The Mother Load

April 30, 2016

My Hannah, as I describe her to anyone who matters, is a brilliant redhead in her sophomore year in Journalism school at Mizzou. She has become one of my closest friends, she was my student in my final years at the 'view, she is a better version of me.

She called last week with some questions for me for an assignment from her gender studies class. My life as a mother working was the subject of the assignment. She knows me well and witnessed firsthand my juggled life. Even so, her questions about the delicate (and I will admit improbable) balance performed by this mama took me off balance. I hadn't really stepped back and thought about how hard it was. But I had always known how great it was.

It was hard.

It was hard when I left that first time for an overnight tournament after Gracie was born. I cried with Nydia in the parking lot that Friday morning while little Gracie cooed in the backseat. It was the most difficult climb up bus steps I've ever made. She was 3 months old.

It was hard when Gracie was diagnosed with pneumonia and I was on my way to the State Tournament. She was two.

It was hard when Drew was so sick he had to get an IV and it was during the National Qualifier and I was the Judges' Chair. My husband knew I was in the middle of it and kept it from me as long as he could. Drew was almost one year old. He was so sick and I was in utter agony.

It was hard when they had games and birthday parties and life and I had tournaments. It was a lot.

It was hard when I was planted at Parkview until 8 or 9 at night and they were home. It was a lot.

We were winning. A lot. 

I had a responsibility to my students.

I had a responsibility to my children.

It was a lot.

Balance has never been my gift. I tend to go overboard with whatever I'm in. The results can be great and they can be disastrous. With the help of an amazing support system, I was able to do my job and be a mother. The guilt, the trade-offs, however, are not to be discounted. And I couldn't maintain it. It did me in. The imbalance finally got the best of me.

I've mulled over my conversation with my Hannah many times. The irony is that she is a precious part of my life that I wouldn't have if I hadn't engaged in the delicate dance of motherhood and work. 

Much has shifted for me in recent months and years, but this I know: when you care passionately about a thing or a person or a people or an activity and you invest it all in whatever it is, sometimes something has to give. But even then, if they know you love them and you did the best you could, it's ok. 

Even if it's hard.

Singing Soprano

April 28, 2016

I used to sing a little. Choral music. High school, church, a little college action. 

Tonight I have the house to myself and I was having a little singing and dancing party while performing the mundane domestic tasks that adulting requires and that I generally despise (laundry, dishes, blah, blah, blah). I was listening to The St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys sing "Let the River Run" (it's from the soundtrack of "Working Girl" and changed my life this way and that in my late adolescence). If you listen to the song, you will realize that the dance portion of the evening had paused. Anyway, as my invigorated soprano notes floated through the air alongside those of the men and boys of the St. Thomas Choir, my dog looked at me with fear and awe. She had been on her belly, but when the notes really gained high-pitched momentum, she sat up at attention and next I expected glass to break. And then I laughed like a mental patient and she looked at me quizzically and sank back to the carpet. 

In addition to the obvious my relationship with my dog is newsworthy takeaway is that we all do things when we are home alone that we might not do otherwise. In "Sex and the City," Carrie Bradshaw describes standing with saltines and grape jelly reading fashion magazines as her single person behavior. Everyone has their thing.

I love that I can walk around this lovely house and look at things in the shadows of night and think and hear creaks and hear my puppy’s concerned paw steps following me. But no one questions my whereabouts when I venture downstairs to swallow gulps of ice cold milk in the wee hours. No one is annoyed if I stand and stare out the window at 3am, listening to the train pass by in the distance, lining up my to-do list for the next day. If there are papers to grade in those hours in bed with the best of Netflix on, it’s not a problem.

Until a couple months ago I had never lived on my own. Let me revise that: I have two incomparable offspring to keep alive and love and make happy. Nothing in life matters more to me than that or them. And I’ve a support system of family and friends that love me and care for me and us more than I deserve. I am anything but alone. In fact, lonely isn’t anywhere on the playlist. It was before. It isn’t now.

The responsibility of being the only adult in a place can be overwhelming. If the laundry piles up, it piles up. The dishes, too. And the bills. The minutiae and substantia of life are mine to govern.

Works for me. With glee.

Maybe the standard for wanting to really live life with someone is finding the person with whom you can sing soprano and dance in the kitchen and jack up the dog with the high notes and eat saltines with grape jelly. Anything less certainly seems like a dip in the shallow end.

I prefer the deep end. Works for me. With glee.

The Grass

4.12.16

I grew up behind a push mower. In second grade I was pushing the LawnBoy up what looked like Everest aside our split-level. My Pops told me he thought I was too little to mow it.

Game on.

Little did I know that by proving my 8-year-old affinity for yard clippings I would guarantee myself a life quite yardish. 

I missed the historic dream sequence in which Bobby Ewing dies and returns to life in the shower because I was mowing and we had not yet embraced the 1980s and purchased a VCR that records life-altering moments on "Dallas."

I memorized and executed (beautifully! I might add) Whitney Houston's first album while playing it proudly in my Walkman while I push-push-pushed that mower to "How Will I Know?"  and "Saving All My Love" whilst singing at the top of my pre-adolescent lungs. 

I regularly scalped my Nanny's backyard where the jonquils would grow and bloom too early each spring and die an unmerciful death at the hands of me and the mower. But she squeezed me and loved me to pieces anyway. The yard be damned.

When my brother and I would take to the riding mower at my aunt and uncle's place in Aurora--a treat for the two of us when all we ever wanted to do was DRIVE!--my Uncle Wayne would stand at the end of each row and tell us where to turn. Yes. That happened. That was our childhood good time.

In my adulthood mowing has been a domestic task for which I always enthusiastically volunteered: it was a calorie burn with a clear project-completion-high. When Gracie was too little to govern herself I would trap her in the back of my Explorer and position the back end of the car so she could see me as I mowed while the neighbors walked by, questioning whether to applaud my ingenuity or call the authorities.

Today I find myself with a sizable lawn (half an acre?) and a riding lawn mower. For the first time in my life, I'm not pushing. I'm steering a miniature tractor around a tract of land for which I am solely responsible (also a first). And to add to the wonder of this Patrick Dempsey-esque thrill ride (see "Can't Buy Me Love" classic teen film for details), I have a house that NEEDS TO SELL about 5 blocks away. That yard must be regularly and closely shorn. So now I get to drive my chariot through the neighborhood to the old, unsold monstrosity to keep that yard nice and trim. Then I drive it back. 

That's right: I drive through the streets on a MOWER smiling and waving...or pretending to be engrossed in my phone. And the neighbors wave as I swallow what pride remains in this very-little-embarrasses-me-anymore psyche, guiding my lovely mower from one yard to the next.

Today I mowed my new big ol' yard for the first time beneath a crisp blue spring sky. 

I sang at the top of my lungs.

The Swing

My favorite place on the planet for the first two decades of my life was Nanny's house. My mom's mom was my go-to. She loved me. She understood me. She had a great laugh and a nutty temper and a critical eye that spilled out of her mouth without a censor. I miss her every day.

It took me years to lose the impulse to call her when anything of note happened. Telling her  made it real.

Nanny and Papa (Papa died when I was seven, just months before my Dad married Nydia) had a porch swing on their enclosed back porch. I loved that swing: the sound it made, the beanbag ashtrays on the arms, the weird green floral cushion, that everything about it was happy and free. 

I am the youngest of seven cousins. Each of us could tell a different favorite story of time on that swing. When Nanny died in my 21st year, my heart split wide. And I was somehow lucky enough to inherit the swing. It is one of my most prized possessions. 

I am in a new house. It's me. My babes. The dog. Liberty. Glee. Palpable happy in every nook and cranny. A wrap-around porch that is the stuff of my dreams. And a swing that faces the setting sun.

Halpert's first ride. She was born to swing.

The Discompassionate Christian

April 1, 2016

My faults are without end. I know it. I admit it.

I am a Christian. A Christian with flaws aplenty.

I've been raised to believe sin is sin (no degrees, no levels of severity), in spite of the fact that many of my conservative Christian brethren are quick to stack up sins in a hierarchy that--when you think about it--is most unholy.

So tonight I've decided to don the hat of the Pharisee and cast judgment from this well-intentioned sinner (which might remove me from Pharisee status, but I digress). I'm probably sinning just by typing these words. But I happen to believe in a merciful God who sometimes might actually just say "ok...let's see how this pans out. And even then, I will love you."

I've scoured the scripture for Jesus's encounters with the sins we confront each day. What occurs to me today--as I confronted this particular transgression in the flesh--is that one of my favorite of sweet Jesus's dictates is "let Ye who is without sin cast the first stone." Here's the thing: I can handle all kinds of behavior, excuse it, understand it, forgive it. But the Discompassionate Christian is of an ilk I struggle to tolerate: the person who lacks empathy and compassion for the plights of those in their midst; the deacon/Sunday school teacher/believer who sees only their own wonder and none of their own shortcomings. I don't understand it. It seems to me to be, from my own meek perspective, most unChristian.

Whatever the sin, however dire the wrong, Christ forgave. He empathized. He showed compassion. And yet there are believers wandering around out here seemingly incapable of the same. He is their God whom they claim to follow. Hell, they are the line-leaders! But cold-hearted, sanctimonious acrimony isn't up Jesus's alley. You can check me on that.

And it is my challenge to forgive those who themselves forgive not. Who understand not. Who care not. I ought not cast a stone.  But can I toss it around, just a little?

I do hate to write in the abstract, but sometimes when I get too specific, people get pissed off. These might be the very people who suffer from a void where an empathetic heart may be, but that's not for me to say. You know me, "I'd rather walk on my lips than criticize."

I just tripped on my lips.

Dear Lord, forgive me.

Halpert: The Compassionate Canine

The Family that Eats Together...

March 7, 2016

This morning I nuked two Ham, Bacon and Eggs Hot Pockets for Drew, the dog, and me. (That’s right:  the world’s worst frozen snack.  Our freezer’s full of ‘em. Go ahead, judge me!) It was a balmy 60 degrees out at 7:30am. It is the Monday of our Spring Break and Drew and I rose early.  We migrated to the back patio where Drew shot baskets, the dog sniffed the ground, and I marveled that this is my reality.  It is sublime.

The Hot Pockets were our processed appetizer.  After we bummed around out back, I laced up my running shoes and took off.  When I returned, I found my son mixing up a batch of brownies. Not long after, I decided that frying up a pound of bacon would be nice for all canines and humans on the premises.  It wasn’t long before Gracie and one of her besties who had spent the night came down with a hankering for cinnamon rolls.  By midmorning we had created the perfect confluence of unhealthy deliciousness.  We floated in and out of the kitchen and around the kitchen’s island and consumed the carbs and fats that make life worth living.  We talked, we laughed, we just were.  It was bliss.

I have spent my life at the altar of the evening meal.  As a child, it was sacred.  The television was off, the kitchen lights were on.  My poor stepmother came home from a long day of teaching high school English and whipped up meat and potatoes and a bunch of other stuff.  There was always a tension in the air while the  meat and potatoes were consumed with smiles and the dishes were put away without complaint and we could get on with our evening.

I married and I figured that’s what you did.  Our first evening home post-honeymoon, I did what I assumed was the thing:  a big ol’ meal in serving dishes and bowls. I had spent hours making this first perfect meal. I was quickly informed that there was no need for all this pageantry.  It could all remain in the dish in which it was created, and I certainly didn't need to make so much. I'm sure it was an attempt to decrease my workload.  I hoped to sit and visit after the dinner I had made. But the focus seemed to be on cleaning up.  I think this was an attempt to decrease my workload and get on with our evening. All that diminished that day was my spirit. And my love for the evening meal.

It never re-inflated. But I tried.

Since that time, I attempted countless family dinners. Usually, any attempts at flagrant cooking effort were met with lackluster appreciation.  My kids seemed to love the cheap-o processed, bagged crap over stuff I spent energy and time on.  Granted, I'm no Julia Child. And the nights when we were all together and we held the dinner summit around the table, it was fine.  We talked.  Sometimes we laughed.  And I look back now and see that we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when it was over.  At least I did. 

I don’t mean to whine.  I can't stand whiners.  And I do have a vast appreciation for good times around the dinner table.  They do happen. I in no way discount treasured moments found with loved ones noshing gratefully and joyfully on a homemade meal, made with love. But I’ve learned in the past several months without the pressure of the “family dinner” that the dialogue and togetherness implied in the “family dinner” can be found wherever we are, whenever we are.  Intimacy as a family cannot be contrived or staged.  The times I have shared with my kids over nuked meals or take-out standing at the counter or an open can of soup at 11pm on sitting our red couch have meant more than any attempt at culinary excellence on my part. 

This morning, as my son made brownies all by himself and my girl and her pal popped open that can of cinnamon rolls and I fried up a vat of bacon, it was perfect.  It was easy and spontaneous and fun.  No expectations, no stilted conversation. Just happiness.

And bacon. Don't ever underestimate the bacon.

42

February 20, 2016

My Pops tells me the day I was born was much like today:  unseasonably warm and sunny.  The baseball coach at Southwest Missouri State, he was headed to practice that day over at Meador Park when word came that my mom was ripe for delivery.  These were the days when the dad was prohibited from the delivery room drama and the baby’s gender was a mystery until he/she found his/her way out of the blessed canal.  So it was on that day that Dad got the news in the waiting room of St. John’s that he had a daughter. 

On this, the celebration of my 42nd year, it is thus fitting that I spent time in the sunshine.  I soaked up as many rays of light as possible before the privileges of motherhood called me to basketball, debate, volleyball. 

It’s been quite a year, and I’m grateful. Hell’s bells! It’s been quite a 42. My gratitude is without end.

I thank you, my dear friends, for the birthday love you sent my way today.  You are the stuff of a life worth celebrating.

I'm in the front row these days. And I’m grateful.