The English Geek

It Goes Like This, the Fourth, The Fifth

I walked into Haley's choir concert late on Wednesday night. Just a few minutes, and late because I'd been to Nathan's choir concert at his junior high right before. The first choir (not Haley's) was singing Leonard Cohen's song "Hallelujah" and I found myself crying before I could even find a seat.

Back in the spring before she started junior high, Haley had to choose whether she'd learn an instrument or singing in the choir for her music option in seventh grade. She wanted to maybe play the flute or the violin, but my gut told me something different. Even though she didn't seem like a particularly strong singer, my gut new she needed to take choir. So I listened to my gut and I insisted she chose choir, even though she was mad at me.

She didn't love it at first. But her junior high (the same one Nathan and Jake go to now) has an amazing choir teacher. She encourages and bolsters and supports. She takes those young people and teaches them how to read music and how to use their voices. There's something powerful in that, I think—in learning to use your voice. It becomes more than just singing. If you know you have a voice then you also start to know you can say what you think.

What I didn't expect from that gut feeling was how Haley would blossom in choir. She discovered that she has a beautiful singing voice. Who knew? She didn't get that from me! The last time I sang in a choir I was in fifth grade and my friend Brittney asked me not to stand by her when we sang because the horribleness of my voice knocked her off her own tune. I mouthed the songs for the rest of the year. Don't get me wrong: I love to sing. If I am in the house or the car by myself, I often have music on and I'm singing along. But I keep the music loud to drown out how terrible my voice is.

But Haley? Her voice is strong. It's strong and confident and lovely. And choir, despite her initial reluctance, became her thing. She earned solos and went to choir festivals and never missed a concert. She tried out for and got into Bella Voce in ninth grade, and when she got to high school (ours is 10-12 grades here), she found another accomplished and amazing choir teacher.

There were some struggles, especially at the end of tenth grade when she didn't make it into the A Capella choir. (This is an enormous choir class; I think there are about 100 kids in it, and they sing the more technically difficult songs.) I didn't understand why and came this close to calling the teacher to protest. But I listened to my gut again, which said that the Con Brio choir she was in would be the right place for her that year. And it was. She learned to accept a loss without making others feel guilty for their accomplishments. In the smaller choir, she shined. She became a leader. And I know, listening to my gut again, that she learned in Con Brio what she needed to know to earn a spot in Chamber choir (you know, the exclusive one that does all the coolest stuff) for her senior year.

So much knowledge and experience over the past six years. No wonder I started crying at the concert, because it wasn't just her last concert. It was my last concert to listen to. No one believes me, but I swear: I can always hear Haley's voice in the choir. Not because she overpowers anyone else. It's subtle. But I can still hear her in the weaving of voices. I have loved coming to listen to her sing. It has been one of my favorite parts of her adolescence: her voice. And while this could be a story about moms listening to their guts, what it's really about for me is a person finding her way. Finding the thing that gives her expression, finding the thing that helps her be unique even within a crowd.

I will miss that beauty.

"Even if Everyone Hates You, Your Mom Always Loves You."

Yesterday at the library, I answered the phone to an urgent voice. "I'm at the bookstore," he said, "and I need to know what to get my mom for Mother's Day." I had a small inward giggle at someone calling the library from the bookstore—they have booksmart people there, too. Also a silent groan and eye roll: it's only 4:30 on the day before Mother's Day, what's the hurry? Still, I asked him some questions about his mom's taste and then made some recommendations (Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake which I recommend to almost every woman older than about 35 or 40; Unbroken, and Frozen in Time as his mom likes nonfiction about history). The urgency was gone when he thanked me.

The very next phone call that came through was my husband. He wasn't at the bookstore (ha!), but his question was fairly similar: Give me some ideas for a Mother's Day gift. 

Another deep sigh.

Mother's Day, like Valentine's Day, is not my favorite thing. From the talks in church about perfect moms (I actually dreamed this morning that I had to speak this morning in church, and my dream talk started out by stating how I wouldn't be talking about perfect moms) to the idea of gifts. I don't know—it all makes me uncomfortable.

I told Kendell not to worry, I wasn't expecting anything and what I really want for Mother's Day is for everyone to be nice to each other. And maybe a picture of me with my kids and no one complains about taking it. I wasn't being passive aggressive; that's really how I feel. But then I found myself writing a Helpful Guide for Husbands Who Don't Know What to Buy: gift cards and little tokens and even grand gestures.

I ran out of time to write it last night.

This morning, Kaleb woke me up at 7:30. He had an envelope for me to open, and four pictures he'd drawn for me. In the envelope were three pennies he'd found, and the pictures were of skeletons and dragons and hard work---he'd written about why he loved me, in his most careful penmanship, and not just a few words. (The quote in my title comes from one of his cards.)

And that, my friends, is Mother's Day in my mind. The sweetness of my child being himself and telling me he loves me. The only thing I really need is that reminder: I love you, Mom.

Blue Jeans Quilt

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: 
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world,
derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
      ~Elizabeth Bishop

 

Right now my back hurts because I sat on the floor almost all day yesterday, cutting out 10x10, 5x5, and 8x5 (roughly!) squares from old jeans.

All of Haley's old jeans.

Today I will square them up to their exact proportions and start sewing a project I've been working on for 18 years now. I can't remember who gave me the idea, but I have saved almost every single pair of jeans she wore, since she was a baby, with the goal of working on this project: a blue jeans quilt as her graduation gift.

It's a strange thing to get a little bit teary eyed over a Rubbermaid box full of jeans, but I have. They tell a story, her pants. There's a dearth of tiny jeans, except for the size-6-month pair from Old Navy which were literally the first pair of little  jeans I ever bought. This is because she hated wearing jeans for a long, long time. We never could find any that really fit her body shape and besides: she liked spinny dresses. From the time she could make her opinion known until kindergarten, she wore dresses almost exclusively. I stopped buying pants and shorts and just indulged her love of spinny, pretty, girly dresses. (This is one of the best choices I made as her mom. It made her happy and it was my one chance to overdose in Girly.)

When she went to kindergarten, she saw that girls wore jeans, so she wanted some too. But she didn't like just any jeans. She still wanted pretty ones. So I watched for jeans with embellishment, embroidery, and bedazzlement.

She's had some cute, cute pants.

There's a clean line in time: pre-skinny jeans and post. In sixth grade she discovered skinnies and I didn't buy her a pair of wide-legged jeans again until last summer. There was the Aeropostale phase and the True Religion phase and the black jeans from Nordstrom she loved so much we bought another identical pair when she wore the first one out.

They're not just pants. They capture a little bit of who she is. And they're stories: of shopping trips, of school experiences, of fun (and sadness) with friends. When they are sewn together they will make a sort of retelling, a comfortable scrapbook. I can't tell all the stories, nor can she, but it's sort of a metaphor, the blue jeans quilt, a history made tangible. It represents how she's grown and changed, how she puts her personality into everything she does. It's a compilation of wants, identity, individuality, and history.

It is my way of saying, as she starts to fly, "these years happened too. Don't forget."

I didn't know how hard these last few months would be. The last days of my daughter's childhood. "Bittersweet" is almost the right word, except it isn't really bitter. It's sweet to see her becoming a woman with dreams, ambitions, and opinions, to see the person I only wondered at when I bought those tiny jeans at Old Navy so many years ago. It is a sort of salt, though, too, knowing things will change. Knowing that a phase of her life is passing. A door is closing. I still remember, I have the memories, I will have new memories, but those experiences, all of them with the pants: they won't come again.

But for now, working with the medium of her old clothes, I am remembering anew, and that is something I didn't expect, back in the spring of 1996 when I put her too-small jeans into a box to keep for now, that the blue jeans quilt would also be a gift to myself.

18 Years Ago

This happened:

 

I became Haley's mom. I was so wildly in love with her! With all of what I was experiencing, the utterly, entirely unbelievable gobsmacking amazingness of an entirely new person just arriving. A new person. How could I grasp what that means, when they handed me the slippery body and at last I got to see her face? Not just someone I met somewhere. But a new human being who never existed before, and whose care was entrusted to me. Me!

I flipped through her baby album last night, after her birthday dinner party, trying to remember exactly how that felt. The exhilarating terror of being a first-time parent. How filled up with certainty I was that I would do everything right. How much I loved every bit of her tiny little self. How filled with anticipation to see what kind of person she was, and also how hesitation grabbed me as well: already I knew she wouldn't be small for long.

I keep looking at my face in that photo—the happy exhaustion, yes, but right in the eyes. At the pure, sweet surety I felt then. I was so much younger and had so many things to learn. I was certain I would make none of my mother’s mistakes, but I would learn that I would still go on to make my own. I imagined that we would always agree, me and this beautiful, perfect creature, because how could we not? My heart was full of adoration. I had to learn that she is a strong individual and sometimes we would clash, and that would hurt but eventually we’d figure it out. I thought motherhood would be, if not exactly easy, something I could absolutely and completely do correctly, simply because I wanted to. The sheer strength of my wanting to be a good mother would be enough to make me a good mother. I had to learn that wanting is one thing, but succeeding is something entirely different, and that the very sharpness and strength of loving her would make the mistakes hurt even more.

But I didn’t know any of that yet, just like I didn’t know yet how to nurse or to change a diaper in the dark or to comfort the inconsolable. This was my first step in being a mother, and I thought I knew what my next ones would be. I had my future mapped out. I’d have two boys and another girl sometime within the next seven or eight years or so, close enough that they’d all grow up together, spread out enough that I could savor each of their babyhoods. I’d eventually be a stay-at-home mom, and parenting would sweeten and strengthen my marriage. Somewhere in all of that I would write novels, of course, but my main focus would be taking care of my kids. I had the vision of blissfulness that I was certain would be given to me because all of these were good things. (It didn’t quite turn out like that.)

Life has taught me quite a bit in the 18 years of Haley’s life.

I’m not quite sure why I feel so blue right now. She turned out to be entirely herself: funny, smart, sarcastic, creative. Who knew she would have such a beautiful voice, such a quick wit, such determined independence? We have had 18 years of laughing, talking, reading, and living together. She’s healed old wounds in me just by living a normal life. Despite my many mistakes, she is going to be fine. She is strong, which is what I always hoped for. I love her so much and am more proud of her than I can say.

But there’s still that tug: the mistakes. The arguments, the times I disappointed her or the things I regret saying. The alienation that adolescence inevitably brings. There’ve been times when I have felt absolutely wrong for her, as if she picked the wrong mother, as if she would be happier with someone far more fabulous than I. Looking back, it is easy to see what my mistakes were, and the ones I regret the most are the things I didn’t savor enough, the time I didn’t take, the kindness I didn’t share. In motherhood as in life, sometimes there is no way to know what you need to know at the beginning other than going through the process of learning it, by which time it is too late.

I thought that my goal to be a great mom would make me be a great mom. Would make it easy. I thought that because I loved her with that fierce, enduring emotion that it would never be really hard. And it wasn’t, of course—wasn't hard to continue loving her like that. But getting it right? That was never easy. Perhaps if there were only the two of you in the world. But there is also always life to live. Life that is messy and full of unexpected detours, life that rarely takes you where you think you’re going. Loving her, and wanting to be the kind of mom she needed, wasn’t always enough to make me able to actually be what she needed. And if I didn’t love her, I guess that wouldn’t matter so much to me.

But I can’t change the yesterdays. I can’t tell the Amy in that old photograph that she should savor more, and be more brave and less selfish, and share more of herself. I know now what I needed to know then, but I can’t toss the knowledge back through time because I could only learn it by living. So all I can do is look forward, and take what I know with me, and hope it will be enough that she and I can continue on, building a relationship. Because that hasn’t changed, from the person I was to the person I am now. I still love her, I still want to be a great mom, and while our relationship will continue to change as she strides out into the world, I still want to be close to her.

bulge.

In the minutes after Kendell leaves somewhere and takes all the kids with him, I have a moment of panic. My entire family is in that car, I start thinking. What if something happens? And then I start envisioning fiery crashes caused by drunken miscreants. It's entirely the same scenario (with different imagined disasters) when Haley drives herself and the three boys somewhere. Or even just when she drives herself: my heart races while I imagine something awful before I can control myself. Just a few examples of the following fact about me:

I am a worrier. More specifically, an imaginative worrier. I can come up with something horrible to worry over about nearly any possible situation.

Then there's this fact. The TV show E.R. ran for 15 seasons, and I didn't miss a single one of the 331 episodes. Partly this was because I had one of those TV-show crushes on Dr. Carter, but mostly it was because the medical world is fascinating to me. (Back when I was trying to decide my career path, I briefly considered becoming a nurse, but once I realized I'd have to touch actual bodily fluids of complete strangers I decided that nursing was not the path for me.) All of the things that can happen to a human body and all of the procedures we've developed to counteract all of those things. I'm not a doctor, and I don't even play one on TV, but I have studied  lots of TV doctors.

All of which combines into the fact that when Kaleb's pediatric cardiologist told me yesterday about the changes in his heart and then followed it up with "don't worry about it, though," I had one of those deep (but very inward) (and highly sarcastic) laughs with myself. This was our third visit with the pediatric cardiologist. The first time we went, I didn't have much of a clue as to what to expect or how to feel, other than hopeful that what we knew—Kaleb has a bicuspid aortic valve—wouldn't completely change his entire life and the desperate desire that it wouldn't require surgery. Last year, our second trip, I was a complete mess. I didn't sleep the night before because I was terrified that things would have progressed in some dramatic way. But they hadn't, last year. Last year, nothing had changed.

So I went to our 2012 appointment yesterday feeling the slightest bit optimistic. I was less anxious (although: still anxious) and a little bit closer to feeling like getting an echo and an EKG done on my 7-year-old was not as scary as I'd thought. It would all be OK. And his valve still is OK. But he now has some slight thickening of his aorta, which is the main artery that leaves the heart with oxygenated blood. Like his bicuspid valve, this thickening—a slight bulge—will probably never affect his life in a completely negative way. Statistically, he's likely not to have surgery.

But we still have to be careful. He will continue having an echo and an ekg and an appointment with his cardiologist every year. "And he should also not play contact sports," the doctor explained. "No football, basketball, or karate because of the nature of the sports—all that shoving and hitting and pushing." She continued to explain that this is because if his chest is hit at just the right angle and with the exact amount of force, and if his bulge has thinned too much, it could burst.

And then that little, silly bit of a sentence: "but try not to worry about it, though." Kendell was sad over the fact that Kaleb can't play football or basketball. As I would prefer all of my children to be long-distance runners I'm not as upset about the sports themselves. What I don't know to do with is this suggestion: don't worry.

I've always been a worrier and a dreamer; my imagination can take me to dark places. Add to that the fodder of medical stories in my head from years of E.R. (and, yes, now Grey's Anatomy) and yeah: I'm just barely keeping it together. Because couldn't that just-the-right-angle-and-force impact on his chest happen in any number of ways? Like...a car crash, or rough-housing with his brothers or his friends, or a fall off of his bike, or what if he was walking down the hall with books in his arms and he fell, and he was literally killed by books?

I know it sounds hysterical. Probably even a little bit silly. But I can't help it. I've been trying to remind myself: it could be worse. I could be the mom of a kid with cancer of any sort. Or of disabilities. Or of any other medical scenario. The statistics are on our side. But only sort of, because sometimes it starts to feel like what are the odds? Look at Kendell: what statistical anomaly gave him both aseptic necrosis and a unicuspid aortic valve? In one person? Two percent of the population has a bicuspid aortic valve, and of those two percent, about half have surgery sometime in their lives. Being in that group of two percent already feels like it's close enough...surgery on the heart. On my sweet, littlest son's heart. And while, when I went through it with Kendell I was afraid, I wasn't ever really afraid. There was something in me that let me know without any doubt that he would be OK. Somehow I'm not sure I'd feel that, going through it with Kaleb.

But what scares me more than surgery is accident. All those accidental chest hits that I am imagining and worrying over all while I'm not supposed to worry. I can't help it though. I can't stand it—the thought of losing him. Last night, when everyone else was asleep, I went to check on him. He was sleeping, like usual, with his head at the foot of his bed. I tucked him back in and then I couldn't resist: I lay down next to him and hugged him and I cried a little bit. I don't love any of my children more than the other, but I do love them differently. The combination of experiences between each child and me is what creates the resonance of our relationship, and mine with Kaleb has its own sweet, complicated pitch. He was the baby I gave myself to utterly, whose moments I tried to hold on to the tightest, if only because my other children had taught me how fleeting those moments would be. Out of all my children, his existence was the one most fraught with the possibility of not happening at all. All the prayer and the hoping and the begging and the weeping I did to get him here! How can that existence, so worked for and wanted, be threatened by a misplaced nudge, by a bulge, by a genetic abnormality? Was he always going to be an impossible, nebulous wish? What will I do if I lose him?

Oddly enough, what made me stop crying last night, to let go of my clutch on my son, was the memory of another lost child. He was the son of a friend of a friend, a girl I met once at a scrapbooking retreat. Her four-year-old had been killed when they were on vacation; he was kicked by a horse and, she described in a tone of voice I will never forget, "his heart was shattered." Maybe it was the similarity of possibilities that brought her story to my mind that dark night. Or how all those possibilities felt like they were shattering my heart as well. But it made me remember: even without a bulging aorta, life is fragile. A perfectly healthy child could be killed in any imaginable way at any second of existence. (Or unimaginable: I'm certain that part of my imaginative worrying comes from the illogical belief that if I imagine it, it won't happen.) Disease isn't required for death to happen. Which is a horribly gloomy way to brighten myself up, but somehow it did. It was enough to give me the courage to let go and go to bed and see what happened tomorrow, which is all any of us, even with tricuspid valves, can ever do.

July in Review

Yesterday when I was at work, a patron asked me what the date was. "July 31," I said, and then we both freaked out a little bit because seriously: how can July already be gone? It seems like it flew by. Here's how our July played out:

• For the 4th, I took the kids to my sister's house, where we swam and hung out with cousins. I even got in the pool, which I hardly ever do. (I can't really explain why I don't want to get in, usually; it has to do with the splashing and with how you never really dry out until you go home and change, but I think it bugs my sister, which of course makes me sad. Somehow I'm just the stick in the mud when it comes to swimming.)
  
• We had an almost-completely-normal regular ol' day to celebrate Pioneer Day (Utah's state celebration) on the 24th. I did buy some sparklers but we didn't light them until the next day. Lame.
• The kids found a snake in our yard. This happens at least once a summer. Kaleb and his friends played with it all day and then let it go in the field at the end of the street.
• I took the boys to Seven Peaks. (Usually Haley takes them.)
• Kendell and I hiked Squaw Peak.
  
• The kids saw some movies: Ice Age 4 (loved it!), Batman (Haley went to a midnight showing with some friends, Jake and Nathan saw it the next morning, and Kaleb is of course way too young), The Pirates! Band of Misfits and The Lorax (both at the dollar theater).
• The shooting at the movie theater in Colorado affected me harder than any public shooting ever has. Maybe because Haley was at a midnight showing and that made it feel so much more real? I sat in front of the TV and wept for that entire Saturday morning. There aren't any words.
• Haley went to a sort-of disappointing Girls Camp. It was disappointing because they couldn't go to the camp they usually go to because of the forest fires. It was her last year at camp and I so wanted her to finish with an experience she really loved. And she did love what she had, but not as much as if they could have gone to Camp Shalom. (Someone told me later that the camp wasn't ever really in danger; they didn't let them go not because of the fires but because of parents being afraid of the fires, which sort of really annoys me.)
• Nathan's camp was also postponed because of the fires so maybe that parenthetical aside is full of falsehood. Who knows? We're just glad he got to go.
• I read two books, Afterwards and The Snow Child. No! I also read Attachments and Rainwater. I also was completely enjoying Run and Eat until yesterday, when I accidentally returned it and it went to the next person on the hold list. My little paper markers of stuff I wanted to write down were even still in it. Sadness!
• Jake and I went on our special night to Chili's. He was in the mood for both mashed potatoes and french fries, so we got the 2-for-20 thing and had cheese fries as our appetizer and mashed potatoes as our side dishes. (His Special Night month is really June but I didn't quite make it so we went at the beginning of July instead.)
• Haley and I went to the Nordstrom sale and then to lunch together. We really wanted to go to the Spaghetti Factory but didn't realize it's not open for lunch. We went to Brick Oven instead.
• Nordstrom sale: totally disappointing. We went to the pre-sale and the girl who helped us was so unhelpful. Haley only found one thing that was in the pre-sale stuff. Everything else that she found was on the regular sales rack, only they had all been put there accidentally and weren't even on sale. Then, when we got out to the car I looked over the receipt and realized that the girl had charged us full price for that one Anniversary sale item so we had to go back in and get it fixed. That's not even mentioning the (small) family drama of my mom wanting to go with everyone and not being able to organize it and me feeling like it was being organized around everyone else but me (I know, I sound like a baby and I don't really mean to) which is fine but left me feeling thoroughly unimportant. Yeah. Not my favorite year for the Nordstrom sale.
• Work! I'm re-running my Write Now! class at Big Picture in November, so I had tons of work to get accomplished. Two weeks of July were spent on the remodel.
• I didn't run nearly as much as I wanted to. I'm discouraged about my shoes, which got a hole along the seam when I had only 57 miles on them, but the running store where I buy all of my running stuff wouldn't help me, and Asics wouldn't help me, so now, gah, I have brand-new shoes with a hole and I don't want to buy new ones because I don't know where to go now that I'm pissed off at Runner's Corner where I've probably purchased 15 pairs of running shoes over the years but who wouldn't help me and actually gave me the "you are a liar" look when I told them my story. Deep breath.
• Kendell and I went on a date to a restaurant in Salt Lake, The Blue Iguana.
• I got quite a bit of back-to-school shopping done between that (blasted) Nordy's sale and Dillard's extra-clearance sale last weekend.
• Jake and Nathan both left for scout camp on the last Monday of July.
• Kendell and I were up late watching the gymnastics team final (great job girls! You totally made me cry and then have gymnastics dreams all night) when the calendar flipped over to August.

off to Scout Camp

This morning, both Jake and Nathan left to go to scout camps. Jake is going to Calf Creek Falls, Lake Powell (only my favorite place on earth!), and Zion National Park to hike the Narrows. (I am jealous of every single bit of his trip.) Nathan is going to Scofield Scout Camp, where he'll work on some of his merit badges and have fun with his friend Jacob. (I just wrote, perfected, and then deleted an elegantly-barbed statement there about the issues he's had with his neighborhood "friends" but I decided that even though I counteracted it with how awesome his friend Jacob is and how he doesn't play the stupid (and oddly Mean-Girl-esque) games the other boys do, it was too bitter; I only included this parenthetical because it matters further on.) We had a great time yesterday getting them ready and all packed, and they both went to bed excited. I was excited for them, too.

But then I dreamed all night of bad things happening: fires and earthquakes and stumbles over cliffs. When my alarm woke me at 6:00, I stayed in bed for a few minutes and my mind took me on one of those horrible loops when you're only half-awake and you're watching something horrible happen to your child only you can't stop the thought nor the horrible. So many bad things could happen. Especially when you factor in this one fact: there are no women involved in these trips. No one to remind kids to wear a life jacket and to put on some sunscreen and to drink enough water because in my experience it's usually the mom reminding even the dad about that kind of stuff.

I suffered through a thousand mishaps before the snooze alarm yanked me out: Jacob drowning, or jumping off a cliff into too-shallow water and coming home paralyzed, or getting caught in a flash flood in the canyon or lost on his hike or trying to jump over a fire and getting burned. Nathan lost in the woods or shot by an careless arrow or felled by a random falling tree branch or trying to jump over a fire and getting burned.

It was all I could do to get out of bed and drop them off.

(As I was getting out of bed, Kendell said "Make sure you remind Jake to watch out for snakes because Lake Powell is covered with snakes" and part of me rolled my eyes because in all the trips I took to Lake Powell I never once saw a snake and part of me added a True-Grit-esque rattlesnake pit of death to my list of possibilities.)

Whenever I send them to overnight campouts, I always say the same thing: please don't do anything stupid and don't try to jump over the fire. I said the same thing this time, only I followed it up with a litany of things to do, too. (Wear sunscreen and stay with the group and be mellow.) And a prayer in my heart. And what else can I do but send them off?

The literal second I walked into my quiet, early-morning kitchen I started crying. I know...could I be a bigger baby? Could I have less faith and trust? Could I stop being so overprotective? But it was a combination of watching the friend trouble unfold right there at the drop off — the real, true bad stuff—and the imaginary horribles. I just wish: that I could make things smoother for them somehow. That I hadn't cursed them somehow with a dearth of true friends. That horrible things didn't happen ever. That they didn't have to feel any pain or sorrow, which is possibly every mother's wish. Except I know, of course, that only having good things wouldn't make them strong. So then I just wept for how hard life is and I prayed furiously that they'd be OK and that if they weren't I could deal with it.

And then I went back to bed until 10:30 which is probably what I needed the most anyway.

Do your kids go off to summer camps? Do you have a meltdown when they do?

How I Came to Find Myself Literally Weeping into My Oatmeal

I'm not going to lie: this weird stomach virus/bacteria/whatever-the-hell-this-mild-plague-is continues to make me grumpy. For the past two weeks and one day, I've woken up and felt like hell. Like, right on the verge of coming down with the stomach flu, except it never actually comes down. Or, er, comes up, which is good. Except for I feel like hurling almost all day long. I feel like eating only white-bread toast and drinking only anything bubbly and extra-icy-cold. I feel like sleeping a lot.

I feel like I am pregnant.

I AM NOT PREGNANT!I promise. I have taken three different tests just to make sure. I'm not late. I don't even get nauseous when I'm pregnant, I just get really, really hungry and my hands get these strange red spots. And I'm the opposite of really, really hungry. And no red spots. Besides, hello. I am forty years old. I know what causes babies and I take every measure to prevent them. I'm too old and the there's the fact  that I have recently made peace with the lack of babies in my life.

Plus, really. I'm not pregnant.

I'm trying to be friendly to the nausea, even though I do keep threatening to call the doctor tomorrow if it doesn't go away. Or I'm just ignoring it and doing all my normal life stuff, like going to work and going running and cooking dinner and doing laundry. Sometimes I baby the nausea by giving it exactly what it wants. Four-cheese Italian Cheezits? Sure. Strawberry Fig Newtons? OK. Watermelon? Lucky I have some of that in the fridge! On Thursday morning I made nice to it by making it some hot oatmeal like it was demanding. Oatmeal, delicately spiced with cinammon, ginger, a dash of nutmeg and a swirl of honey, with preferably a glug of cream on top (not possible, as the cream had soured).

While I waited for the water to boil, I looked out my kitchen window. My neighbors, who are an eldery couple, walked out of their garage and got into their mini van. They were dressed up and, I imagine, going to the temple, and obviously they were driving their van because they were going to pick up some of their friends and take them along. Afterwards, they and their friends would go to lunch somewhere fun but not too expensive and then they'd all go to their respective homes and take a nap.

The water wasn't boiling yet so I watched them. They sat in their van until the water boiled and I turned away to pour the oats in, and then I stirred and I watched them. I watched them for ten minutes (because I am decidedly not a quick-cook-oats kinda girl) while I stirred, and I wondered what they were talking about. What they were doing there, just sitting in their van.

I tried. I tried so hard to imagine them having a happy conversation. I wanted them to be saying kind things to each other, because they really are kind and sweet people. I wanted him to be complimenting her on her dress and her to be laughing and saying that he still looks handsome to her after all these years. But I couldn't imagine that. I could only imagine them having one of the arguments Kendell and I have, like why is the van so cluttered and can't I ever vacuum it, or please can you drive without yelling at all the other drivers this time, or yes, I know, I made us late again, or any of the other bajillion things that married people tiff over.

Watching my neighbors and imagining them having my marriage's arguments made me think about my grandparents. They've been gone for half my life but I still miss them. They both made me feel this amazing combination of unconditional love and unfettered admiration but in a manner that gave me confidence, not arrogance. I was simply happy and peaceful in their presence.

But I also was always aware of an underlying tension. I don't know any stories to tell that would give my hunch any weight. I don't want to ask my mom because I don't want to know the details, but I wonder: were they happy? Or did they, too, sit in their car (the big brown Oldsmobile my grandpa loved) and argue?

My other grandparents—my dad's parents—definitely were not  happily married. They were actively involved in not being happily married. My dad didn't talk about this much, but there were enough small stories to piece together a larger narrative. In fact, there are suggestions, in the family stories, that my grandpa Curtis, who died when my dad was just 16, went not just from a heart attack but out of sheer, unfettered unhappiness.

I stirred my oatmeal. I thought backwards to my grandparents and forward to my own children's future. Have I bequeathed them a legacy of unhappy marriages? Have I taught them? Have they seen, despite the arguments, me loving their father? Have I taught them that love, which has to include arguments, also includes laughter and happiness and comfort? Do they know love exists?

I'm not sure anyone taught me. My parents loved each other, but I don't think anyone would say they had a happy marriage. I remember, during a rough patch that happened when I was about 14, lying in bed and listening to them argue and promising myself that my kids would never hear me argue with their father.

A promise I broke about a month into my sojourn as a mother.

And I realized, right there in the kitchen on that random Thursday April morning: I don't know. I don't know if I have taught them what love looks like. I know it was my responsibility to do so. I know whether the arguments were my fault or someone else's, whether I was right or wrong: none of that changes my responsibilities. I know I want them to know it exists so that they have faith enough to find it. I'm just not certain I've taught them that.

All of those thoughts while I stirred my delicately spiced, boiling oatmeal and watched my neighbors sit in their van and wept. Out of shame and disappointment in myself and missing my grandparents and wishing my parents had been happier and trying to grit my teeth against the nausea. I finally realized what they were doing: they were laughing, their heads flung back, their faces split by grins and I wanted that to make me hopeful. To give me an idea that with time, with enough eventual growing up, we can reach a place where the arguments stop and the recriminations cease and we are simply, finally, enough for each other. That it just takes growing up and trying and coming to an understanding of each other that is deeper than anything you might argue over.

But it didn't. It made me weep even harder because I don't know. My parents never got there. Did my grandparents? Will I? Worse: will my children? I want them to. I want them to get there more than I want it for myself. But I don't know if—no, I don't believe I have—been the kind of example that could teach that that is a possibility. The fact that for ten long minutes I couldn't imagine my neighbors were simply laughing with each other seems to me to be proof enough.

What is maddening about this failure is that, despite the arguments, I do love my husband. Their father. I do. I just, I just don't know if I have shown them that. I don't know if they know. And I don't know if it is too late for me to show them that. So I cried, there in my kitchen. And I promised myself I would try harder and be kinder. Let them see me laughing with him and let them know  we were laughing. Not make them guess, or wonder, or fail to imagine.

Not leave them to pick up that unnamed current of tension and work it into their own marriages.

17 is an Odd Number

Today, my daughter turned 17.

Of course, just yesterday she was sixteen. But sixteen, while notable for driving and dating, still felt manageable, somehow. Still felt like enough time was left.

But 17? 17 feels so urgent it can't be typed with letters, only numbers.

17 feels like a butterfly unfolding her wings.

17 feels like flight is imminent.

17 feels like a contradiction: a loss and a gain all at once.

It feels like the hush of the breeze before a door closes.

It feels like although another door will open, I wasn't quite ready for the one on childhood to shut.

So today as I helped her get ready for her prom—and how magical is that, to go to prom on your 17th birthday in just the dress you've always wanted—as I sewed straps and added lace and adjusted measurements, gave make up advice and touched up a few last curls, I was swept up in the contradiction.

Here she was, her beautiful and competent self right in front of me, talking and laughing and curling and painting. Yet sometimes when I turned too fast I could almost see her just behind me. Her six-point-five-year-old self (who knew enough math to calculate that she was already halfway to thirteen) was adoring her prom gown, adoring and pointing out all of the perfect details. And then asking to spin in it. Her nine-year-old self was touching, with careful but ink-stained fingers, her thick, long, curly auburn hair, commenting on its beauty. Even her thirteen-year-old self paid a visit, admiring the grace and the confidence of her walk in such high heels.

Those selves fluttered around us even though she didn't see. They are only in my heart now, as only a mother can know how she saw her own child. This girl whom I held when she was 17 seconds old, then 17 minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and now years. Who will she be? I wondered, watching her change, who will she become? and then I went back to her in that moment and gave her what I could.

I never knew just how immense my capacity for failure would be.

I also could not imagine the ways in which I would succeed.

And I didn't know, when they first put her in my arms, what it would all mean. They hand you your baby like they're handing you your baby, the small being you chose to make. Who they are really handing you is a person, a person for whom all your choices are made in order to help her make her own choices.

What else do you do? You teach them everything, from that first thing—this is human touch and voice and breath—to whatever is last—tonight it was a trick for the bra strap and a way to keep her eyeliner from smearing and a reminder to take some Kleenex in her tiny purse—with the goal of helping them find their own happinesses. With the desire that, when they stand on the precipice of their familiar cocoon, spreading and drying the impossibly beautiful wings they have formed, you have taught them enough.

When your daughter is 17, you want her to know that you look backward because for you, the entire metamorphosis matters, not just this one moment of it, and that the looking back helps you see the future as well and that her whole life matters to you. That who she is right now is formed of all those other versions of herself and that for you all the incantatory swooping of time coalesces in the here and now.

You want her to know that you know she can move forward and that she will be strong enough for life's tumults. You know that her heart will be broken and her will and her hope but that she will mend and find and renew. You hope that she will appreciate beauty and love the world and be loved by others in amazing ways. That one day she will be handed her own sweet bundle of life.

But more than anything, watching your daughter at 17 in the door frame, on the edge, pushing out, your heart fills up with this desperate hope: that when she flies it won't only be away.

Pondering on this Late Night

Fourteen years ago, I went to bed at about this time—a little bit after midnight. I'd been up late that night, after a long day of shopping and doing post-Christmas returns with a sweet little two-year-old who wanted to be carried everywhere that day, working on recovering the bumper pads. Not three hours after I finally went to bed, I woke up in labor. I really didn't want to be in labor, since my due date was still almost three weeks away, but desire almost never matters when it comes to labor, does it? By 5:30 Kendell and I were driving to the hospital for what turned out to be my only pitocin-free delivery.

Tonight, I was up late making two sheet cakes and a double batch of artichoke dip for the December 30th festivities. We're celebrating Jake's 14th birthday with Kendell's entire family because it was the only day they all could get together to celebrate Christmas (one of the dangers of being born so close to Christmas). As I worked I thought about how much has changed since that December 29th in 1997, the last night of my life when i didn't have a son to mother. Of course, every baby you have changes your life dramatically. But they also change it specifically. They each bring themselves into your life—personality, quirks, affections, dislikes and tummy troubles and peaceful moment. Jake was a healing force for me in a way I had anticipated for a long time, but he was also, simply, himself. He brought a sweetness into my life that was nothing other than his own (and equally indescribable). He was my child I knew was coming to me for years before he actually arrived, who made his presence known in small whisperings and nudgings before he ever started taking shape.

I wish I could relive it, somehow—those moments of his birth and right after, when they handed him to me. Out of all my babies, he had the most definitive face, a clear foreshadowing of what he would look like as he grew up. Sometimes I still catch a shadow of what he looked like as a baby. Those moments were some of my life's favorites. Even though I was exhausted I was ecstatic.

(Yes! He really is that much taller than me!)
In the morning he'll turn fourteen. There will be cake. Cake, and presents, and possibly even singing. I will count my lucky stars that I get to have him in my life; I will look backward to the day he was born and forward to what might be to come. And I will hope that he knows: even though I get mad at him for playing too many video games and leaving his cups downstairs and forgetting to put the towels in the dryer when I asked him and not wearing his rubber bands—even though all of the adolescent difficulties are staring us right in the face—even though I yelled at him the other day and might have even sworn—even though all of those mistakes, I love him so, so, so, so much. Him. Even the complicated bits. He gave me my first chance to raise a son and I still, when I stop to think of what that means to me, get a lump in my throat. I love him.

And I hope that he knows.