Apron Strings

Last night I got my beloved Abigail Lea for 3 days and nights.  Immediately upon entering the house she caught sight of her apron and pronounced that it was hers.  I agreed.  She asked me to put it on her.  I did.  She wore it all night and then insisted on sleeping in it.  I thought this would be too confining, but danged if she didn't sleep in it and it was the first thing she thought about when she woke up.  Three year olds are amazing.  I happened upon this apron at the Salvation Army one Saturday and picked it up for 50 cents.  The ones I had were way too long for her, but this one was perfect and will be for several years, until she grows into mine. :)  You hardly see aprons anymore, so you have to pick them up when you find them!

She has the cutest little boots, which luckily coordinate quite well:

These boots, in addition to the apron ran down the water in the gutter for awhile this morning while Mimi was unconcerned about what time it was or whether anyone was getting dirty.

I took vacation for this and I needed it.  For three days I do not have to deal with government agencies or bill collectors illegally calling businesses in search of, well, who knows what.  Instead, I get to be Mimi for the next three days and do stuff like this:

Other than getting the boys to school on time and roughly feeding kids at least a couple of times a day, all I have to do is stuff like this:

And keep the apron clean, naturally.  Today it has already been washed twice.  The first time I told her to put it in the dirty clothes I discovered later that in Abigail's mind that is the dryer.  I found a couple of half-dry towels in the clean laundry basket TWICE before I figured out that she equated "dirty clothes" with dryer.  LOL  It made a certain kind of sense.

This was my view for most of the day.  We also made a pink lemonade cake with the same kind of icing, which was a big hit, and homemade pizza for supper.

From such simple things come peace and happiness for me.  A three year old child is old enough to give you a very good picture of what you are to them.  I think you have to get older before you realize that one of the best things you can ever be to a child is THE SAME.  

I think what Abigail loves here so much is that everything is always the same.  She will point to the sink and tell me that I used to give her baths there.  Which I most certainly did. She marvels at how small she must have been there, as she admits to not remembering it.   Then she says "I not a baby now, but I used to be."  Yes.  She is now a girl big enough for her own apron to catch soap suds, flying cake mixes, and tears.  She knows so much already and I know she is going to know so much more.  The most important thing to me is that she already knows where everything is in this house, what will happen here, and what will never happen here.

I will probably get in trouble from her mother, but tonight she was weaving some incredibly detailed story about how bad guys were after us and we had to hide. She wanted me to get up off the couch and go hide somewhere and this sounded like a lot of trouble to me.  So I told her there would be no hiding from bad guys in this house, pulled out an imaginary gun and shot the bad guys instead.  She thought that was a fine idea.  And honestly, I have to agree:  it does make a lot of sense.   Then she gave me a high five and told me we were the TEAM and we had WON.  Dang straight!!

Today I spent most of the day chasing apron strings.  Tomorrow, if it doesn't rain, we have a date with a pond and some horses.  Whether she will be wearing apron strings remains to be seen, but if she is I am sure it will come in handy.

What makes a good weekend?

It's pretty hard to ruin a weekend if you work.  Even if you don't work, and are a student, weekend's always rock, am I right?  Last weekend it was just me and the boys and the dogs, and we had a really great one.

Maybe it's the age I am, but a "good" weekend to me does not involve going anywhere.  Unless you just want to and have no time frame to have to stay within and no pressure to be anywhere by a certain time.  We get enough of that during the workweek, don't we?  I do.  My weekends are strictly my own, and the best ones often involve doing a whole lot of nothing.  I think we all need a lot more nothing in our lives.  The definition of nothing is not actually nothing, of course.  My definition is loosely what used to be considered "normal life" in an apparently isolated period that occurred during the 70's, for the most part.  During this time, at least it was my impression, "doing nothing" included taking care of your house, your yard, your children, and your soul all in one fell swoop.  This was before everyone started signing up their children for various and sundry classes, or sports teams, by the age of 3.  This was back when it was a long time until dark, no matter what time it was, because you didn't have anything to do until then but "play".  Your mother would call you in for supper, not on a cell phone, but by simply stepping outside and calling your name loudly, probably followed by "sup-per" and you would hear it, wherever you were, and you would go home.  Just like that.  No discussion, excuses or compromises, you just went home for supper when your mother called your name.  It was a brilliant system, dependent only upon the same people being in the same neighborhood from year to year.

What did we do?  Not much.  It has been beautiful here, after the winter that wasn't.  Friday night the twins wanted 2 other boys to spend the night.  I said sure and they did and the next day I was naturally the first one up.  I had this whole plan, what I have come to think of as "the usual" in mind.  "The usual" consists of dusting, laundry, sweeping, occasionally turning mattresses, raking leaves, drudgery, mostly, but normal life depends upon it.

I walked outside and it was----beautiful.  The first nice day we had had in recent memory that I would be able to actually see it, so I just sat there and made myself sit in the sun and enjoy the beautiful weather.  Then I went inside and started the washer on laundry, made coffee, and did a few dishes as the coffee dripped.  I felt my spirits rise, and it wasn't just the smell of coffee.

For some reason I just love being the only one up in the mornings.  I think it gives me a false but comforting sense of being in control, and with everyone wondering when the world is going to end these days (I'm not the only one, surely?) I try to cherish every moment of it, false or otherwise.  I made biscuits.  Real biscuits.  Easy as pie but I never take the time to do it anymore.  I made angel biscuits, that include yeast and light kneading, just because kneading bread comforts and calms me.  If you have never kneaded bread, you should give it a whirl.  If you have, you know exactly what I am talking about.  I was euphoric, and "the usual" was already seeming like a good thing to avoid on this day.

So I made biscuits, grabbed my coffee, threw the laundry that was in the washer into the dryer, grabbed my book and headed outside.  Glorious!  

When the boys got up I had biscuits ready and they even helped clean up.  A little.  Enough, because it was glorious outside and who wanted to be in the house?  Not us.  They spent the day trooping between all of our houses and the creek.  I spent it sitting in the sun letting the warmth seep into my bones and not feeling the least bit guilty.  The dogs spent it lolling in the sun on their backs and keeping me company as I did NOT rake leaves in the yard.

I threw a bag of chicken breasts in the crock pot with a jar of bbq sauce and some brown sugar and vinegar and planned on scalloped potatoes and steamed cauliflower, broccoli and carrots that evening, which during the week I never feel that I have time to do.  The entire house smelled wonderful all afternoon.

About the time the birds started chirping and the sun was getting very low in the sky, I went out and here came the boys trooping up the street.  They were sunburned and muddy, slightly in both cases.  They also were euphoric, not just because they hadn't dusted or vacuumed that day, but because they had spent most of the day on the creek.  

The creek is about a block and a half from my house.  They love to go down there and fish.  How much fishing gets done is anybodies guess, but they are 14 and old enough for such manly pursuits.  On this day they had decided they were an Indian tribe and everyone had picked an Indian name, known only to the others.  They had caught frogs, quite a few of them, and then built a fire on the sandbar in the creek and sharpened sticks to cook the frog legs with, and then dined upon what nature and their own wits had provided.  They were incredibly satisfied with themselves, as was their mother.

We had our incredible supper and went to bed happy.

The next day was the dreaded time change.  It was also raining.  I made coffee and decided not to get out of my pajamas for the entire day.  When they finally got up, the twins concurred.  We spent the day reading, watching movies and taking naps.  They also played video games, and I didn't care.  I felt I had been away from work for longer than two days.  That is priceless.

We can't go back to the days when we had more time.  We can try, but the world won't cooperate.  What we can do is take our time when we get the chance and make the very most of it.  Sometimes making the very most of it means doing very little, or only the bare minimum of what we usually hold ourselves responsible for.  We should not be so hard on ourselves.  A little time outside in the sun listening to the birds and the breeze and just breathing is not just good, but I think essential to our lives.

Make sure you make the most of the time you have while you have it.  It goes very quickly and you don't want all your memories to be of waiting in line for one thing or another.  Don't forget to make some memories at home.  They are the ones that will resonate the loudest.

Doorways....

There are many doorways that we go through during a lifetime.  Those moments, whether recognized at the time or not, after which things will never be the same again.  Little breaks in time of the before and the after.  Some of these doorways loom over us for decades before we step through them.  Some we step through before we even realize it, and some we have to decide to step through.  There will always be another doorway waiting, but no one ever turns and goes back through the same one.  This just isn't possible.  Life is reconciling oneself to the choices one has made.  The trick is to always be true to yourself, which can be hard sometimes, but one thing will shape in such a way as to keep you always ready to be judged by God at a moment's notice.  I speak of having a child.  Birth is one of the doorways that looms for women everywhere from the moment they are old enough to realize that they are "girl'.  It's what women do, what only women can do (transgender discoveries aside).  Whether one chooses to go through that particular doorway or not, many have found themselves staring at the handle nevertheless with a decision, sometimes a hard decision to make.

I tell you the truth when I say that you become a mother the minute you realize you are pregnant, and whatever happens, whatever happens after that moment, you will always be one.  And you will be a better person for it.  Whether that pregnancy ends in a birth, an adoption, a miscarriage, or an abortion, you will carry that child with you in your heart and in your mind forever, and it will color every day the way you think about the world, for better or for worse, and truth be told, you wouldn't have it any other way.  All this will happen in an instant, and I can tell you when it will be.  At some point, after counting days and taking several tests, you will stop wondering whether or not you are pregnant, and let your mind skip ahead to a scenario in which you are.  You might shiver.  Understandable, because you have just passed through the shadow of a doorway.  Nothing will ever be the same again.  Time has split into before and after.

What it is like to become a mother?  Such a simple question with such a complicated answer!  What is it like to become a mother?

It's terrifying.  First and foremost, this is what I remember.  The thought of giving birth is terrifying.  The thought of all that responsibility is terrifying.  The thought of all the things you don't know and how long this will go on and the fact that YOU will be the parent and no one will come and take over, like always before, is terrifying.

It's exciting.  It's wonderful.  You feel holy, if a little nauseous. Thrumming right along, under all the dread and preparation is the most exciting and exhausting sense of destiny playing out. THIS is what is going to happen to you.  You are going to be someone's mother!  Astounding as that is!  Maybe you didn't plan it.  Maybe you did.  It makes no difference to the ecstasy you feel, in between the bouts of incredulous confusion that this is really happening.  You are no longer alone.  You carry precious cargo every moment of every day and night.  You imagine what this child will be like.  I even had a dream in which I gave birth, which didn't turn out to be nearly as bad as I expected, only to see that I had given birth to a duckling.  Not that I didn't love it, in fact I think I loved it even more, but the guilt at the initial rejection of my 'baby' lasted for several days.  And yes, I knew it was just a dream, but pregnancy turns you inward.  You are constantly monitoring a whole other separate, even holy, world that is all within yourself.  If you didn't before, you start to get closer to God than you have been as an adult.  Which I believe is all part of the process.

Also a necessary part of the process is the waiting.  Nowadays, the waiting has largely disappeared, as it is not uncommon to pick a date and schedule a c-section at a convenient time, but I don't have any experience with that and personally I am hoping that is just a phase.  By the end of your pregnancy you won't be able to sleep much because you will be getting up to pee about every 2 hours.  Getting up will take a lot longer than you can imagine, and by then you will have lots of pillows placed strategically so that you are comfortable.  Your feet will be a lot bigger than they ever have been before and probably will never be the same size again.  You will have become familiar with all manner of hemorrhoid treatments, and you will have been wearing a maxi pad for a couple of months because you will pee your pants all the time.  Try not to worry about any of this.  Motherhood is not for the faint of heart!  Besides, this is the least of your worries.  Your main worry is how long is this going to go on???  Everyone you know asks you, no matter where you go, "You haven't had that baby yet??"  If you stay at home, they call you on the phone.  Then they frequently don't have anything to say, because "oh, you answered the phone.  I guess you haven't had that baby yet!"  Try not to take this personally, these same people will be helping you figure out the weird underwear in the hospital that you will have to figure out how to fit the largest  maxi pad you have ever seen in your life.  And you will thank God for them.  Try to remember this, as you feel helpless because you have no control over this and you really want to get it over with.  Everything is washed and ready and the room is waiting.  You are never really going to have any control again.  But don't worry, you won't care.  You are going to have a baby, and you are about to go into what I like to call "Lioness Mode".  You don't even have the faintest idea of who you are, but you are about to find out, and you are going to be so proud of yourself you won't even be able to believe it.

These days, most likely you will have to drive quite a while to get to the hospital (since no one in small towns can afford the malpractice insurance to deliver babies anymore), and odds are that you will have a C-section scheduled (because it's too inconvenient to let nature take it's course and/or the insurance has already agreed to pay for a C-section, you figure out which, if either, is more true).  I can't really speak about this without sounding bitter, but giving birth is about the most natural thing in the world and there is largely no reason to even have a Dr. or a hospital, in truth.  Having said that, however, in the interests of full disclosure, I will tell you that I have had an emergency c-section and it saved both my twin boys lives, plus my own.  Long story short, I had an amniocentesis to see if the twins' lungs were developed enough for me to schedule a c-section because I could no longer really breathe if I was lying down (not that I did that very often in the last months...).  The amnio needle caused a placental abruption, which is a way of saying that my placenta tore away from my abdominal wall and both babies and I were bleeding out, albeit very neatly inside my body somewhere and I had no clue (NO CLUE WHATSOEVER) that I was in the midst of dying along with the babies inside me.  I didn't die, and neither did the boys, despite being born with no heartbeats and only hald of their blood volume.  But that is enough of that story for our purposes here.  In short, while I strongly disapprove of c-sections just because, in emergency situations they can save lives, and of course you should never turn one down if you really need one.  That would be stupid.

This is to deal with normal deliveries, where you are taken through an ever increasingly painful, exhausting, and seemingly unending time where you are laboring.  You may have tried to get out of doing this by this point.  Don't feel bad.  It's only natural, and I have seen even animals try to run away rather than go through labor, but you will reach a point where you will realize you are not going to get out of this.  You know it's going to be bad.  It's been bad for quite a while now, but you know it is going to get worse.  A lot worse than this.  Don't be embarrassed if you get ugly.  I even tried to kick the Dr. at one point during my first delivery and he was not even the least bit surprised.  Never will you be so grateful for people who have the attitude of having seen it all before. You will feel yourself go into a "zone", or a spiritual state where your pain, your exhaustion, and most probably your "birth plan" no longer matter.   It's OK.   All that matters is the baby.  You may be looking at the clock but only out of habit, because the clock cannot keep track of this kind of time you are in now.  Time doesn't matter except that it is passing, passing, and no  matter how long it takes, you are going to see this little soul safely into this world, even if it kills you.  It occurs to you that it might, indeed, kill you.  You do not care.  It occurs to you that this state you are in is probably equivalent to an LSD trip, but that doesn't seem strange.  The idea of dying is put on the list in your head, but not at the top spot.  It is second on the list now, right behind See Baby Into World Safely, because you are now in Lioness Mode, and you are a fierce warrior, who will stop at nothing before her job is done.

For many women, even ones who have been Christians for years, this is the first time that they can say they actually know what it is to love someone more than themselves.  It comes to you crystal clear, you just know it in your soul, and you know that no matter how bad it is or how hard you have to work, this is what you were born for.  This moment.  This is it.  You are the doorway.  Even if you still don't think you are doing it right, your body knows exactly what to do.  This is the miracle of life, your life, and it is happening.  Nothing will ever be the same for you again, no matter what happens next.  You have carried this child, sacrificed for it, loved it, dreamed it's life, prayed over it, and now you are going to deliver it into the world.

By now they are telling you you are almost done.  You are not aware of the people around you except that they are manipulating your body, trying to help, and you don't even care.  They are on your side, you don't know who they are, you don't care, it doesn't matter, and then, suddenly, it's done.  You are distantly aware of feeling cold suddenly, you look up and see your baby, which is unceremoniously plunked down right on top of your huge, now jelly-like, sloshing stomach. You see that baby, and that baby cries.  They tell you what it is but it doesn't matter if it's boy, girl, or even duckling, it's your baby and it's alive.  You feel as big as the whole world!  You are not actually as big as the world, it's just that your world has just shrunken.  Everything that really matters to you is in that room.  You see your baby and your baby sees you, and the time that has been running so strangely stops for just an instant.  Everything else just drops away and you know, in your heart and your soul, that this is what it's all been for, and it's all been worth it, a thousand times over.

They take your baby away, throw it down (you will think) on a table under a bright light and rub it roughly with a towel to get the gunk off.  Should your poor husband still be under the impression that you are the center of the world, you quickly disabuse him of that notion with possibly stern orders spit in his direction to "GO WITH THE BABY!!"  Or not.  Maybe you will be a nicer Lioness than I was the first time.  Probably, though, you will at least consider him addle brained, perhaps for the first time.  Sorry about that.  It's hard for the fathers sometimes, I think, to make the transition.  He didn't just reconcile himself to death, and gladly, for the sake of the life of this child.  He made no bargain with God, he missed all that, and you haven't had the time to fill him in.  Don't feel bad about it.  Just blame it on Lioness Mode.  At any rate, he will go over there and they will hand him that baby and he will be lost, and for good, and he will figure it out pretty quickly.  Take heart!  He is about to discover that the wife whose temper he wants hates to deal with can be used as a shield that will protect your whole family.  Many is the man who has traded his dreams of a perfect woman in for a trusted comrade in arms.  You will work it out, and pretty easily, because you two have just hitched yourself into the yoke of parenthood, and whatever comes, you are never getting out of it.  Never.  No matter what.

Never in the history of birthing stories have I ever heard anyone talk about the afterbirth.  You will know in your mind, because you read the books, that the afterbirth is delivered.  I can vaguely recall that happening once, but not with any details.  Your legs might be shaking uncontrollably right after, and they once made the most interesting long bag of ice, slapped it right between my legs, and then covered me up with the most wonderful warm blankets, and I didn't even care!  I couldn't feel the cold, and they seemed so sure of what they were doing, I just went with it.  I think this is normal.  I can remember being back in the room then.  Whether I passed out, went to sleep, they gave me good drugs, or what happened between the baby being on the table and me being in my room is still cloudy to me, and so much the better, I say.  It just doesn't matter that much to you.  People who love you will be waiting in your room and they will fuss over you and bring you wonderful things, and if you take a moment, treasure that, because this is the last time that anything is ever going to be just about you.  From now on, no matter what happens, your child is going to color everything that happens to you, you are their mother, forever.  Now you are wanting your baby brought to you, and here it comes.

This is it.  You have been trusted with this life.  You are about to dive into the deepest water, with no assurance of survival but the biggest commitment of all.  You have been the doorway and now the safety of the realm rests with you.  Have faith, thank God, listen to your heart, and do what's best for your child.  Know that what's best will hurt, sometimes, and that's OK because some lessons are that important.  Know that everything else is just details.  It just won't matter to you as much, ever again, as it once did.  You will put it away with your other childish things and treasure the memory of the girl you were, before you walked through the doorway of motherhood.  You are so much more than that girl could ever imagine, and she would be so proud of what you have become.

Welcome to best club in the world!  You are a link in a chain that has no beginning and no end, it transcends language and cultural barriers, and has never changed...... Find a mother in any time period in history you will find yourself.  I wish you joy, and peace, and, it should go without saying, as few hemorrhoids as possible.  I already know you will have love in abundance.