while he separates individual sections of toilet paper into satisfactory squares. No, I won’t hurry up, he says as his chubby fingers work to remove a rogue fragment that dangles from the perforated edge much like me to my composure.

I am feeding Charlie a bottle while actually holding him (for a change) and wiping my nose on my shirt sleeve to keep from dripping on his forehead. I just need a real tissue you little OCD Hitler I don’t say as I blow my allergy ridden congestion into a Thumbelina sized hanky.

I take the boys walking around the block and Toby must push the stroller. And I must back up. Far away. No not there, over there. Yeah, right there in that grassy, scratchy plant. Stand there and don’t think about taking the stroller back. Or collecting your dignity and committing to a well-planned insurgence.

Charlie takes to disdain when he and Toby crawl around on the floor together. Toby, who is curiously adept at assigning sinister motive to unmistakable babyishness, freely tattles and orders and “No’s” him until Charlie defaults to some passively simple irritation to counterstrike (if that’s possible). Mommy, Chah-wie is twying to take my twains away he says when Charlie playfully explores the bright colored wheels of a red and blue engine with his fingers. No Chah-wie! Charlie stares blankly at him and bangs the train on the table casually, just because.

I imagine him later in life sitting in therapy explaining the angry voice in his head shouting orders as he goes about his daily business sipping espresso or driving to work. No Chah-wie! That’s MY mocha latte. Give it to me! Move, Chah-wie I get to dwive the car, its MY turn! he hears until he resigns into a dejected stupor.

At the sandbox we pack damp mounds into plastic molds forming a tractor, a bulldozer, a concrete truck. I relish these times, working together, building and talking, even the windy evening air blowing my hair into tangles. He admires our ingenuity fondly and I think to myself, this is the sweet baby I carried and nursed and snuggled and smooched. His doe eyes look up at me with a hint of wild excitement. Now can I cwash them Mommy? he says like any good tyrant, yellow spade already raised above the sandy masterpieces.

At least he asked.

The flu. A very long, feverful, snot-tacular, exhaustingly monotonous crater in our late winter bliss. It is the malefactor I now blame for my son’s relentless presence beside me in Sunday morning service.

It started out as sober precaution. A desire to not relive eight straight days of isolation and nauseating amounts of Thomas and Friends. Just a temporary quarantine from church childcare, where influenza lives a life of germy luxury.

When spring arrived, I happily marched my boys back to the children’s check-in area, ready to enjoy service by myself. I passed Charlie over the counter without incident. Toby, however, staged a frantic coup by disintegrating into a noisy puddle of anguish on the lobby floor. I should have scooped up the blubbering mess of him and poured it into the three year old room where it belonged. Instead, I offered him a glazed donut and implored a promise to whisper during the talking parts.

So, here I am in late May walking into the auditorium with my perpetual “pew” buddy flopping along behind me with his mouth crusted up from donut glaze.

I stand him up on a chair slightly behind me, our usual routine, and I join in the chorus of “God of Heaven Come Down” with everyone else. I glance back every now and then to make sure he is not engaging anyone behind us with silly faces or peek-abo like he has in the past. He flashes me an angelic grin as if he knows my motive.

When the communion tray goes by I let him help pass it along, but not before he spends the better part of a minute selecting the biggest cracker square for himself. Then I try to appear casual while my non-baptized, non-prayerful, heathen son defiles the very blood of Christ by jauntily drinking a cup of juice in three relishingly slow sips as if this were nothing more than a refreshment break. (For those of you who were sitting two rows back and throwing me scorn arrows from your offended, legalistic eyeballs just remember that I know it’s inappropriate, but I am living by grace so that you can peacefully direct your thoughts to the Savior of the World without a soundtrack from my three year old son whom Jesus LOVES.)

Once communion is over Toby and I sit together, my arm around him, his legs straight out in front and only long enough for his two green flip-flops to hang over the seat edge on his chubby, wiggly feet. Toby do you know that we eat those crackers and drink that juice to think about Jesus? It’s hard to hear over the loud music, but he looks at me when I talk and I hope in a tiny way he begins to see a bigger picture of why we come here every Sunday morning.

The band launches into “Nothing but the Blood” in a groovy remix that has everyone in the room on their feet and singing loudly. I sway and bounce to the catchy beat. Suddenly, my son, who has no understanding of abstract concepts like sin or sacrifice or redemption, raises one hand in the air, palm open in a gesture of worship, as if this were the most natural thing in the world to do. I try not to react because I want him to have this moment for himself, but I just can’t stop all the heaven inside me from bursting open in colorfully radiant pleasure.

I know he is only a little boy, but someday, he may see things in his heart that he wishes weren’t there. He may find himself lonely and afraid. I hope when that day comes, he’ll know just what to do.

I can’t spend another day skipping smilingly around the house like an imbecilic Pollyanna gently coaxing him to perform the simplest task.

If I don’t help him put on his Thomas underwear he gets frustrated. If I do help him he unleashes a rabid burst of independence and takes them back off so he can do it over himself. Then I have to stand in silence while he thrashes around his bedroom yanking and tugging away while my hair grows down to the floor and I have to fight the urge to grab the waistband and jerk it right up to his eyeballs.

But I do something worse. I open my mouth and yell TOBY, just LET ME DO IT. And I can tell by the crestfallen look in his eyes that I have crushed him in the most shameful way because nothing would mean more than showing me that he is capable. That he can put on his clothes or make chocolate milk or push baby Charlie’s stroller through the parking lot just like a big boy. Just like I do.

I look at his little buzzed head, face contorted in a wash of unabashed defeat, underwear elastic printed with the silhouette of a train slightly disheveled and twisted around his tummy. Look Toby, you DID it. Mommy didn’t even have to help. You did it all by YOURSELF. I hug him and grab his stout shoulders in my hands. I am so proud of you buddy. What a big boy you are.

He looks at me and sniffs while wiping away sweaty tears. I hope he forgives me. I hope I show him how strong he is and how smart he is and how big he is.

That I am so proud of him sometimes that it hurts.

Maybe France can wait one more day.

I try to manufacture this pleasure in the afternoon when both boys magically fall asleep at the same time and leave me a bit of glorious silence, scarce as a bald eagle’s feather. Instead I end up flitting around the house in a frantic rage, folding infinity loads of laundry and slathering Italian dressing on the chicken breasts for dinner because it must be done now or our very lives will tumble down around us into a pile of stinking, rotten chaos.

When I was sixteen I remember driving down the highway in my best friend’s Blazer, listening to the Reality Bites soundtrack blare “Stay” from the stereo, toes pressed up against the front windshield, windows open, warm summer air swirling my hair into tangled pieces of rope. We had nothing to stop us from driving to the next state if we wanted. It was a sort of wild bliss that only teenagers can embrace. How did it fade so far into distant memory that I have to pull it out from the brittle, time-soaked archives of my life?

It’s early evening and Greg has just come home from work to weed eat the back yard and scoop up the piles of dog poop we can no longer justify as fertilizer. Toby is sifting around in his sandbox, his sweaty red-cheeked face covered in gritty, brown splotches. He squishes a stuck-together clump in his fist and watches the grains fall through his fingers. Baby Charlie chatters away on the baby monitor patiently waiting for me to lift his little bean of a body out of the crib.

Maybe we will eat out on the patio tonight. Maybe we will have corn on the cob and ice cold pop and sit around laughing at Toby ask for his own “gwass of Coke” through a mouthful of chicken nuggets. Maybe we won’t notice our dog licking the mashed carrots from Charlie’s messy face because we are too busy talking to each other.

Maybe I will stare at the faces of my men with a frenzied passion that only a grown woman can feel.

Maybe I will discover a more profound satisfaction than I ever knew possible.

Of all the communication vortexes, preschool is the cat’s pajamas. Because I am not present, I have no system of checks and balances to fill in the missing plot elements. I might be told that “so-and-so went to time-out for playing in his poop” or “someone-or-other hit me in chapel” but be left hanging for the logical circumstances surrounding these allegations. Some days a take-home report appears in his folder to guide me, a daily inventory that tallies the number of poopoos and peepees and how much of the PB&J was left in the sandwich bag after lunch. The focus of study for the morning appears under the heading “Ask Your Child About…” followed by an activity or nursery rhyme that was of particular importance (which curiously ends up being the one thing for which he has no recollection). The teachers are wonderfully forthcoming if I feel the need to pry (an act that requires my lingering in the doorway of the classroom, bouncing a very heavy seven month old on my hip and making idle chatter until every last whining and groggy child is collected by a parent), but even they are often baffled. Due to his array of imaginary friends and ability to recall insignificant events (e.g. seeing a dead fish floating in an aquarium at Wal-Mart, the engine that pulled the North Pole Express was named “Puffy”), I must determine what is fact and what most likely occurred on an episode of Calliou two weeks ago.

A post preschool conversation might happen like this:

Me: So how was your day at school? (My eyes burrow right into his buzzed little head hoping to read his mind and forgo the formalities.)

Toby: “My eyes was open at skewel. They was bro-ten.”

Me: “Really. Was that during rest time?”

Toby: “Yes. Miss Julie say ‘Toby, be steel.’ Sometimes I not need be steel. Sometimes I need be a lil’ bit widdly at skewel.”

By utilizing the decoder ring from the bottom of the Frosted Flakes box I can now simply substitute all “t’s” for “g’s” or “k’s”…or leave them as “t’s” if it makes more sense. It is really a brilliant demonstration of algebra being useful in an everyday situation. Maybe it could be added as a story problem on the SAT.

As his linguistic skills evolve, I must also keep up with the improper usage of new words. Upon hearing an event happened “today” I know he clearly means today or yesterday or last year or next Easter, all of which are virtually interchangeable distinctions. For nearly six months he began every single sentence with either “probably” (sounding like prolly) or “maybe”. It was the kind of habit that I found irritating until one day he woke up from nap bluntly asking for chocolate milk and I sort of missed the cuteness of those silly adverbs.

Toby’s language is a sort of mysteriously morphing blob that is slowly shaping itself into something recognizable. But whose complaining? My son, with two of the darkest, deepest wonders of the whole earth, which are his delicious little eyes, surrounded by eyelashes as long as a peacock’s feathers, looks up at me to ask out of nowhere, “Member dat mommy? Member when we wode on Puffy last night?” I do remember, Toby, I do. And even though I know that it was months ago, I get what you’re saying because you had so much fun and you just wanted to tell me about it again. I’m listening. ]]> http://andihawkins.com/2008/03/27/my-eyes-was-broken-and-other-insights/feed/ 3 http://andihawkins.com/2008/03/24/an-unmemorable-day-to-remember/ http://andihawkins.com/2008/03/24/an-unmemorable-day-to-remember/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:20:00 +0000 Runningmama http://andihawkins.com/?p=15 The crock pot is still out on the counter from last night’s roast, rinsed but not scrubbed. The kitchen rag has fallen into the sink and collected bits of uneaten food from our dirty plates. The dog is on the back porch barking to be let in the house. Folded clothes wait to be put away. They all beckon me, but I do not answer. I am laying on the living room carpet, still in my flannel pajamas, my elbows nestled deep into the plush fibers. My boys are playing trains. (Actually, Toby is playing trains, but Charlie is chewing on trains…) The sun is shining just right through the glass to pour over the whole floor and speckle the air with tiny bits of dust like snow. Toby watches a fleck drift his way and tries to capture it in his hand. He is still young enough that his knuckles are dimpled and his fingernails are slightly overgrown and dingy. I watch his face pause in curiosity as he uncurls his fist to reveal an empty palm. He gives it two more tries before conceding and returning to his train table. Charlie follows him with his half crawl, half scooch, a look of yearning on his face for stronger legs to jump and bounce like his big brother.

Has it already been three years since Toby himself was bound to his tummy, swimming around on the floor like a baby turtle? I realize that pages are flying off the calendar faster than I can catch. I want to pause time in this place, when I am an acceptable substitute for a jungle gym, and dinosaurs are the scariest thing imaginable, and wooden trains have faces and feelings and are real. Childhood is magical and consuming when you are in it, but infinitely more so as a mother.

Toby rearranges his tracks to create a trap for Gordon and the Express Coaches and hisses crashing noises as the cars tumble over. Charlie clambers up the side of a wooden bin nearby, his heavy breathing revealing the intensity of this feat, hoping for a better view of the action. “Mommy,” Toby looks reflective, “I don’t like apples.” He pauses and spins the wheel of his train with his finger, “But I like juice boxes.” Because I am his mom I know what he means and it makes sense. Apples are crunchy and fleshy and surrounded by thick peel that might be hiding something even worse. Juice boxes are made with apples, but only the sugary and smooth parts. And they have a bendy straw. I answer him with the best mom-lesson I can devise. “Juice boxes are good, buddy, but maybe you can like apples too someday.”

I wish I could save this kind of morning: the dimply fingers, the timbre of their voices, the downiness of their hair — the very essence of their smallness. I imagine snapping it safely into a Tupperware bin and throwing it in the attic with my old yearbooks to preserve for forever, but I know that I can’t. And besides, to visit this place again after the dimples pull taught, and the fingernails are neat and trimmed because they can do it themselves, and hair is gelled and prickly, and their eyes no longer worship me, but are independent of me, that would break my heart into a million pieces.

So instead, this morning, I let the dishes get dusty where they lay. I turn away from the dog hair accumulating on the baseboards. I am busy. My kids need me to teach them how to somersault, and eat broccoli, and aim at the cheerio in the toilet bowl. The important stuff. Never before have I pursued a goal so foreign to my heart’s true desire. All of my effort will be pointing to the day I dread most. A day when they put on big shoes that don’t flash blinky lights with each step, not fastened with Velcro, but real laces, and walk out my door for the last time.

The sun shines vividly on one side of their faces, both engrossed in the moment’s new discoveries. Pleasure and sadness mingle together, stinging my eyes, and I know I will mourn today’s sunset.