Parenting 101

May 30, 2015

I am no poster child for parenting:  I often speak too plainly, curse too much, drive too fast.  I have, however, always spoken to my two with respect and with the expectation that they have a view of the world that is not less important or less funny than mine.  And I love them fiercely and they know it. As a result, every once in a while, a zinger flings about.  I have decided (much to their eventual chagrin, I am sure) to catalogue some of our finer moments here.  

This is just a start…more will come as a) they happen or b) I remember them. And please ignore the ball theme...I swear we aren't pervs.

Just this morning, my 10-year-old son was instructed to vacuum his room.  He met with difficulty one of the hoses that really sucks up the nasty *&%$.  He asked me to help, but I also couldn’t unstick what was stuck.

Drew: would you go in there and ask dad to fix the vacuum?
Me: why don't you go?
Drew: he might be changing
Me: so what? what are u, afraid of seeing him nekked?
Drew: (eye roll) no...but you're the mom and he's the dad and he might yell at me
Me: Drew, when Daddy yells at you, does a little piece of you die inside?

Drew: (no answer, but his eyes said yes) 
Needless to say, I asked for his father's vacuuming assistance

Getting Drew ready for baseball a few weeks ago:

Me: don't you need to wear your cup?

Drew: no. Don't tell dad, but I don't really wear it. 

Me:  Drew, what happens if you get hit in the balls?

Drew:  it's fine.

Me: don't blame me if you get hit there and you aren't able to make any little Drews when you grow up.

Drew: mom, I don't have a vagina. I can't make babies.

Me: but...you...never mind

 😳



It was Memorial Day and Grace was three. I grew up in a family for whom cemetery visits were not uncommon. On this particular day of remembrance, Grace asked what the holiday was and why I was not at school.

Me:  it's Memorial Day.

Grace: oh...then I guess we should go look at some graves.

Me:  I guess we should. Which ones should we go see?

Grace:  well, Aunt Grace and your mom and dad...

Me:  Grace! My dad is still alive! That's your Papa!

Grace:  oh, yeah.

My very much alive father stopped by soon thereafter.
Me to him:  sorry, Dad, but Grace already has you in the ground


Grace was two and strapped into her car seat one morning when I was trying to get us both out the door. I couldn't find my car's garage door opener anywhere. I searched high and low, inside and outside. Nothing. All the while Grace watched from her perch in the back seat. I continued to hunt until finally, exasperated, I opened the front door of my Ford Explorer and leaned in against the driver's seat. I assumed defeat. Garage opener 1, Nance 0. I looked back at blondie, taking it all in.
Grace: whatcha looking for?
Me:  the garage door opener. I can't find it anywhere.
Grace: Oh, it's back there, she said casually, her thumb wagging toward the back of the car.
Without hesitation, I opened the back hatch to find the elusive garage door opener waiting for me.
She was two.
I was grateful and a tad terrified.

Best Scenes, Take Two: Mona Lisa Goodbye

May 28, 2015

When I coached high school debate, I formed relationships with students akin to family. It is impossible to spend weekend after weekend and days and evenings and days and evenings with these kiddos and not develop a bond that runs deep. I am grateful to count many former students among my most precious friends.

Graduation was always a challenge for me:  I had to figure out how to stay when my seniors left. Every May my heart cracked.  

Eventually, of course, I just couldn't stay.

It is no surprise, then, that one of the most cathartic scenes for me in all cinema is the last moment in "Mona Lisa Smile." Julia Roberts portrays Katherine Watson, an art teacher at Wellesley College in the 1950s.  She encourages her students to examine the mores of the time as they study art beyond the standard fare. Most importantly, she develops deep connection with these gifted young ladies.

Her teachings are considered a tad subversive, and although she is invited back for a second year, her return is contingent on a much more restricted curriculum and the promise of more impersonal relationships with students.  She decides to leave on her own terms rather than stay and deliver a caveat to her approach.

As she leaves, a host of her students follow her cab on bicycles, including (first and foremost) the student who was the catalyst for her demise who has since realized the value of this teacher and friend. Their devotion is moving, but her reaction is what cripples me every time I watch.  She is surprised, thrilled and touched.  In the final moment before the screen fades to the film's end, she wipes away tears and, when there is nothing else to say or do, she laughs.

I am no Julia Roberts or a fictional art teacher in the Ivy League, but what her character experiences in that moment rings remarkably true. As I watch, I think, "that's what the goodbye feels like. How did they know?"

See it here:

https://youtu.be/_s0Qn2nfTLE

The Champ

May 27, 2015


Today is the 20th wedding anniversary of a very dear friend of mine. Much made this wedding memorable, not the least of which was the black and white gingham bridesmaid's dress I got to wear (and about which I gave the bride enough grief that disinviting me from the wedding--let alone the altar--was definitely warranted). But our friendship was one that never quaked over minutiae. 

Shauna was a few years older than me, but we had become close when I was in middle and high school. In my estimation, she was the most fun and the coolest pal; and since she was older, the cool factor was amplified. She was the best.

When she left for college, I was bereaved. But I still have the mountains of letters she wrote me (back when pen and paper and postage were the lifeline). I don't know if she has kept the miles of endless adolescent angst I penned to her. I know she could have dropped her young friend but she kept me close. It meant the world to me.

It was my freshman year of college when Shauna and my other best friend Sarah came with the news that Shauna was pregnant. The pregnancy was the result of actions far contrary to Shauna's consent. We sat in my dorm room and faced with her the biggest choice of her life.  In heroic fashion, Shauna chose the life of her unborn child. Her bravery during that time still astounds me. She embraced her reality with characteristic smiles and faith. I watched, awestruck.

In August of 1993, I stood with her mom, sister, and close pals outside the delivery room and heard the first newborn cries of a miraculous little girl. An hour or so later, those of us not postpartum crossed the street to a convenience store to smoke cheap, nasty cigars in honor of this new life and our dear friend's courage.

Ashton became the accessory to most of our subsequent outings: we wanted Shauna's life to roll on and Ashton was her life. I remember being astounded that one of us could have one of those and then keep her alive. I wasn't even twenty. The whole thing was an eye-opening miracle. And Shauna was a total champ. That's all there is to it.

It was nearly two years later that Shauna married this wonderful guy who had been there during her pregnancy and thereafter and loved Ashton as his own. So on this day in 1995, it was more than any ordinary wedding. And I got to be right there. It was an honor.

Ashton has grown into a gorgeous replica of her beautiful mother. Shauna and Craig had a baby boy, too. They live in Texas now, and we keep in touch now and then. But the wonder of true friendship is that--when we do see each other--it's as if not a moment has passed. 

I'm grateful for Shauna showing me that sometimes you just have to nut up and deal. When I look at this pic today, I see a friend who made those years some of the best of my life...and who managed to get me into black and white gingham gown with puffy sleeves. That, my dears, is friendship.

From the Mouth of Pops--updated

May 27, 2015

My Dad has some words of wisdom that really need no explanation. When you least expect it, he will deliver. I will add to this list because there are definitely more. A shout out to a Marionville upbringing and his good pal, Charlie Spoonhour, for their contributions:

"He'd kill his own mother to go to the orphan's picnic."

"Are u writing a book? If so, leave that chapter out."

"I know I have to kiss your ass, but do I have to kiss it right in the groove?"

"It's colder than a mother-in-law's love."

"I was puckered up. I couldn't have gone to the bathroom in a washtub."

"I've seen more heat on a dog." --re: a weak pitch in baseball, compliments of a former player of his 

The Rope

May 25, 2015

I have often been guilty of praying most fervently when in peril:  when someone I love (including myself) is suffering or troubled, I employ the scripture “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). I ask God’s forgiveness for any deficit on my part, but today my prayers are fervent indeed. Illness is gripping someone I love.  These words of wisdom, straight from the good Book and from those who know it well, are a guide and a comfort.  If this blog serves any purpose at all, it is to communicate what matters (from laughter to grief to worry to love to even the noteworthy minutia of life).  Today, prayer matters most.  

"Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!" Psalm 4:1

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Mark 11:24

"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me." —C.S. Lewis, in "Shadowlands"

“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” - Martin Luther

“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.”- Abraham Lincoln

"If you cannot trust God for the temporal, how dare you trust him for the eternal?" - Charles Spurgeon

“Prayer is the rope that pulls God and man together. But, it doesn’t pull God down to us: It pulls us up to Him.” - Billy Graham

Hanging on to the rope...

Do you hear anything?

May 23, 2015

Grace and I found ourselves with a free bit of time in the hotel today before heading to the ballpark to watch Drew and his cronies play.  We chased through the channels and landed on HBO’s award-winning miniseries, "Olive Kitteridge."  Not having watched the prior two parts of the series, we were a tad lost at first but captivated by the amazing Frances McDormand (a fave of mine ever since she declared “I think I’m gonna barf” as the pregnant police detective in “Fargo”) as Olive.  It became clear that Olive is a mother and widow in the final years of her life and that she has a broken relationship with her son that was apparently fueled by her difficult relationship with his father.  She is crusty and rigid and, after her husband dies, even more closed off.  She is on a walk with her dog Clancy when she happens upon Jack (Bill Murray) who is equally miserable, having just lost his wife six months earlier. “Then you’re in hell,” Olive remarks.  He doesn’t disagree. It is a sad sight, the two of them, lost and grief-struck and full of regret.   Olive admits to Jack matter-of-factly that she is just waiting for Clancy to die so she can shoot herself.  They attempt a friendship, but it is difficult for two so isolated in pain and thought.

When Clancy dies soon thereafter, Olive takes a blanket, a note of explanation, and a gun with one bullet to the woods and is just about to end her life when three children interrupt her.  She covers the gun, they scamper off, and her shell cracks.  She weeps silently and shakes her head as if gripping her mistakes, her loss and her second chance all-at-once. We catch a glimpse of her feeling. It may sound morose, but I was mesmerized.  

The point of this little synopsis is what happens next.  Olive leaves the woods and goes to see Jack. She finds him resting in bed.  “Are you feeling poorly?” she asks.

“Just soul-poor, “ he replies.  “Body keeps banging on.”

In a rare moment of need and affection, Olive lays down next to Jack and places her head on his chest.  It is neither awkward or necessarily warm, but Jack asks, “do you hear anything? Am I still alive?”

Olive replies, “Keeps banging on."

I Hear a Banjo Playing...Still (an update!)

May 22, 2015

I am no elitist. I come from humble beginnings nestled in the wornout crease of the Bible Belt. But we are driving to Memphis for my boy's baseball tournament, weaving through the back woods of Arkansas, fearing the sight of Ned Beatty at every turn. 

I find myself asking why?

Why can I get ribeye steaks and pork chops at any gas station? Why is the funeral home we just passed the size of my closet, complete with a Coca-Cola sign out front circa 1960? Why must the First Baptist Church on the left assure me everyone is invited? Isn't that a given? Why so many abandoned appliances, tires, buildings? Is there not a landfill handy to hide all this nasty sh*t like in any other civilized community? Why did we just pass a concrete black crow 20-feet tall? Why is there a rusty life-sized statue of Jesus next to a teeny roadside pond? 

Why am I driving hours and hours to watch 10 year olds play baseball?

You do what you do. 

And you live where you live...until you can escape...or wear a blindfold every day. Or maybe an inviting church adjacent to a pile of tires and a roadside bait stand and a broken statue of our Lord and Savior is a recipe for your life's happiness. Whatever works.

No pressure, Drew, but you better win ;). 

PS--On our way home (the boys' possible sweep of the tournament was snatched from their able hands when rain cut short the championship game when we were down 3-2), I noted two things :

1--the crow is actually a Raven, as my husband asked us all if we would like to stop and pose with this classy shout-out to the town of Ravenden.  No takers on the pic. And my apologies to crows everywhere.

2--the bait shop also sells snow cones.

May 22 Nugget

Quotable Nuggets for May 21

May 21, 2015

Aldous Huxley wrote that “Every man's memory is his private literature.” And so it is.   

Additionally:

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

Edgar Allan Poe

I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes

Vladimir Nabokov

We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.

Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6)

I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.

Janet Fitch, White Oleander

The Summer Breath

May 20, 2015

It’s the last day of school here in Springtown. As I watched my son and his pal run out of school as if the building had just ignited behind them, I was reminded of the PRAISE JESUS IT’S OVER feeling that is really like no other.  

Grace’s 8th grade “graduation” was also today, in the high school where I once survived, suffered and succeeded. While she and I both rolled our eyes a little at the necessity of such a ceremony, we rejoiced plenty at the resulting early dismissal. I watched her confident stride, surrounded by a gaggle of her pals, and prayed silently that all the good that can come to her in these next four years of high school will come to her.  I prayed that the heartbreaks will be few; and when they happen, may she be only bent, not broken.  And if she is bent by the tumult of these decisive years, may she not lean too far this way or that.

I also prayed that she continues to be spared the insecurity, short temper, bad hair, snaggle tooth and sizable midsection that plagued me at her age.  (I shouldn't lie in the midst of all this praying.)

In a favorite book of mine, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells writes this:

"I try to believe," she said, "that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Nobody sees it. Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as if they could see that crack.”

The world would be different for us all had we sight of the hidden cracks.  (Life would be particularly better for adolescent girls.  I remember it.  I was in it. I am witnessing it.) Perhaps the prayer is that we come out whole and stronger at the broken places; and that we do as little as possible to tear off the saplings to our right and to our left.

I know, I know, people survive being teenagers, and being parents of teenagers.  But when the little cherubs shoot out on the delivery table and we wrap our eyes and arms and hearts around them, all slimy and tiny and new, it is hard to believe that the time will come when we will watch them every day as if they are walking a tightrope above sharky waters.  And as we watch, we pray the balance we’ve tried to give them each day since that first slimy one is enough to keep them from all that threatens beneath.

The miracle is how often the sharks don’t get fed. Or at least they don't get full.

Watching former students, cousins, friends just young enough to not be my peers but older than my own kiddos is a great soul builder:  they are going out in the world and gobbling it up with advanced degrees from hither and yon, with work in the coolest ports of call, with dreams followed with verve.  I love seeing them all from afar with awe.  My prayers (all very honest!) follow wherever they bloom.

Here’s to the beginnings and the endings and the cracks in the side.  Let’s face it, it’s all part of the story.  And for my little and not-so-little people, today has been that perfect no homework tonight and we can sleep in tomorrow end.  Praise the Lord.

May 20 Nugget

May 20, 2015


"The life you have led doesn't have to be the only life you have." -Anna Quindlan

Best Scenes, Take One: Where is Your Heart?

May 19, 2015

I'm making a list of favorite scenes in literature/cinema. Why? ummm…probably for the same reason I catalogued every videotape I’d used throughout the 90s and why I watch the same movies too many times:  because I can and I may have a teensie bit of a problem.  Oh, and remembering things that matter to me ranks right up there with breathing, so that counts. And hobbies are good.

As cliched as it may be, I am a true fan of Jane Austen. Her female protagonists are always uniquely strong with a well-hidden crack somewhere inside the corset.  In the Oscar Award Winning adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Elinor (always the kind and sensible one) finds herself discreetly in love with Edward Farris. The love between them has not been spoken, but it is understood.  Trust me, the characters know it, the audience knows it, and Jane Austen definitely MEANT it. The two are clearly intended to (politely) grab on and hold on to each other for dear life.  To steal from another of Austen’s masterpieces, Persuasion, “There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.”

 Elinor’s sister, Marianne, is as concerned with romance and the heart as is Elinor with the logistics and propriety of life.  Through a series of twisted events that would make sense to all the Georgian English, may they rest in peace, Elinor discovers that the love of her life (Edward) is engaged to a nice but ill-suited gal named Lucy (who doesn’t deserve him, if you ask me…and the engagement was a blip in their youth that is another sketchy component of the era).  Lucy has confided in Elinor, and Elinor has long harbored this secret that has broken her heart.

In this scene, Marianne discovers that Elinor knows her love is seemingly obligated to another.  Their exchange whips up my tears every time.

http://youtu.be/C5yp1RTbWkw

Into the Wild

May 18, 2015

We live in a subdivision just behind a busy thoroughfare that becomes highway just past the turn into our neighborhood.  Behind us is a bit of wilderness that buffers us from the highway. We aren’t in the country and we aren’t officially in town, and this is the Ozarks, so a little touch of nature is never all that surprising.  I have been stopped by deer while out running (both deer and me, I suppose) within a few miles of our house, and turkeys sometimes trot around behind us. 

We also happen to be the favorite outpost for a colony of spirited squirrels who crawl up and down our stucco exterior with glee.  It is nothing to be sitting near a window and almost get a high-five or a kiss blown from a passing rodent.  The real high point, though, was this past winter when said colony found an opening beneath our roof and just over the master bedroom and bath.  Be it midnight, just before dawn, or at sundown, the sound of amorous squirrels giving it one to another with abandon floated through the air.

My husband was raised by a pseudo-mountain-man from Arkansas.  While Darin hasn’t had to skin and fry up a squirrel for dinner as was the custom for his impoverished father growing up with banjos playing in the distance, he has learned the ways of survival in midwest suburbia.  Hey, during our courtship we went target shooting down at Bull Creek (and I outshot him, by the way).  I also helped put up barbed wire fence and helped herd cows and/or listen to them get castrated out on his parents’ farm, but these are tales for another day.  Anyhoo, suffice it to say that an army of nasty overfed squirrels in our attic was grounds for war.

My favorite moments were when he would go to the attic and pound on its floor/our ceiling while I attempted to track his movements in the civilized part of the house.  We could hear the little bastards, you see, but we couldn’t find them.  Eliminating the contaminants of our domestic tranquility kept poor Darin awake at night.  Bleary eyed, he would gaze at the ceiling each morning after listening to squirrel Olympics with defeat and resolve, all-at-once.  

They would die or be excommunicated.  I wasn’t sure when or how, but it would happen.  Eventually, with the help of some half-assed (see previous post about such work ethic) roofers, the entryway into the squirrels’ porno paradise was sealed.  Quiet returned.

Things warmed up, though, and Grace reported multiple sightings of a large rodent she couldn’t identify just outside our basement.  Eventually she was able to capture this guy (we named him Reggie for reasons that escape me) on film.  Reggie had made a nice home for himself under our porch and some meals out of my flowers.  We came home Saturday afternoon to a live viewing of Reggie.  Darin, like a vigilante atop a watch tower, created a post for himself out of our bedroom window, sans screen.  He waited.  We watched.  

In the meantime, I sighted a dead opossum which I was nominated to get rid of.  With gloves I fearfully got the disgusting creature into a watering can, sprinted screaming toward the wilderness behind us and tossed it.  This isn’t really my scene.  Grace received a text a few moments later from a friend down the street asking if her mother had just been screaming and running behind the house.  Yes, that was my mother, Grace replied.

But the groundhog remained elusive and I became afraid to walk out back.  I didn’t want to be mistaken for the groundhog by Darin’s 22.  

Safely inside, within a half hour of the possum’s funeral, I heard three shots.  I glanced out to see that Reggie had met his end.  I glanced in to Darin at his post to see a hunter’s pride.  I gave him props for his sharpshooting and I also gave him the dreaded task of depositing Reggie out with the possum.  Grace had left for a party, so I had to deliver the news via phone:  “Reggie’s dead.” 

Today I came home to find a little fox in our backyard.  He was scratching and trolling about slowly.  Very cute.  I named him Ginge.  Via text, Darin asked why I thought the fox was male.  “I just assumed,” I wrote.  “Males seem to enjoy scratching themselves A LOT more than females.”  Who knows.  Maybe he/she will return soon and we will become friends.  Maybe the 22 will get another big moment from on high.  Maybe the fox is out amongst the trees telling his buddies there is utter carnage over at the Wedgeworths'.

They have been warned ;).

May 17 Nugget 3

May 17 Nugget

 May 17, 2015

 “She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
—J. D. Salinger, “A Girl I Knew”

The Foxhole

May 16, 2015

Aristotle wrote that a friend is "a single soul inhabiting two bodies." Francis Bacon noted that, "without friends the world is but a wilderness," and Robert Brault added that "I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar."

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is in the book of Job. Job had endured grave loss, as the Lord allowed Satan to take from Job everything but his life. Three of Job's friends heard of his loss and came to comfort him, but his pain was so great they hardly recognized him. Job 2:13 states that "they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great was his suffering."

These descriptors of friendship acknowledge its core: friendship makes life bearable, sufferable, better, breathable. That we feel kinship as if we share a soul, that friends make civilized that which otherwise is wild, that a friend will toss aside the schedule to be there--this is the stuff of one of God's greatest gifts to us. When Job's three friends knew not what to say but stayed, it was their presence that mattered. They were there.

My friends are the Biblical reflection of Job's: (okay, they may cuss and carry on a tad more than the three fellas in the Old Testament, but...) even when they know not what to say or do, they are here. And often they know just what to say and do. Yesterday was a rare, wonderful moment when three of my nearest and dearest converged in one spot. For hours we laughed, cried, vented, talked. It was precious. There is no punchline here. It was precious. It is what it is.

Friendship is a foxhole: a protection from the scariest sh*t life hurls at us. This is a little tribute to my protectors, my mates. Thank you, God: my foxhole is crowded.

May 16 Nugget

May 16, 2015

A motorcycle just passed me on the highway.  A large woman wearing sweatpants and a white tank top was holding tightly to the fella driving the bike.  On her lower back, in the coveted tramp stamp position was a tattoo with the name “Joseph” proudly displayed as her tank billowed up from the wind.  I wondered, as they sped by, about love that would lead to one dressing in a clingy tank and sweats two sizes too small and holding fast to a person who held her fate so perilously in his hands as he exceeded the speed limit by twenty and zig-zagged in and out of traffic; I thought about where they might be headed on this delightful afternoon in what might easily pass as jammies; and I wondered if he was Joseph.

The Field

May 14, 2015

Today I worked Field Day at my 3rd grader's elementary school. This is a day crafted to amp up every kiddo to a frenzy of gratitude and pent-up mania, for the school year's end is a whisper away and hours of school-sanctioned tomfoolery are on the menu.

My saintly stepmother joined me as we approached our station: two plastic swimming pools, two buckets, two pvc pipes filled with holes. The object of this game was for two teams (two at a time) to run to the pool, fill the pipe and race back to dump water in the bucket. Okay. I could get behind this as fun for me thirty years ago. But it became clear that the primary goal of the challenge was to get as wet and as muddy as possible while Nydia and I watched. I could get behind that notion as well. It's Field Day. Let's get crazy.

A third member of our "team" running the game joined us and I quickly realized we were dealing with an enthusiast of moments such as this. After about five minutes of watching this well-intentioned mom spring to life with the WONDER of collecting WATER in a PIPE and dropping it in a BUCKET, I sauntered over to Nydia.

"Is there something wrong with us that we always get paired up with the weirdos?" Nyds--true to her kind and perceptive nature--giggled and nodded. Nydia and I aren't amateurs in the realm of crazy. We have witnessed plenty and count ourselves lucky to have one another's company as we navigate our way through their midst.

As I watched this mom jump and holler with more enthusiasm than the kids, all I wanted to say was "What the hell's the matter with you?" 

A break in the action came and I took a moment to steal away inside the school for a few minutes. Poor Nydia was left with the unhinged jaw of our new best friend. In five minutes time Nydia had learned all about her love of children and who her child was and how she had worked for 13 years in special education and blah blah blah. I returned to Nyds to find her smile glazed and her eyes glassy. She had been ambushed with unwanted information and plenty of it. Nyds taught high school for 30 years and taught teachers how to teach for 12.  As she recounted the conversation to me, she said with class, "I'm not in to one-upping."

"There is no point," I agreed. "This isn't a pissing contest. But I'm sure if you were a man you wouldn't have been able to help yourself."

Our talkative friend quickly re-approached. "You are Drew's mom!" She kindly remarked. "Oh, Garrett talks about Drew all the time!" She looked at me expectantly. I knew I was supposed to return the compliment, but there was a void where Garrett's name should be. I've never heard your son's name, I wanted to report. But instead, I managed, "oh, Drew speaks well of all his buddies." Or something like that. I was grasping.

It was no time before our next group breezed through. There were clearly a few sweet boys in the class who had special needs and teachers assigned to them who handled their challenges. When the group left, however, our resident expert sidled up next to me: "I wanted to take that little boy aside but he didn't know that I had been a process coordinator for special ed."

No, Cynthia. He didn't know. And I wish I didn't.

Each class and pairing would figure out their own strategy for getting the water to the bucket. This fascinated my gal Cynthia. "Isn't it SO interesting how they use the pipe?" She asked excitedly, standing almost on my muddy feet.

"It is a wonder," I managed.

Over the next shuffle of time, we got these snippets from Cynthia, when she wasn't jumping or describing with awe the strategerie of pvc pipe and water:

Cynthia: I have just a little bit of a headache.

Me: Please leave. (Ok, I just thought it.)

Cynthia: I'm going to take a bathroom break.

Me: Please, make it a long one. (Ok, only to Nydia)

Cynthia: I wasn't going to get in the middle of that! (To me, when two groups fought over who had filled the bucket with the most diseased, nasty water)

Me:  We aren't in nuclear talks with Iran. They are in 3rd grade. It's muddy water and I can feel myself aging. (Again, only in my head)

When our time together had drawn to a close, Cynthia and Nydia and I didn't high-five. We didn't hug or promise to write. Nyds and I scattered like rats. I wish this happy mom well; and I hope there is someone in her life who listens and nods and shares her enthusiasm for everything.

As for Field Day, my boy climbed into the car at its conclusion quite happy. The end of school is but a whisper away, and he had fun. His voice silences all the rest...even Cynthia's.

Glimpse Back

May 13, 2015

Today I have the distinct honor of spending its length with an almost-3-year-old genius who happens to be the daughter and granddaughter of my two best friends.  The ins and outs of how this little cherub came to be (not the logistics, of course, but the windy road) would make a legitimate book or romantic comedy, had I the wherewithal to write it.  Suffice it to say that if you doubt there is a god, the path that led to this little spitfire landing on the planet may very well dilute the doubt, if not kick it on its ass.

Nonetheless, I was fortunate to be available when the regular babysitter fell ill, and I get to turn back time a little to the spot when I had a feisty almost-3-year-old.  It’s amazing what you forget and how quickly it comes flooding back:  the spunk, the surprising vocabulary, the attention given to every word or deed, the spirited desire NOT to sleep, the unending charm.  It’s magical. (And for once that descriptor is not laced with sarcasm).  I wouldn’t say I missed “it” the first and second times I was in full possession of the toddler wonder years, but I definitely could have enjoyed them more, breathed a little more…soaked them in. But I also remember that it’s hard to be in the moment when a thousand “to-dos” are buzzing around in your motherly head.  Today I am reminded that sitting still and watching or getting up and following and chasing are just good. Pure. Good.  Today I am catching a glimpse back.

I’m writing this little bit while the little one (after tries in three different beds here at my place) is finally snoozing…very Goldilocks-ish, but better, of course.  I worked in some signature Nance bribery to get the job done:  we are heading to feed the ducks at a favorite park when the respite ends.  Hey, I’m not Dr. Spock.  I get to be fun Nance.  And trust me, that’s the Nance who even I will admit is worth knowing :).

May 12 Nugget

May 12, 2015

"Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any."

--Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

May 11 Nugget

May 11, 2015

"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."

--CS Lewis

MDay

May 10, 2015 

My Mother's Day began with word from the baseball gods at 5:30am that today's tournament was rained out. I gladly returned to some shut-eye and awakened next to my boy in his old man robe, peeking in to see if my coma had subsided. It had, indeed, so he climbed on in and wished me a happy M day as he grabbed the controls for the TV. "I think I will mix it up today," he declared as he clicked on "The Office" on Netflix. Drew gets fixated on one show he really likes, and lately his fave, "The Office," has been on the back burner. So this was a gift to us.

Both of my babes presented me with homemade treasures this morning in my signature yellow. Drew made me a poster/placemat with an acrostic describing his mother. Along with "easily makes me food and my lunch," the "H" was "Happy things are the two words I would use to describe my mom." I asked him about happy things. "You are happy things!" he explained. Duh.

I will take it. 

I can't think of a better way for him to see me. There is a miracle in there.

And my girl presented me with a yellow mug she made, complete with hand-etched sunshines because, she told me, "you're tanorexic." She also added that she got an A on said mug and hoped the handle wouldn't break like the tall pink mug she had made as a much smaller tot that had met such a crippled fate. I still use that mug because she made it and it's adorable, but the absent handle is a tad obvious. Little did I know she had noticed and remembered and spent several grueling hours in her (much despised) eighth grade art class to rectify the situation. I also appreciate the shout-out to my solid commitment to eventual melanoma. Grace doesn't miss a beat.

I've had the choice every Mother's Day (thanks again, Hallmark!) for many years to be forlorn at the void my mom left or to celebrate the superstars in my life who filled in the gaps. Mostly I tend to choose the latter. My stepmother, for example, has sacrificed more and loved more than any biological mama. And there aren't words apt to honor the aunts, friends, mothers of friends, and mentors who have held me in their caring grasp. 

Mother's Day changed when I became one. It got easier, really. I stopped dreading it. And now I get to watch Netflix before church with a stout 10-year old who sees "happy things" when he sees his Mom. And now I get to drink from a yellow cup made by my first-born who is just an inch from standing eye-to-eye with me. She remembered the handle broke. And she fixed it.

May 9 Nugget

May, 9, 2015

Ah, Mother's Day...

"Neurotics build castles in the air; psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them."

— Rita Rudner

"I can remember the first time I had to go to sleep. Mom said, 'Steven, time to go to sleep.' I said, 'But I don't know how.' She said, 'It's real easy. Just go down to the end of tired and hang a left.' So I went down to the end of tired, and just out of curiosity I hung a right. My mother was there, and she said 'I thought I told you to go to sleep.'"

— Steven Wright

"My mom said she learned how to swim. Someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. That's how she learned how to swim. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.'"

— Paula Poundstone

"My mother never breast fed me; she told me she only liked me as a friend."

— Rodney Dangerfield

May 8 Nugget

May 8, 2015

One of my best pals (educator or otherwise) called me this afternoon with this little bit of wisdom she heard today: a student teacher asked a veteran, "when do I know I should write a referral?" (a referral is basically the written indictment against a student for a misdeed worthy of a trip to the principal)  The veteran responded, "sometime after 'f*ck you' but before the ambulance comes."

They don't teach that sh*t in teacher prep courses, but they should. 

Armor

May 7, 2015

Today I lunched with my Kindergarten teacher, Miss Shirleen. We have known each other these past 35 years since I was the little brown-eyed girl with the bowl cut in her class. She has been a steadfast fan of Missouri State, and since I grew up with my pops at the helm of MSU athletics, we would see each other off and on. I ran into her at the grocery store in the middle of the day back in fall, and she was surprised to see me when I should have been at school.  When I told her I had freed myself from the shackles of my teaching post, she was thrilled for me and mentioned grabbing lunch sometime.

So today we finally found ourselves together again, far away from 1979 and Pershing Elementary. My view from my little spot in her classroom was of a perfect, sweet lady who treated me like she was the luckiest teacher in the world to meet me and teach me. 

My Kindergarten year we were in the eye of a storm. Eight months before I walked through Miss Shirleen's classroom door my mom had walked out of our kitchen, climbed into her car, lowered the garage door, and turned the key. In the wake of her death that icy January, among a hundred other questions to be answered, was what to do with me. My brother was in school already, but my days needed something beyond what the bereaved parents of my dead mother could manage. Don't get me wrong:  they were wonderful, but I was a spirited five year old who liked to act out commercials with household products and sample beer and hide it beneath the shrubbery while my beleaguered Nanny and Papa took their afternoon naps. Dad had tried a preschool or two which I promptly vetoed, declaring, "nope! They want ME to take NAPS!" Finally he found an oasis for me that spring in a saint named Mrs. Tacke at a church preschool in town. And there I was distracted and out of the beer at least three hours a day.

There is no end to the descriptors of memories of that time. You would expect "horrible, tragic, awful." Yes. But I was five. I remember confusion and pain and happiness, too. Our time living with Nanny remains (quite ironically) among the favorite years of my life. I could always breathe a little easier there...and perhaps the oxygen was more abundant on Rogers Avenue because everyone in the house had been hit by the same twister. Or maybe it's because sounds and smells among the pipe and cigarette smoke and the back porch with the perfect swing and the familiar clap of the front door all heralded safety and love. 

The horrible, tragic, awful debris would fall unexpectedly over the next four decades on everyone. And often. That's what happens when moms get in the car and turn the key in a closed garage.  But we all have something that can rain down on us. I know that.

Today Miss Shirleen told me about her 16 grandkids and we swapped stories about baseball and mothering and teaching. As I could feel things wrapping up, Miss Shirleen told me she couldn't imagine how awful all that had been, and that she was proud of me. I don't deserve her admiration, but it was one of those defining moments that etched its place on the plus side of my soul's ledger.  

I thanked her, and then I asked the question I've harbored these many years: "what was I like?" She didn't even have to think. She said, "you would never have known anything had happened to you."

I'm not surprised. 

I lunched with my Kindergarten teacher today, and it was truly delightful. We promised to do it again, and we probably will. In this life, you gotta cling to the people who--however and whenever--help construct the armor you need to withstand the debris.