Last night I watched in horror as Coulter my 5 year old, stared (I mean, like, seriously stared) in the mirror trying to arrange each last little piece of hair to resemble Justin Beaver. (Yes, I know it's Bieber, but you try telling that to Coulter.) We are so infatuated with Justin right now that Coulter talked my parents into taking him to see the movie, "Never say Never." You really need to know my parents to understand the gravity of such an event, but let me just say that when we were growing up we were allowed to listen to a) classical music b) Amy Grant or c) Sandi Patty. When my sister was in high school she somehow, and no-one to this day knows how, came into possession of a Chicago 19 cassette tape and once my Mother got wind of it, she snapped it in two with her bare hands. Now, we're not talking Kiss or Ozzy or even Michael. This was Chicago.
It was only when we got into my Dad's truck that we were able to explore new musical horizons (read: Country) and to this day I get a little teary and lonesome for my Dad whenever I hear Dolly. But as much as I like a good country croon, I know all too well how quickly children memorize lyrics and the last thing I need is for Coulter to go around singing "Get the Sheriff on the phone. Lord have mercy, how's she even get them britches on." And I only use that example because I once had a 4 year old in Kindermusik that brought "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" on her iPod as an example for tempo and she sang word for word the entire song. It scared me to death. I turned my car to KLOVE and have had it there ever since. (Side note for Suzanne: if you mention this blog to my sister, the brilliant music historian, professor and lecturer, please tell her that I, a classically trained pianist and teacher, eagerly and regularly expose my children to all sorts of classical music even though nothing could be further from the truth, unless you count Veggie Tales, which I'm pretty sure you can't.)
Lately though, I've had some kid-free, adult-tunes time. I've started spinning class. The instructor, one of my first friends in Fremont is sweet and petite and soft spoken, but get her on a bike and she's a mountain climbing machine! Sometimes it's so hard that I try to focus on my childbirth memories just to get my head off the fact that I can't feel my legs. And if I do start to feel a little better or have any shred of confidence, I look over to see a woman nearing her 9th month in her own pregnancy and then I just get mad. It's not normal for someone to be able to work out that hard while being pregnant. I would've needed a step ladder just to get on that thing.
Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the music is great. One of my favorites is this "Bottoms Up" song which for someone who doesn't drink seems a little ironic, but while most people are dreaming of a cold beer, I just keep thinking about Emma Claire who likes to take her clothes off and stick her "bottom up" while screaming "BUNS TO THE WORLD!" (don't ask!)
OK., so I think it was about 500 words ago, but I was actually talking about Justin. One afternoon, after repeated requests for "Like Baby, Baby, Baby" I did a search on you tube (seriously, who needs an iPod?) an played it for the kids. We had a dance party and were singing our hearts out until I saw Eminem come on the screen. Remember my sister, the historian, professor and lecturer? She had actually warned me about this and called it cross-pollination (at least that's what I think she called it) which sounds like something you would do with a tulip and a daffodil, but as Fancy Nancy would say it's actually just a fancy word for trying to introduce my innocent little Justin Beaver fan who still thinks that flag football is called fake football and that out of order means the ball has crossed over the line, to the likes of Eminem. No thank you for that! I turned the computer off and explained to Coulter that this other singer wasn't someone that we could listen to.
So, fast forward several days. I'd been having one of those, "my children don't listen to me and I'm a terrible Mother" kind of days when Coulter bolted into the car. "Mom! Mom! Guess what? Mr. Wisdom played music today during p.e., well he always plays music, and I mean we don't dance or anything, he just plays music for us to listen to. Actually today we rolled these things out on our arms and my belly really hurts, but today he played, 'Baby, Baby,' only guess what, Mom?
"What?"
"He played the whole song, even the part with that guy that we don't listen to. I tried to close my ears but, Mom, I did hear part of it, you know, part of that other guy."
Oh, how my children make me smile. We may not be listening to Mozart and we may, at the moment have "Beaver Fever," but the fact that Coulter would try to hold his ears during p.e. knowing that his Mom doesn't approve of "that other guy" tells me that out of all the voices playing in his ear, my little guy is still listening to his Mother after all.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
A Special Sinner
This past Sunday in church the Pastor was talking about sin. He spoke to the idea that while some sin is always sin (murder,) other sin is relative depending on perhaps your culture (going topless at a beach.) I don’t know, but in my book that one has always belonged with the former, but that’s just me. I’m more of a full-coverage swimmer, complete with skirts and heavy duty spandex. Anyway, he urged us to consider that while we may stay clear of the “BIG” ones, we are often guilty of lesser known sins such as feeling special. He said that feeling special sets us apart and is a sin. After his service, or rather during (my nursery pager may or may not have been vibrating,) I snuck off to attend another service. It turns out the liturgy for the Methodist and Presbyterian churches must be the same because wouldn’t you know it Pastor #2 also spoke to the fact that we aren’t supposed to feel special. It’s only by His Grace that we are saved and we shouldn’t boast. Yes, yada, yada, I get it only I don’t really get it. I mean, of course, yes I know it’s only by His Grace that I am this person, living this life, and that I have no reason to boast, but I question that about being special. I believe God thinks I’m special. I believe I am special. How can we claim to be “the righteousness of God in Christ,” and “created in His image” if we don’t believe we are special?
After the 2nd service there was a formal Q&A time with the pastor. I’ve attended church my entire life and I’ve never attended (or even heard of) Q&A time so I decided to stick around. I was trying to summon the courage to ask about the “special” issue when the conversation quickly turned very (and I mean VERY) theological and I realized, without hesitation or shame that I was, no question about it, the dumbest person in the room and I decided it was better to just live in ignorance and believe that I’m special.
And it’s not just me, my children are special too, and if feeling special is a sin then my daughter, Emma Claire, is in real trouble. She walks into a room and there’s a slight pause; a hushed silence. She stops; looks around and expects people to notice. She makes special mention of her clothes and gives a play by play of where it all came from. Moving beyond clothes, she continues with a dissertation on where her brother is and what the plans are for the day, or she’ll randomly start telling stories of her grandparents’ dog CoCo or their farm hand, Jesse, and occasionally she’ll just break out into song. I smile and nod and try to give reassuring glances that, yes, I know you’re just trying to buy groceries and no, it’s not rude if you don’t respond with genuine delight at hearing this impromptu concert.
Emma Claire believes she is special and as her Mother, I believe she is right, but lately I’ve decided it’s more than that. She is fearless. It’s not so much that Emma Claire thinks she’s special, it’s that she’s confident and she’s brave and it just comes across as “wow, aren’t I special.” Yesterday I watched endlessly as she propelled herself off the leather ottoman and did belly flop after belly flop onto a couch cushion. She never once questioned whether this would hurt or if she might be unsuccessful in her landing. She just kept flying. And I just kept worrying; feeling sure that this wouldn’t end well (and for the record it didn’t.) I also kept thinking that Pammy, our nanny for almost 6 years was seriously underpaid, but that’s a story for another time.
Some days I look at my daughter and even my son and I wonder where it came from? Did I help instill that or are all children just born with that? Was I ever that brave? Did I ever fly from couches or float into a room looking around to see who had noticed and know, without doubt, that they had noticed? I don’t remember, but I do remember being told that I was a child of the most high God. I do remember being told that I should “let my light shine.” I do remember being told that I was not to have “a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and self-discipline.” And that feels pretty special to me.
Being a child of God makes us special. Knowing it’s only by His Grace keeps us humble. If teaching that to my children is sinful then, well, I’m a sinner, but I guess we already knew that. What I didn’t know until this week, is that even as a Christian, I can go swimming at a topless beach, so long as I’m in Germany. Now isn't that special?
After the 2nd service there was a formal Q&A time with the pastor. I’ve attended church my entire life and I’ve never attended (or even heard of) Q&A time so I decided to stick around. I was trying to summon the courage to ask about the “special” issue when the conversation quickly turned very (and I mean VERY) theological and I realized, without hesitation or shame that I was, no question about it, the dumbest person in the room and I decided it was better to just live in ignorance and believe that I’m special.
And it’s not just me, my children are special too, and if feeling special is a sin then my daughter, Emma Claire, is in real trouble. She walks into a room and there’s a slight pause; a hushed silence. She stops; looks around and expects people to notice. She makes special mention of her clothes and gives a play by play of where it all came from. Moving beyond clothes, she continues with a dissertation on where her brother is and what the plans are for the day, or she’ll randomly start telling stories of her grandparents’ dog CoCo or their farm hand, Jesse, and occasionally she’ll just break out into song. I smile and nod and try to give reassuring glances that, yes, I know you’re just trying to buy groceries and no, it’s not rude if you don’t respond with genuine delight at hearing this impromptu concert.
Emma Claire believes she is special and as her Mother, I believe she is right, but lately I’ve decided it’s more than that. She is fearless. It’s not so much that Emma Claire thinks she’s special, it’s that she’s confident and she’s brave and it just comes across as “wow, aren’t I special.” Yesterday I watched endlessly as she propelled herself off the leather ottoman and did belly flop after belly flop onto a couch cushion. She never once questioned whether this would hurt or if she might be unsuccessful in her landing. She just kept flying. And I just kept worrying; feeling sure that this wouldn’t end well (and for the record it didn’t.) I also kept thinking that Pammy, our nanny for almost 6 years was seriously underpaid, but that’s a story for another time.
Some days I look at my daughter and even my son and I wonder where it came from? Did I help instill that or are all children just born with that? Was I ever that brave? Did I ever fly from couches or float into a room looking around to see who had noticed and know, without doubt, that they had noticed? I don’t remember, but I do remember being told that I was a child of the most high God. I do remember being told that I should “let my light shine.” I do remember being told that I was not to have “a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and self-discipline.” And that feels pretty special to me.
Being a child of God makes us special. Knowing it’s only by His Grace keeps us humble. If teaching that to my children is sinful then, well, I’m a sinner, but I guess we already knew that. What I didn’t know until this week, is that even as a Christian, I can go swimming at a topless beach, so long as I’m in Germany. Now isn't that special?
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The Three Little Pigs and Other Weird Stuff
When my daughter was almost 2, her dad told her the story of The Three Little Pigs. I think he has a secret wish to be a professional story teller because he takes this role very seriously. At first I heard loud knocking (the wolf) and then I heard hysterical crying. There is consoling and reassuring and yet for days and weeks to come, I found myself explaining to her that the wolf was just pretend. She would wake up with nightmares and screams of “the wolf was trying to get me.” All of this from a few knocks on the night stand. Nothing I said worked until one night, I just told her that yes the wolf was real but that Jesus would not let him get her. And that worked. As it turns out, I was right: the wolf is real, only according to our first sermon in Fremont, we’re not supposed to be afraid of it or even be protected from it; we’re supposed to kill it.
As I’m sure y’all well know, finding a church home isn’t easy, but I’ve committed to no complaining (seriously, what was I thinking?) so this is me not complaining: “Yippee! What an adventure! Time to find a new church!” The reason this makes me nervous and not the least bit excited is that my history with church seeking is not the greatest. I tend to be one of “those” kind where the tiniest infraction sends me packing. I’d like to think that over the course of the past few years I’ve changed, but only time will tell. We were in Sioux Falls for 10 years and during that time, we attended numerous Methodist Churches; we eventually joined a Presbyterian Church and planted there for a few years until the pastor lied to me and about me and well, I guess that’s on my list of don’ts because shortly after that we started searching again before we finally landed at a Baptist church which secretly riddled me with guilt for the longest time because my Aunt Ida, God rest her soul, thought all Baptist were evil and that the only thing worse than a Baptist was a Republican Baptist and shortly before I got married the only thing she wanted to know was whether or not my soon-to-be-husband was a Baptist. My Aunt Ida (think Weezer from Steele Magnolias) was opinionated and loud and what some might consider to be rude and yet she was also very passionate and dedicated and I loved her with all my heart. And so it was hard in the beginning but I came to learn that while she was right about a lot of things, she was wrong about Baptists….at least the South Dakota kind (and I’m thinking just to be safe here, I should also throw the Nebraska and Arkansas kind as well!)
So, all dressed in our Sunday best (which means Coulter wore a shirt that didn’t have a team logo on it) we arrived right on time to the 1st United Methodist Church of Fremont, only to find that the website hadn’t been updated with the new Sunday School times so we missed Coulter’s class, but, as the usher assured us, this was “the rockin’ service” (to which I think he meant contemporary) and that Coulter would have a great time. After all the rockin’, a man walked up to the platform and introduced himself as the Associate Pastor. It turns out that the Senior Pastor was ill and, well, unfortunately for us, there had been no real time in which to prepare a sermon. (He’d actually had about 18 hours based on the story that he told us, but who I am to count?) He shared a scripture, “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you,” and then he started to tell us the original version (or what he called the R-rated version) of The Three Little Pigs. I couldn’t help get tickled with all his huffing and puffing thinking that perhaps here was someone else who had missed his calling as a story teller, but I also couldn’t help wonder why I was sitting in church listening to The Three Little Pigs. I did learn something new, however. Evidently Disney softened it up a bit with the 1st two pigs and eventually the wolf escaping because that’s not how it happened at all. In the original story, the wolf eats the 1st two pigs and the wolf dies in the fire. As the storytelling went on (complete with audience responses of “not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin”) Coulter’s eyes get bigger and bigger. He looked at me as if to confirm this man’s story and I just nodded and said, “Let’s not share this with your sister.”
Before long, though, time ran out because it’s the 1st Sunday of the month and as any good Methodist knows, that means communion, so the pastor cuts his message off and says, “Well, we need to do communion, so let me just say this: It’s o.k. to kill wolves. We don’t need to feel guilty about killing wolves.” He related the story to killing the wolves of poverty and other evils and commented on how there’s no way to know if the pigs were lazy, that maybe all they could afford were sticks and straw but I didn’t get it and I’ve been trying for almost 4 days now and I still don’t get it. I’m frustrated that I missed out on a sincerely profound message on social injustice but I guess I just found it hard to go “there” spiritually….you know, with the pigs.
And yet God brought us to that place at that time, so I’m thinking there’s a lesson somewhere, I just have to find it. We certainly have faced our share of wolves lately not the least of which is the adjustment period that follows up-rooting a family of four. Coulter, who’s homesick and dearly misses his special friends, has struggled to find the exact words. When you ask him what’s wrong he says, “I don’t know. This place is really weird.” I assumed that he’s just struggling to verbalize his feelings, but the more I think about it, maybe he is using the right word. Maybe it does feel weird to have a new teacher and new rules and no kids in your neighborhood and to all of a sudden share a room with your annoying sister and to spend time that was usually reserved for friends and is now hopelessly and forever spent with your mom who tries to be awesome, but is probably, again, just weird. Yes, I think I’m starting to understand. Everything is different and different isn’t always bad, but sometimes it’s really, really weird.
It’s weird to sit in church and listen to your pastor how like a wolf. (O.K., there wasn’t really howling, but there was definitely huffing.)It’s weird to get so into character and knock so loud that your daughter believes you’re a wolf and cries hysterically for weeks on end. I suppose it’s also weird to tell your daughter that the wolf is real but that Jesus will protect her. Now that I think about it, we’re all just a little bit weird and I think we’re going to fit in just fine!
p.s. Sioux Falls friends, I had to just tell you that a couple came up to us at church and after visiting for a minute they shared that they had raised their family in Sioux Falls...when she gave her last name, I recognized it immediately as a Kindermusik name. I had taught 2 of her grandkids! This is a very small town! :)
As I’m sure y’all well know, finding a church home isn’t easy, but I’ve committed to no complaining (seriously, what was I thinking?) so this is me not complaining: “Yippee! What an adventure! Time to find a new church!” The reason this makes me nervous and not the least bit excited is that my history with church seeking is not the greatest. I tend to be one of “those” kind where the tiniest infraction sends me packing. I’d like to think that over the course of the past few years I’ve changed, but only time will tell. We were in Sioux Falls for 10 years and during that time, we attended numerous Methodist Churches; we eventually joined a Presbyterian Church and planted there for a few years until the pastor lied to me and about me and well, I guess that’s on my list of don’ts because shortly after that we started searching again before we finally landed at a Baptist church which secretly riddled me with guilt for the longest time because my Aunt Ida, God rest her soul, thought all Baptist were evil and that the only thing worse than a Baptist was a Republican Baptist and shortly before I got married the only thing she wanted to know was whether or not my soon-to-be-husband was a Baptist. My Aunt Ida (think Weezer from Steele Magnolias) was opinionated and loud and what some might consider to be rude and yet she was also very passionate and dedicated and I loved her with all my heart. And so it was hard in the beginning but I came to learn that while she was right about a lot of things, she was wrong about Baptists….at least the South Dakota kind (and I’m thinking just to be safe here, I should also throw the Nebraska and Arkansas kind as well!)
So, all dressed in our Sunday best (which means Coulter wore a shirt that didn’t have a team logo on it) we arrived right on time to the 1st United Methodist Church of Fremont, only to find that the website hadn’t been updated with the new Sunday School times so we missed Coulter’s class, but, as the usher assured us, this was “the rockin’ service” (to which I think he meant contemporary) and that Coulter would have a great time. After all the rockin’, a man walked up to the platform and introduced himself as the Associate Pastor. It turns out that the Senior Pastor was ill and, well, unfortunately for us, there had been no real time in which to prepare a sermon. (He’d actually had about 18 hours based on the story that he told us, but who I am to count?) He shared a scripture, “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you,” and then he started to tell us the original version (or what he called the R-rated version) of The Three Little Pigs. I couldn’t help get tickled with all his huffing and puffing thinking that perhaps here was someone else who had missed his calling as a story teller, but I also couldn’t help wonder why I was sitting in church listening to The Three Little Pigs. I did learn something new, however. Evidently Disney softened it up a bit with the 1st two pigs and eventually the wolf escaping because that’s not how it happened at all. In the original story, the wolf eats the 1st two pigs and the wolf dies in the fire. As the storytelling went on (complete with audience responses of “not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin”) Coulter’s eyes get bigger and bigger. He looked at me as if to confirm this man’s story and I just nodded and said, “Let’s not share this with your sister.”
Before long, though, time ran out because it’s the 1st Sunday of the month and as any good Methodist knows, that means communion, so the pastor cuts his message off and says, “Well, we need to do communion, so let me just say this: It’s o.k. to kill wolves. We don’t need to feel guilty about killing wolves.” He related the story to killing the wolves of poverty and other evils and commented on how there’s no way to know if the pigs were lazy, that maybe all they could afford were sticks and straw but I didn’t get it and I’ve been trying for almost 4 days now and I still don’t get it. I’m frustrated that I missed out on a sincerely profound message on social injustice but I guess I just found it hard to go “there” spiritually….you know, with the pigs.
And yet God brought us to that place at that time, so I’m thinking there’s a lesson somewhere, I just have to find it. We certainly have faced our share of wolves lately not the least of which is the adjustment period that follows up-rooting a family of four. Coulter, who’s homesick and dearly misses his special friends, has struggled to find the exact words. When you ask him what’s wrong he says, “I don’t know. This place is really weird.” I assumed that he’s just struggling to verbalize his feelings, but the more I think about it, maybe he is using the right word. Maybe it does feel weird to have a new teacher and new rules and no kids in your neighborhood and to all of a sudden share a room with your annoying sister and to spend time that was usually reserved for friends and is now hopelessly and forever spent with your mom who tries to be awesome, but is probably, again, just weird. Yes, I think I’m starting to understand. Everything is different and different isn’t always bad, but sometimes it’s really, really weird.
It’s weird to sit in church and listen to your pastor how like a wolf. (O.K., there wasn’t really howling, but there was definitely huffing.)It’s weird to get so into character and knock so loud that your daughter believes you’re a wolf and cries hysterically for weeks on end. I suppose it’s also weird to tell your daughter that the wolf is real but that Jesus will protect her. Now that I think about it, we’re all just a little bit weird and I think we’re going to fit in just fine!
p.s. Sioux Falls friends, I had to just tell you that a couple came up to us at church and after visiting for a minute they shared that they had raised their family in Sioux Falls...when she gave her last name, I recognized it immediately as a Kindermusik name. I had taught 2 of her grandkids! This is a very small town! :)
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Yesterday I was doing a little “research” and discovered that according to experts, “moving is one of the greatest stresses we face in our lives.,” (duh!) and that “in its capacity to cause psychological distress it comes only after losing a close relative in terms of severity, and ahead of illness, loss of employment and divorce,” which, after thinking about it explains a lot. It explains the crying (mine; not my children); the behaviours (my childrens’; not mine) and the overwhelming feeling that I’ve fallen into a well and can’t seem to find my way out. I’m hoping that it also explains why for the past two weeks all I seem able to do is observe and judge.
I’m not normally a judgmental person. I suppose my husband might argue this point because he can’t seem to let go of the fact that I criticized Tara Lipinski’s make-up the night that she was given (excuse me, “won”) the gold medal, but come on, she was like 12 and her make-up looked ridiculous. For some reason he thinks I was being too hard and that perhaps I should have given her a little credit for her skating ability. Whatever.
O.K., so where was I? Oh yes, I’m a tolerant person. My “life verse” (or the verse I strive to make my life verse) is Micah 6:8 “…and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” That doesn’t really scream “judge others!” and yet, well…
Yesterday, parked on a side street waiting for school to be dismissed I became entranced watching another mom smoke a cigarette. In the car pool lane. At school. Obviously there were smokers at Coulter’s previous school but it is completely inconceivable to me that they would have lit up on the playground waiting for their Kindergartners to emerge. Even as I write this, I think about all the smokers in my life (some have quit; others have not) and how much love and tolerance I have for them. But they’re older. They started smoking at a time when cigarettes were like gum. Of course I also know and love smokers who knew it wasn't gum and yet I know in my heart they would never smoke during car pool. Anyway, this woman throws her cigarette out the window and emerges from her car. (And while I used the term car pool lane before, what I meant to say was a street full of parked cars. There is no lane. There is no cross walk. There is no car pool.) She is wearing leopard print flannel pajamas. She walks to the back of her jeep, pulls out a black leather jacket with fringe and lights up another cigarette on her way to the Kindergarten door. It was like watching a movie. I was stunned---especially when she was joined by yet another smoking mother. Now, I’m not at all proud of what I’m about to say especially given the aforementioned smoking loved ones, but in that moment; in that hazy, smoke filled, leopard print moment, I wondered if we had chosen the wrong school for Coulter.
BAM! Here comes the guilt. How could I teach tolerance and social justice to my children if I’m ready to bolt at the first sign of, oh how should I say, diversity? How could I claim humility in my life verse if I’m not even humble enough to consider that these are good people? I could write a year’s worth of blogs on how wrong this is and how sorry I am, but I thought it, I felt it, I’m sharing it and now I’m moving on because as it so happens, I must confess to yet still more judging.
Kindergartners soon start piling out of the building and while I was hugging Coulter I couldn’t help but notice pajama lady’s son. His head was shaved bald save for a mohawk (that’s mo; not faux) and again I cringed at what I was feeling and thinking. For 10 years I’ve lived in a neighborhood where the houses look similar and the parents look similar and no-one smokes on the playground and children don't have mohawks. When had I become so snooty?
As we made the drive home, I asked Coulter what was special about his day. “We watched a movie in music!”
“Oh,” I judged, “A movie in music? How interesting. Was it Peter and the Wolf?”
“No.” He replied. “We watched Peter Pan. We also got to watch a movie during quiet time.”
2 movies. At school. How interesting.
But it doesn’t stop there. I’ve judged the Food4Less because they don’t sack your groceries (Seriously? It’s not like I’m expecting a full-service gas station here, just a few bags.) I’ve judged the pot smoking neighbors across the street and, as I posted on Facebook last week, I judged an exercise instructor for using a Jane Fonda tape during class. Of course the joke’s on me because almost a week later I’m still sore from all of Jane’s “squeezing and lifting.”
My therapist friends would tell me that all of this judgment comes from fear; that I’m just scared and they’d probably be right. As moms, we’re always scared of making decisions that hurt our children and I’m scared that moving Coulter in the middle of the year was the wrong choice (even though I know it was the right choice.) I’m scared that Clarmar school is the wrong choice (even though I know it’s the right choice.) I’m scared that I’m always going to have to wash the dishes in the bath tub (even though I know….oh, never mind.) I’m scared of being 16 again when all the smokers in High School hated me. I'm scared that Coulter's going to ask for a mohawk. Mostly though, I’m scared that if I don’t get out of this funk, I’m going to wish a way an incredibly special time in which I have the opportunity to be at home sharing in the lives of my children.
And so that’s it. I’m finished.Tomorrow is a new day. A day to rejoice and be glad. A day to be grateful and filled with joy. A day to show mercy and love kindness and walk humbly. And who knows, I may even do it while rockin’ my own pair of flannels!
I’m not normally a judgmental person. I suppose my husband might argue this point because he can’t seem to let go of the fact that I criticized Tara Lipinski’s make-up the night that she was given (excuse me, “won”) the gold medal, but come on, she was like 12 and her make-up looked ridiculous. For some reason he thinks I was being too hard and that perhaps I should have given her a little credit for her skating ability. Whatever.
O.K., so where was I? Oh yes, I’m a tolerant person. My “life verse” (or the verse I strive to make my life verse) is Micah 6:8 “…and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” That doesn’t really scream “judge others!” and yet, well…
Yesterday, parked on a side street waiting for school to be dismissed I became entranced watching another mom smoke a cigarette. In the car pool lane. At school. Obviously there were smokers at Coulter’s previous school but it is completely inconceivable to me that they would have lit up on the playground waiting for their Kindergartners to emerge. Even as I write this, I think about all the smokers in my life (some have quit; others have not) and how much love and tolerance I have for them. But they’re older. They started smoking at a time when cigarettes were like gum. Of course I also know and love smokers who knew it wasn't gum and yet I know in my heart they would never smoke during car pool. Anyway, this woman throws her cigarette out the window and emerges from her car. (And while I used the term car pool lane before, what I meant to say was a street full of parked cars. There is no lane. There is no cross walk. There is no car pool.) She is wearing leopard print flannel pajamas. She walks to the back of her jeep, pulls out a black leather jacket with fringe and lights up another cigarette on her way to the Kindergarten door. It was like watching a movie. I was stunned---especially when she was joined by yet another smoking mother. Now, I’m not at all proud of what I’m about to say especially given the aforementioned smoking loved ones, but in that moment; in that hazy, smoke filled, leopard print moment, I wondered if we had chosen the wrong school for Coulter.
BAM! Here comes the guilt. How could I teach tolerance and social justice to my children if I’m ready to bolt at the first sign of, oh how should I say, diversity? How could I claim humility in my life verse if I’m not even humble enough to consider that these are good people? I could write a year’s worth of blogs on how wrong this is and how sorry I am, but I thought it, I felt it, I’m sharing it and now I’m moving on because as it so happens, I must confess to yet still more judging.
Kindergartners soon start piling out of the building and while I was hugging Coulter I couldn’t help but notice pajama lady’s son. His head was shaved bald save for a mohawk (that’s mo; not faux) and again I cringed at what I was feeling and thinking. For 10 years I’ve lived in a neighborhood where the houses look similar and the parents look similar and no-one smokes on the playground and children don't have mohawks. When had I become so snooty?
As we made the drive home, I asked Coulter what was special about his day. “We watched a movie in music!”
“Oh,” I judged, “A movie in music? How interesting. Was it Peter and the Wolf?”
“No.” He replied. “We watched Peter Pan. We also got to watch a movie during quiet time.”
2 movies. At school. How interesting.
But it doesn’t stop there. I’ve judged the Food4Less because they don’t sack your groceries (Seriously? It’s not like I’m expecting a full-service gas station here, just a few bags.) I’ve judged the pot smoking neighbors across the street and, as I posted on Facebook last week, I judged an exercise instructor for using a Jane Fonda tape during class. Of course the joke’s on me because almost a week later I’m still sore from all of Jane’s “squeezing and lifting.”
My therapist friends would tell me that all of this judgment comes from fear; that I’m just scared and they’d probably be right. As moms, we’re always scared of making decisions that hurt our children and I’m scared that moving Coulter in the middle of the year was the wrong choice (even though I know it was the right choice.) I’m scared that Clarmar school is the wrong choice (even though I know it’s the right choice.) I’m scared that I’m always going to have to wash the dishes in the bath tub (even though I know….oh, never mind.) I’m scared of being 16 again when all the smokers in High School hated me. I'm scared that Coulter's going to ask for a mohawk. Mostly though, I’m scared that if I don’t get out of this funk, I’m going to wish a way an incredibly special time in which I have the opportunity to be at home sharing in the lives of my children.
And so that’s it. I’m finished.Tomorrow is a new day. A day to rejoice and be glad. A day to be grateful and filled with joy. A day to show mercy and love kindness and walk humbly. And who knows, I may even do it while rockin’ my own pair of flannels!
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