Standing in the doorway

Nine.  The number nine never held any significance for me, but as it turns out, it's a sneaky little number that I should have been watching for.  I was walking along, down a long corridor, holding the hand of my little boy, blissfully unaware that something was lurking in the distance.  Then, all of a sudden, the corridor ended and there was a doorway thrust before us, the number nine looming ominously large across the half-open door.  Something didn't feel right about this doorway, so I clutched his hand a little tighter and turned to go back.   We turned, but before we could take even one step, our feet stopped short even as a whoosh of air rose in our throats and we tried to pull back from falling over a ledge.   The corridor was gone.  The hallway we walked now invisible.  The doorway was our only option.

As I looked at my little boy standing in the big doorway, he began to change.  As though a fog were lifted from my eyes, I began to see him as he was.  He was no longer the baby that I sang to, no longer the toddler who made silly faces and used a towel as his "magician's cape."  He wasn't the little boy trying to figure out who Scooby Doo's villain would be or eating an apple despite a mouth full of missing teeth.   He wasn't looking at me with wide eyes and animated expressions telling a story and he was no longer the boy mispronouncing words with a cuteness worthy of writing down every phrase in his keepsake book.   He was big.  He was  a big kid...and just then I heard the faint strains of "Happy Birthday" coming from beyond the doorway.

My little boy was turning nine and all of a sudden, I knew.  I knew that once he walked through that doorway there would be no coming back.  Suddenly I wanted to grab him and wrap him in my arms and never let him go.  I knew that beyond that doorway he would continue to grow, only this time he would be big, then bigger and bigger.  He would soon be a teenager and then a man.   When he stepped through that doorway, other voices would grow louder and mine more faint.  He would think fewer and fewer silly things were funny.   His joyful and willing acceptance would be tempered by the balance of independence.  His choices would bear more weight and his decisions wouldn't necessarily include me.

It was just a doorway and yet, I knew.  Letting him walk through that doorway was letting him go.  I didn't see it coming and yet now, my heart beat out of my chest as surely as it would if someone had tried to grab him from my arms as an infant.   Nine.  It was halfway to eighteen.  My little boy was halfway gone.   And my heart was breaking in half.

Yes, I know, it was only halfway.  I tried to tell myself there was still a lot of time left.   But I knew the truth.  The time that lay ahead would not be the same as the path we'd already walked.  The days of him sitting on my lap were gone.  The silly stories and squeals of delight were but a faint echo in my mind.   The times I would be able to teach him new things, see the excitement in his eyes were becoming few.  And the hugs, oh the hugs.  How would I ever ever live without the sweet, all-consuming joy of those hugs?

So, I did what any mom in my position would do.  I stood in that doorway and held him tight and refused to go in until time itself reached through and pulled us forward.  And then, as he walked on excitedly and without hesitation, I sat.  I sat on his bed, looked around his room and cried.

I saw the dresser that just "yesterday" I was telling him was still a bit big for him, so he shouldn't try to reach the top just yet.  I saw the little plastic drawers that once held Happy Meal toys and view master reels.  I saw the myriad of posters that had marked his transition from one age and interest to the next.  I saw his closet where the shirts that used to hang from the top were small, yet now, overlapped the toys stacked below.   And then I laid eyes on something else.  There, on the wall, amidst the pictures of Sci-fi movies, super heroes and Lego creations was one of the original decorations I'd hung up for him in his baby nursery.   My sweet boy, through all the changes, through all the maturing and learning and growing up, still found it comforting to have something Mama made at the start of his journey, reminding him that he was on safe footing as he pressed on.

That one image made my heart swell and at the same time, shatter into a million pieces.  How much longer would that decoration hang there? How long til it no longer brought him comfort, but embarrassment or awkwardness?   Somehow the number nine suddenly felt like a thief.  Oh, it wasn't one that came in and grabbed things.  It sneaked them out slowly, one by one, so that I wouldn't notice.  But now, I knew the thief was in the house and I was powerless to stop it.   So, I cried.  And cried.  And cried some more.

Halfway to eighteen.  Halfway gone.  The days ahead may be joyful, but they would never be the same.  My little boy was gone already.   Where tiny arms once reached up for me, a  big kid stood in his place.   And though he looked a bit familiar, as I studied him I realized he was turning into someone I didn't know.   And it scared me.

Where had my little boy gone?  How could the years be over so soon?   When you get pregnant, you think you have eighteen years to raise them, but nobody tells you about nine.  Nine is the doorway.  The cute, cuddly, little years are behind and all that awaits is the unknown.   Nine comes fast, a thief, a ninja, a black shadow.  There was no noise, no warning.  Even my motherly instincts and intuition failed me.   Nine is a bully and suddenly, I remembered what it was like to feel very small.

Nine.  It was going to take some getting used to. The road ahead would be filled with fear, digging in my heels and trying to slow down time even as pain ripped through me.  Bedtime snuggles would be replaced with battle scars.   I would daily fight for balance between giving him strong, solid wings and wanting to build a bigger nest to keep him just a bit longer.

And yet now, even as I write this, the nest has grown smaller, my  fortitude weaker.   Another birthday is on the horizon and an even bigger enemy shadows over me. Though my own life may go on for many more years, I feel like my time here is short.  It's a strange, scary bridge that I'm crossing, but there is a drop off below so all I can do is put one foot in front of the other and hope, just hope that there is something worth reaching on the other side.

Publishing an e-book: You'd never guess, but it's a lot like having children

Somewhere between breaking up arguments, cleaning up messes, soothing the eighteenth  minor "boo boo" in a row and wondering why there is never food in this house despite having just gone to the grocery store, I got a zany idea.  I thought, hey, I should write a book! It would be so much fun. 

The idea that I could do something more than cook and clean ... well, okay, heat up hot dogs and clear a path...but still, I could do this!  But what could I write about?  And then it came to me - games.  Every person who has known me for longer than two minutes eventually calls me in a panic the week before, or sometimes the night before their kids' birthday party, Valentine's Day class party, Halloween party or other you-fill-in-the-blank event involving kids.  They have suddenly emerged from their party-planning shopathon to realize that though they have purchased a cake, planned out all kinds of themed decorations and invited 16 little rug rats to the big event, they have no idea how they are going to keep them all from climbing the walls or killing the goldfish.

Enter me, the gal with the freakish talent for spouting off activities as though motherhood hasn't robbed me of all my brain cells, even as I sit wondering where I lay the ice cube tray that is mysteriously missing from the freezer and a vague recollection of wanting to freshen up my drink floats somewhere between thirst and the memory of someone screaming my name for the fifteenth time.

It's true.  I don't know where this freakish ability came from or why it didn't vanish with every other bit of important knowledge I'm certain I possessed before I had kids, but nonetheless, it's true. I can come up with games at the drop of a hat, even when thirsty.  So, though the ice cube tray would most likely be found when I sunk my foot into a puddle at some point in the future, I could get started right away on a book about games.  This was it, I thought.  Games are fun!  Better yet - it's summer.  Let's make it a book about travel games for kids.  Writing a book about travel games would be fun!

Okay, let me just tell you something that I learned the hard way.  Writing a book about travel games was fun.  Publishing a book about travel games, however, was about as much fun as the twentieth hour of labor.

In fact, I thought afterwards, the only difference between childbirth and getting a mere eight hours of sleep over an entire weekend while trying to learn how to publish said "fun" book, was that after twenty-four exhausting hours of labor and childbirth, there was no four year old bounding into my bed, chattering on about nonsense in a voice loud enough to wake up the sun.

Yep, that was my weekend.   After rattling off a book full of games in rapid succession, even under the ever watchful eye of Big Kid, who insisted on looking over my shoulder and asking me if I was done yet every other hour, I set about the business of publishing my book for Kindle.

I had no idea that by the end of the weekend I would be ready to beg everyone I know to let me entertain their 16 rug rats if someone could just promise me that I'd never again have to learn how to sync some new-fangled gadget with some other new-fangled gadget, read 162 pages of instructions on 30 different websites representing 20 different opinions on what was the "easiest" way to accomplish just one of the fifty new tasks I would have to learn or that I'd never again have to peer at lines upon lines of computer programming language gobbelty-gook and tweak one space, character or page break at a time.

And then there was the repetition.  The uploading and syncing and checking only to see one part of the text had decided to separate itself from the others and do a wonky dance that would clearly label it as bizarre and me as someone who should have stuck with heating up hot dogs.  Back I'd go, coaxing that text into submission, only to upload, sync, read and scream when I'd see that a different line of text had chosen to be rebellious.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that publishing this book was exactly like having children.  Just when you think you've got everything under control, somebody else loses it, and it's never first thing in the morning.  It will always, without question happen when you are exhausted.

But you know what's worse than finding crazy-eyed, rebellious text while you're trying to publish your first book?  It's coming out of the fog that has been your learning curve overload for days upon days and just at the moment when you realize you haven't devoured this much new information since you read the What to Expect When You're Expecting book, you remember that you forgot to include something in your now published book!   So, after 36 straight hours in front of the computer, with the rope from the tire swing now strapped around me to hold me upright in my chair and my brain now mixing up letters, numbers and strange hieroglyphic symbols that I'm sure came from some long lost episode of a Sci-Fi show tucked away in my head, I had to now wait 48 hours to be able to unpublish the book that was now locked in online publishing limbo.

As I literally almost collapsed while brushing my teeth at 4:00 in the morning, I thought back over my weekend.  I vaguely remembered chatting with a friend online at the onset of this marathon when I couldn't even get my newly acquired Kindle to turn on.  That seemed like weeks ago.  I wanted to chat with her again, tell her all that I'd been through and the massive amount of information that had assaulted my brain that weekend, but as I tried to compose a quick email to her, I honestly couldn't even retrace my steps.  I felt like I'd run through a war zone of foreign programming language and devices that were each shouting their own instructions at me.  I had been involved in covert missions to download so many programs that I no longer even cared if they were trustworthy if they'd just help me find the way out of this battlefield and, I'd survived a minefield of people's opposing advice and sometimes nasty, surprise attacks.  I was exhausted and pretty sure I was bleeding.

So, I did what any mom in my slippers would do.  After realizing that I wasn't sure when was the last time I'd actually seen one of my children outside of a computer-generated image, I tiptoed into their rooms to plant a kiss on their patient, endearing little cheeks and then I fell into bed.

When Little Kid bounded into my room two hours earlier than her norm in what technically couldn't even be called the "next" morning, I was sure that I was being punished for some distant bad deed dating back to my own childhood.  I was so tired.  Why, why, WHY of all days did this child have to wake up two hours early?  Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning I had figured out down to the last possible minute how late I could sleep and still get my hair brushed, the kids to the babysitter and myself to work.  I knew I would already be in seriously hurting condition, dragging myself through my work day and oh God help me - my husband's day to work late - with nothing but Pepsi to propel me forward.  But when Little Kid's internal clock decided to wake her up before God himself could get his first cup of coffee, all I could do was crawl to the bathroom, lean against the towel rack and paint pupils on the outside of my eyelids to feign some kind of appearance of interest in this day.

All of this and I still had no book to show for any of it.  Thinking back to the twenty-four hours of labor before Big Kid was born, this book publishing was once again starting to seem a lot like motherhood.   A lot of hours, a lot of pain and nothing to show for it - at least not yet.

But, here I am, a few days and many hours of sleep later and I can say that though this experience nearly finished me off, I did learn quite a bit from it.   I learned that God made sleep for a reason, that even the best laid plans can be unraveled by a four year old and that I should always, always buy an extra 2 liter of Pepsi.   Aside from that though, I truly did learn that despite my daily fear that I have become nothing more than a walking manual on how to change diapers, potty train, chop food into miniscule pieces, use tiny fingernail clippers, wrestle squirming things into the bath tub, repair stuffed animals and pry apart Legos, I actually do still possess the ability to learn new things that don't involve cute little animals or silly lyrics.

It was quite liberating and as I look around at the dishes in the sink, the scuffs on the floor and the toys scattered about, I'm realizing I'd really like to savor that feeling for as long as I can.

So, with that being said, I'm begging you, read the book.    Read it because you want to help this weary mom feel like there is hope beyond the chaos, read it because it will remind you that you, too, can step outside your house-shaped box and accomplish new goals, and read it because it will absolutely save your sanity the next time you are trapped in a car with your children for anything longer than a trip to the grocery store.

My book is called Are We Thrilled Yet?  Fun Travel Games for A Memorable Road Trip With Your Kids.  If you've already got a Kindle, an iPad or comparable device, you can download it and take it with you on the road.    If not, you can use Kindle for PC.

And if you've made it to the end of this long-winded blog post, I'll even let you in on a little secret....for the first day, June 13th, 2012, it's free!  Shhh... don't tell anyone.... okay, actually tell everyone!   And be sure to drop me a tweet or an email and let me know which game you and your kids enjoyed the most.

Safely home

Have you ever found yourself so far off course that you didn't know how to get back?   Did you take a turn somewhere and then another and another until you were so turned around you couldn't figure out where you'd come from?  Or maybe it wasn't you at all.  Maybe the wind or the flood waters came rushing in so fast that all you could do was hang on and hope you survived, even if you found yourself 80 miles north of where you started out.

That's what happened to this blog.  It got lost.   Well, actually, it was there waiting for me all along, but I was 80 miles north and I couldn't find any landmarks to help me get home.  I think, for me, it was a combination of things.   I took one step in the wrong direction and before I knew it there was a storm blowing in like nothing I'd ever seen before.   The darkness that hovered over me was so disorienting that I never thought I'd see the sunlight again.

I wanted to get back to this blog.   I wanted to write.  Oh, how I desperately longed to write.  But as I found out, there are just some things in life you can't write about - not because you don't want to, but because you just can't find the words.   Sometimes the darkness is so consuming, the pain is so raw, that all you can do is hang on.  You take one breath and then another.  You wipe away the tears.  You try to breathe some more.   Amidst this alternately screaming into your pillow, screaming at God and your lungs screaming for air, you just hang on.

But even after the darkness begins to clear, there is debris.  There is rubble that you must climb and claw your way over or through to get back home again.   You can't go around it, and so, it's a slow, painstaking process just to clear a short path.  When you've got 80 miles to travel, sometimes it feels like you will never get home.

And yet, here I am.  I'm home.  At least, I think this is home.  It's not quite the way I remember it before the storm hit.  But it's the closest thing I can find, so I'm staying put.  It's been a long journey back and I'm weary.   I may never find the me that got swept away, but I'm trying to recreate myself the best I can.   I'm trying not to look back.  I'm trying to be grateful that I survived.  

Maybe someday I'll write about this past year and why it took me so far from home, but for now, I just want to settle into my blog, put my feet up and enjoy the company of my old friends.   I hope you still recognize me.  I'm sure I have some battle scars and like all writers end up doing, I'm sure my experience will seep out and fill the spaces between the lines of this blog.  I can only hope that as I keep looking for remnants of my old self, keep reclosing the wounds, keep calling out to God, you'll walk beside me and you'll remind me that I'm alive.   And maybe, just maybe, if you ever find yourself alone in the dark, you'll reach out and find my hand.   I'll help you navigate the storm.  I'll help you breathe.  And I'll walk beside you until you, too, are safely home.

Wrecked is not forgotten!

Hi, if you're stopping by for the first time, please don't go too quickly. I assure you this is not a forgotten blog! We're in the process of merging some content, so though the dates may fool you, there is most definitely more to come!

Bearing their burdens, building our faith

Big kid is well past the age where most kids learn to tie their shoes.  I'm well aware that other people may think we're lazy parents by not teaching him.  It's one of the things that has been on my mind a long time, and as he has grown in height and weight, looking more and more like a true big kid, it has concerned me that maybe his classmates would start to catch on as well and perhaps tease him about his lack of skill in this area.  

Looking back, I can't really say whether I never taught him because just as he emerged from the toddler years, my own life took a turn for the worst and I was too caught up in grief over a baby lost, a crippling financial blow or a myriad of doctors suddenly rushing me through a series of tests and procedures to rid my body of cancer - or if somehow, deep down, I just knew that teaching him would turn out exactly as it did today.

You have to understand, my big kid is the sweetest boy anyone could want.   He is big-hearted and wants to help others in need.   He is helpful and can do tasks independently.  He makes us laugh and when he finds a subject he is interested in, he learns every detail about it.   He, so far, has been a straight A student.   Therefore, one would conclude that he is intelligent.   So why this same child adamantly insists that he can not and will not ever be able to learn a task such as tying his shoes, is beyond me.

As a natural encourager, or maybe it's partly from being a mom, it's second nature for me to go to my Mama bag of tricks.   I pull out all the examples.   You didn't used to know how to do multiplication, but now you do.  Someone showed you how.   Now I'm showing you how to do this.   But I can't even remember all the instructions, he cries.  But you will, I reassure him.  Nobody gets it right the first time, maybe not even the fiftieth time, but you keep practicing.  Well, I better get it right after fifty times!  This thought has obviously upset him.   I try to keep my cool.   How many times did Thomas Edison fail, I ask him.   I don't know, probably a hundred, comes the answer.   Okay, so then you keep pushing through until you succeed.  What makes you different from the people who end up as failures in life is that you don't give up - not when you've wasted money or time or people have told you you'll never do it.  When you finally do it, that's when it becomes a big deal.

But this is different, he says.  Okay, well, you didn't used to know how to build all those huge Lego sets I say as I point to the shelves full of displays he has built.   In his twisted logic comes his response, well, the Legos have instructions and the instructions aren't moving!  Good grief, why is this child so difficult?   It's a shoe. It has a string.  I'm not asking you to train a crocodile to tap dance.

Do you think that you are a stupid boy, I ask.  He hides his face.  I ask again, do you think that you are not able to learn things, that you are stupid?  He's still hiding.  Great, so now I've got a game of cat and mouse which I would much more expect from the three year old.   I remind him that when he was little, he didn't know how to snap and zip his jeans or button a button down shirt.  He tells me that's different because we snapped and zipped his jeans for him.  Yes, but not forever.  Now you do it on your own.  How did you go from not knowing how to do it, to knowing how to do it so well that you don't even think about it anymore?   Well, you and Daddy didn't even teach me how to zip my jeans.  I just learned that on my own!  I disagree and my patience is wearing thin but I resist the urge to strike back.... okay, and so, you'll learn this on your own too, I say.

At one point, he was so frustrated that he threw the shoes.  I remained quiet, searching my bag of tricks and coming up empty.  Was it me?  Great, now the failure complex is settling in to my own brain.    So, I ask him.   Is it me?  Is it just that you don't think you can learn from me?  He says no.  I'm not sure whether to be relieved for my own sake or throw a shoe back and him and say, then WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

I show him once.  I show him twice.  When he fails, I show him why it failed.  I show him where he had placed the laces and he insists that he did not, in fact, hold the laces that way.   And yet, the shoe is still not tied, so gee, uh, yeah, you did.    I begin to question why I did not go directly to the computer and begin to work.   Why did I even make this sudden detour into his room and ask him to get out the shoes that have sat new in a box for over 6 months.  Why, why would I do this to myself without any time to gear up for such an ordeal?   These are the burning questions I'm sure I will have for God upon entering the pearly gates.   Why did you allow my brain to malfunction in such a way that it would only add more stress to my already bowing body?   Somehow, I picture God amused.

And yet, right now, I am not amused.   I'm wavering between wanting to scream, pick up the doggone shoe already and try, just try, that's all I ask - just try - and wanting to take him in my arms and hug away whatever is hurting him so much that he truly thinks he is incapable of learning.   I try the gentle approach, rubbing his back, telling him that it bothers me that he lacks the confidence to try.  It bothers me that he already has it set in his mind that he will fail the moment he sees the task before him.   I tell him that he is strong and smart and capable.  He still doesn't want to tie the shoe.

What is a mother to do when her child is so lost?  How did he get this way?  He cannot go through life like this.  I don't want him beaten down by life or never experiencing the thrill of new things because he was afraid to try.    I ask him if sitting in a desk at school is the only kind of learning he thinks he will ever do.   I tell him that he will be learning new things his whole life, whether it's driving a car or driving a fire truck or flying a plane.  I tell him that people learn all kinds of things like skiing or skydiving and when they first learn, they look like a fool.   I tell him I understand that when he was little, he was just so used to mom and dad helping him that it was easy to say, I'm little, I need help. But now that he's big, he wants to be able to do things on his own.  I get that, but he still has to start somewhere and he can't be so afraid to fail that he doesn't even try.

He is tired of me now.  I can see it.  He just wants me to stop talking and he never ever wants to learn to tie a shoe.   I have encouraged and instructed and even shown him two different ways to tie a shoe and yet he remains defeated.  And so, I am defeated. 
Why is that?  Why as moms are we so intertwined with our children and their emotions that we feel them as if they are our own?   The crazy thing is, this is not the first road I've been down with him.  There have been many other attempts to teach or instruct or encourage and they have turned out the same way.  He freezes up.  His first reaction is that he will fail.   He feels incapable, frustrated, defeated - before he even tries.

There is part of me that thinks he will secretly try on his own, when he's not under the watchful eye of Mama.  Mind you, I offered to go away and let him try on his own but that was met with frustration too.  It's like his brain just locks up and he isn't really even sure what he wants, other than for the task to go away.  He lacks the skills to go through the process of learning, meet the frustrations but push through to the other side.   So, I wonder, is this something that can be taught?  Or, is this just a personality trait that we are born with?  

There are people in the world who just seem to be able to persevere through any trial - the guy who lives for 7 days in the wilderness, treating his own wounds and surviving off berries, the girl who learns to walk again after a terrible accident, the woman who helps her family press on after losing everything in a fire, the boy who refuses to give up his dream of a college degree, despite the poverty he lives in as a child.   There are the people who can survive military boot camp and come out even stronger and there are other people who end up broken, addicted, suicidal.    What makes that difference in people? I am fascinated and terrified all at once. 

When our children are small and we accomplish tasks for them, we don't give it a second thought. We are there to be their caretakers.  But somehow, as our children grow, no one tells us that we, as parents, must grow too.   Oh sure, we realize that we can not send them to kindergarten with a pacifier or diapers, so we take the necessary steps to help them gain some independence.   But somehow, once those main milestones that we've had our eye on for several years have come and gone, we let ourselves fall into a routine and we don't see the other milestones up ahead.

I sure didn't see them coming.  And now, looking back, I'm not even sure what they were.  Should I have forced him to try more things?   Should I have given him harder tasks, but ones in which I knew he could succeed?  Should I have talked to him more about what would be required as he got older?  I just don't know.  I am baffled.  He is a straight A student after all.   I think that therein lies the problem.   Knowing that he is learning and getting high praise from teachers threw me into a false sense of security.  Just because he is smart, does not mean he is confident.   I never realized those two things may not go hand in hand.

But unless this child is going to become some sort of barefoot nomad the rest of his life, I've got to figure out how to fix this.  Or maybe I can't.  Maybe this is the part where I have to lean on God and believe that he will not let my child fall.  I'm not quite sure why that always feels like I am dangling my child over a cliff while balancing myself on one foot, but suddenly I'm feeling the need to read the story of Abraham and Isaac again.  There's probably a faith lesson in here somewhere.  I just wish I could learn it while Big Kid marches past me with his new shoes securely tied to his feet.

Access denied

I have always been fascinated by how the human brain works.    One time when I was peeling an apple, suddenly, out of nowhere, I remembered standing on a playground with some junior high school age kids when I visited a rural school that my friend attended.  That had been almost twenty years ago!   I had only visited that friend’s home and school one time, could not tell you much of anything that we did during our 24 hours together, and furthermore, was no longer in contact with that friend as an adult.    So, why?   Why on earth did peeling an apple spark that memory?   Had I eaten an apple that day?  Was someone on the playground wearing a shirt with an apple on it?  Did somebody make a joke or tell a story involving an apple?   Or maybe it was the knife, or the running water at my kitchen sink, or the rhythmic movement of my hands.    The possibilities are endless and unknowable but somewhere, deep in the recesses of my brain, an entire experience, a detailed memory, is trapped.

I once heard that every single thing we experience, every sight, every sound, every scent, every touch - everything - is all imprinted on our brains. We may not be able to recall even a small percentage of it, but everything we go through in life is there, like a little video in the archive drawer of our minds.

So, I am fascinated.  I am fascinated that sometimes the brain recalls seemingly insignificant details from our lives at odd times, and that same brain can not retain information that is desperately needed such as the babysitter‘s phone number, what time I last gave the child medicine, or when faced with a grizzly bear, how to deter him from turning you into his lunch.   Well, I guess the information is retained, but not accessible, which does me absolutely no good when I'm stuck in traffic, eye-balling the Tylenol, or wondering when is the last time that bear ate anything. 

It got me to thinking, is this what goes on with Big Kid?   Perhaps the very things I get so frustrated over are really not the lack of a common sense gene as I so often say, but rather that the information is in there somewhere, but he’s been denied access.

I’d like to think this is true, because the alternative is really going to make me lose my mind.   There just seems to be no common sense department in Big Kid’s brain, which is frustrating, but equally fascinating on another level because this same child is a straight A student, can rattle off movie and computer game facts by the millions, and has the vocabulary of an English college professor eight times his age!

So, why would this extremely intelligent boy, stand at the back door of our home, with belongings in each arm and say, “Uh, a little help here?”    Really?  I’m fifty feet away, chasing after Little Kid, as usual, and I have to stop what I’m doing because you can’t figure out how to turn a door knob?   So frustrating, I mean, FASCINATING.

And of course, I say to him the same thing, “Really? How do you THINK you might be able to solve that problem?” 

But I swear to you he stood there and stared at me like not a single idea fluttered through his mind, even briefly.    The access door to the common sense department was firmly closed, sealed on all sides, dead bolted, triple locked and set with an alarm.  Nobody was getting near that top secret information!

My very clipped words were an indication that my common sense door swings wide open and has a huge neon, flashing welcome sign on it apparently because I was very quickly able to surmise that if he just, let’s see, SET SOMETHING DOWN, he could then free up a hand to turn the door knob! 

The level of frustration this caused him was very apparent, but I just can’t help getting irritated.   I mean, if his brain were an old tv or a vending machine, I’d probably be smacking it on the side by now and ordering it to work. But as it is, I must fantasize about how wonderful it would be if he was the droid character, Data, from Star Trek, the Next Generation, and I could simply open a flap on the side of his head and start tweaking the circuitry in there.

I am in complete awe of the intricacies that God has placed in our brains, so complex that medical science is a long way from mastering an understanding of  it.    It is a strange irony that human brains are required to understand the human brain, and yet, we lack the consistent firing of all those little connectors to retain the information needed.   Whether this misfire happened after Eve ate that first bite of Apple (hey, maybe I was thinking about sin back on that playground!) or whether God designed it that way, so that he would always be looked upon as the only All-Knowing One, I don’t know.    But, no matter which way this miscommunication in our brains began, I sure wish he would have at least given us some sort of reset or reboot option. 

Big Kid has a glitch, and I just know that if I could “clear” a pathway to that common sense department, then at the very least, we could maybe drill a peephole in that door. Because seriously, if I have to give him step by step instructions on how to perform basic functions for the next ten years, while Little Kid is multi-tasking like a steak knife juggler who is eating an ice cream cone mid-act, I’m going to quickly lose my life long fascination with the human brain.

Jane Austen's got nothing on this kid

I am a worrier.   I can worry with the best of them.    I can obsess about those two little words, “what if”, like my very breath depends on the outcome.  But in all my days of worrying and panicking and probably sending all kinds of stressors to my heart and brain functions, I have never seen anybody worry like my Big Kid.

This child doesn’t just worry a little.   He is a full blown professional at the age of eight.  He can out-fret the little old women in Jane Austen’s novels.   You know, the ones who skitter about and have to take to their beds because they’re so upset they nearly faint every other minute?   I’m a worrier and yet I’ve never seen anything like it.

He’s always been cautious.  He has always taken his time to analyze a situation before jumping in to participate.    He’s always been meticulous in taking care of his things and listened, unlike Little Kid, when I told him not to dive into furniture or other hard objects with his head.   Even so, I didn’t see this coming.  

Somehow, he drove right past Mildly Concerned Court and wound up on Hyperventilate Highway.   I think he missed the exit around the time Little Kid was born, but I can’t be certain because I, myself, was too busy being on What Have I Done Drive.

And yet here we are.  We have arrived in Worryville and I don’t know what to do about it.   This child worries about everything from the fact that he can’t exactly, and I mean exactly duplicate the computer drawn model of a cursive letter for his homework assignment to the possibility that the first rumble of thunder may mean a tornado is headed our way.

He worries that my favorite bush has not received enough water of late, that the cat is going to scratch him, that a tiny speck of dirt is, in fact, a man-eating tarantula and that we don’t yet have a replacement for his near-empty tube of toothpaste.

And poor Little Kid.  That girl can’t wiggle a finger without him jumping up to make sure she isn’t sticking it in an electrical outlet - even though this is, miraculously the one source of trouble she has not yet discovered.   He follows that girl like a Child-Safety Stalker.   He seems to think that every time she picks up a piece of paper or taste tests an inanimate object, she is doomed to severe punishment or tragic injury.   He polices Little Kid like she’s got gasoline on her hands and matches in her pocket.  

I remember a time when we were standing in a Walgreens and I was trying to compare medicine labels, no easy task with two children jabbering the whole time.   But, the task became all but impossible when Big Kid began to give me reports on Little Kid’s every flinch, faster than Ashton Kutcher could tweet his way to a million followers.

She’s touching that, she’s got that in her mouth, she’s trying to get out of the cart, she is, she’s going to, she might….  I finally lost it.    I looked him square in the eye and told him that I have my own tendency to panic, my own irrational fears, my own pattern of freaking out, but even I could not worry that much!
I just can not comprehend what it must be like to live inside his head all day.   I’m torn between feeling sorry for him and wanting to shake the fretting right out of him.   It is exhausting, absolutely bone-tired exhausting to try to get him to stop.

It’s like he’s hard-wired for it, an entire circuitry of criss-crossed wires that can not be undone lest a bomb go off.    I try to talk him down from the ledge with love, but when he still throws one foot off the side, I end up screaming at him because it’s just the most infuriating thing I’ve ever dealt with.

How can a little boy who gets straight A’s in school, wield the vocabulary of a literary genius, garner compliments upon compliments for his manners and sweet behavior, be so tortured with worry within? 

It is mind-boggling.   Is his sister so opposite him in her adventurous spirit that he was thrown into some sort of personality-difference overload?  Have the Other One and I  done this to him somehow?  Did we satisfy his little genius-brained curiosity with too much explanation, too much information when he was young?   Or did I somehow corrupt him unknowingly by simply passing down the worst aspects of the gene pool?

Whatever the case, I sincerely hope and pray that he will grow out of this.    And the sooner the better because if being a mom and having to juggle 963 things a day isn’t enough, I feel like I have to be 14 steps ahead of any sign of danger at all times.   I’ve been a mom for a while now, so I’m pretty keen on being 2 steps ahead, but I can not fathom the infinite ways in which he conjures up scenarios that may destroy our very existence.  

But if I could, I’d probably have a lucrative career as an action-adventure writer.   Hey, maybe there’s hope for him after all…

I am woman! Hear me... please?

When did it happen?   When did I cease to be a woman and just exist as a mom?

I’m fairly certain that before I had kids, I had a life.   But then again, that was so long ago that maybe I’m just dreaming that up to fulfill some need to have stories other than those about childbirth, potty training or homework struggles.

And yet, I seem to remember a little red dress…  or was that a little red wagon…or a big red dog?  Oh, it’s so hard to tell anymore.  It all just blurs together.   

Still, whether “she” ever existed or not, there are times now when I desperately need her to appear or reappear.    When the Other One barely notices me or thinks my greatest need from him is to pick up milk on the way home, I just want to say - uh, hello, do you think I spent forty five minutes putting on makeup and curling my hair while lecturing on attitude with one child and trying to pry the other one off me, so that I could hope to be admired by the cat? 

And it would sure be nice to feel like a woman when I walk into a party or business gathering, but as it is, within minutes, somebody is asking me about the kids.  I mean, come on, I did my best to clean the spit-up, chocolate and play-doh off my clothing, put on a 3rd layer of under-eye concealer and shove my 4 belly rolls into the most snug-fitting clothes I could find; the least you could do is talk about the weather.  

Of course, I can’t blame any of them.  I am a mom.  And the truth is, these kids take up a huge part of my day.   Okay, they take up all of my day, because the little bit that is left after they’re asleep, is nowhere close to a woman, but rather just a big pile of exhausted bones.

So when?  When do I get to be a woman again?  Or did I somehow get duped into giving that up for good when I traded the little red dress for the little red wagon?  

There are times when I want to scream, “I’m still in here!”    But, I don’t think anybody can hear me anymore.   I’m just a mom, or mainly a mom, or only good at being a mom or some combination of all of it.    Nobody else can hear my voice and so I begin to think that maybe I’m imagining it too.  

But I long to step away from all of this.   Oh don’t get me wrong.  I see how fast the time is going when my children learn new words or skills, move up to the next clothing size, understand more grown up concepts.    But while time is flying for them, it feels like it’s screeching to a halt for me.    For though I love them and enjoy them (well until about that last 2 hours of the day) and would never in a million years think of actually, physically “stepping away” from them, there are times when I wish I could both speed up and stop time simultaneously. 

In my desperate moments, I want to speed up time so that I can get a breather.  But in the very next thought I want to stop time.   They are already growing up too fast and I want them to stay little and sweet.  I want to stop time because I know how sad I will be to see it all end, but also because if I could stop time, maybe this woman inside me longing to get out, could find her way back to the surface.

Somehow in my twisted brain, I think that if I can just get someone to see me as a woman now, amidst the whining and sticky fingers and eye rolling, life would be good.   But, the way things are going, that woman inside sinking further and further into oblivion, I fear she’ll never be seen again.  

For you see, I’m very aware of how old I was when I had these children, and thus, how old I will be when they are grown.    It is the imagined image of the much older face looking back at me in the mirror, the face I’m already seeing dreadful signs of, that keeps me clinging to my children’s youth for my own sake as well.    I see it all the time, that we are “growing up” together, and while the end of this road for them is just the beginning of a lifetime of new roads and opportunities, it feels very much like a dead end for me.

Oh, I know I won’t be that old in physical years.  It’s just that I’m afraid once I take off the Mommy robe, rather than discovering a beautiful woman still existing underneath, I’ll just disappear all together.  

Had I known when I hung up that little red dress that it would be for the last time, I may have strutted past my husband just a few more times.   Because now, this road that leads to my children's future is filled with both excitement and concern at the same time.  When my daughter sets out in her own little red dress and my son takes on the world in his suit with red tie, my own red dress will be faded.

It's strange.  I don’t know when it happened, this intertwining of who I used to be and who I have become, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a say in it.