Parenting Archives - Page 18 of 39

1951: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {27}

Four generations, including Grandpa, my dad, my older brother, and Great-Grandpa

My dad was born in June of 1951. Grandpa was a builder, and that was a good profession to be in when the war had ended and the country was in the mood to grow. Everyone was having babies and building houses, including Grandma and Grandpa, who married while their high school diplomas were waiting to dry.

My dad was born before anyone had time to ask what was taking so long. Grandpa marked the event by naming a street after his first born baby boy. He was going to sell houses all up and down Gary Drive, and things were going to be better.

The babies came as the houses went up, and in just a blink, it seemed, there were eight mouths to feed. No, ten, because Grandma and Grandpa had to eat too, although it was a wonder anything was left after the kids were through. The milk never spoiled and the leftovers never went to waste because someone was always hungry enough to eat yesterday’s meatloaf.

Even for all the promises of prosperity, things didn’t get much better. Hope hung in the air, like a cloud, but it refused to rain down. The big family of little children struggled. Grandpa thought it shouldn’t be so hard for an honest person to earn a living. But it was.

Grandma thought the same thing. She had to find a way to make ends meet so she filled a van full of wallpaper books and spent her days climbing ladders and smearing paste and talking to customers about matching borders. She wallpapered the local McDonald’s and a house or two on Gary Drive. It put food on the table and new shoes on growing feet. But it didn’t pay for braces or piano lessons or sweet sixteen dresses.

On Sundays, the family scrubbed up, lined up and went to church. They took up the whole pew. As they grew, they took up a few more. All the kids had at least one decent shirt or dress to wear to church, even if it wasn’t new and the shoes pinched funny because they had been bought for someone else.

And the kids grew up and out of their clothes and the milk cartons were put back in the fridge empty and no one knew who ate the last piece of bread. Grandma canned everything that grew and tried to keep her oldest from eating a whole jar of peaches by himself because there was always someone else to think about.

But having someone else to think about was not such a bad thing. Having someone else to think about is what turns men into husbands and women into mothers. It’s what makes children into well-rounded adults even when the childhood is harder than the parents wish it was. It’s what makes people know they have enough when they hardly have anything at all.

Sometimes, I wish I could give my children more than I can. I wish I could offer them the newest shoes and the pretty Easter dresses, the soccer camps and the horseback riding lessons. If we had fewer children, some of those things might be possible.

But we have a large family (in an age when five children is considered a large family), and while we certainly have more than enough, much more than my grandparents had for their children, we live simply. It is both a choice and a necessity.

Sometimes, I wonder if it is the right choice. Most of the time, I know it is. It is hard to mourn the fact that my kids don’t have the latest gadgets when I hear them laughing over a game they’ve invented themselves. They are grateful for what they have, eager to spend time with one another, and willing to work to earn the extras.

It is not perfect. Nothing is. But on this beautiful day of motherhood, I am thankful that my children can’t have all they want. I’m thankful that in our house, there’s always someone else to think about. I am thankful that they have the chance to wait, to share, to give, to adapt, and to consider others better than themselves. I’m thankful that when it’s their turn, they know that the gifts and opportunities they have came about because the whole family worked to give something to them, and they, in turn, are learning that it’s good to work for the good of someone else.

Prosperity may be as elusive for us as it was for my grandpa. It may not. It really doesn’t matter at all. We know we have more than we deserve and more than enough.

Playing in a bucket= Best. Fun. Ever.

All Things New: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {26}

Halfway through the morning, the weather changed. The lazy grey clouds were thrown off over the mountains like covers, and sleepy-eyed sky appeared.

Kya had already drawn a fluffy cloud on her weather chart, but no one minded the inconvenience of erasing it and starting over with a yellow-rayed sun.

I was going to have to find my sunglasses.

It was warm enough—just—to play outside without mittens and take one more stab at winning the argument with Mom about running around outside without a coat. It turned into the kind of day that makes the early lambs jump around in the field and compels dogs to roll in things they shouldn’t.

It was a day that felt new, like mercy.

Mercy is something I need. I have felt a little bit brown around the edges lately, a little too tired and buried a little too deep. I am back to my old mistakes of taking on too much and saying no to too little. All week I struggled to keep up in a race I never should have been running in the first place.

Little things got under my skin, like rocks, and I felt gravely. I said things to my husband I shouldn’t have said and didn’t really mean. It’s always easier if it’s his fault than if it’s mine. It’s always easier to feel trapped by him than to acknowledge the fact that I’ve imprisoned myself.

But I don’t think he knows how to build a cage as well as I do.

If there’s one thing I am good at, it’s walling myself up with too many commitments. I am good at finding ways to chain myself to the clock and the calendar and the to-do list. I am good at scrambling my priorities and fighting him when he tries to set me free and straighten me out.

I think that if I can build a cage, then I can get myself out of it. So I clench my teeth and set my resolve and make everyone miserable while I try to prove that I can do it.

The truth is, I can’t do it. Not well, not godly, not in a way that is healthy.

This last past week was not healthy.

But today was the kind of day that forces me outside. I have to hang something on the clothesline, even though nothing will dry. I untangled the bed from the flannel sheets and extra blankets which have held us captive since sometime in October. They hang head-down and penitent on the line.

It is good to be aired out, I think, and to start fresh.

I stand out in the yard and fill my lungs with the smell of the waking earth. I notice that the deeply hidden daffodils and tulips are beginning to push their way up through the dark and the dirt and the dead of winter. Their tender green shoots push aside the brown fallen leaves and stretch toward the new mercy of spring. They are dirty, still, from being so long in the ground.

But they are growing again, even after a season of dormancy and darkness.

I am a little dirty too, a little rough around the edges. But on this beautiful day of motherhood, I cling to the hope that God is not done with me yet. My sins may be chronic, but so is His mercy. He coaxes me out of the dirt and into the light. I am well aware that I have not done everything right or well or good. But I am also aware that God is in the business of making all things new—including me.

Surrounded by Savages: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {25}

A young and innocent Kristen Glover, banished to the Outside while her mother makes quiche

First published in August, 2012

In the beginning, the first man and the first woman had two children. But the children were both boys so their mother felt like she had a dozen.

The earth was young and the boys were wild since they didn’t have any girls but their mother to tame them. They made weapons out of sticks and stale bread and pomegranate seeds. They chased the sheep and ambushed the chickens and managed to find mud in the desert.

They punched and wrestled and ran so much, some days their mother thought she might go deaf. Other days, she wished she already was deaf.

“That’s it!” the first mother shouted. “I’ve had enough!”

The boys stopped dead in their tracks and wondered if this might be the end of the human population increase.

But God looked down on the earth and had compassion on the first mother because she was the only woman in the entire world, which pretty much meant she was surrounded by savages.

So God looked out over the great expanse of all that He had made, but He couldn’t find any place in all that wild world that was soft and beautiful where a mother could rest. So He said, “Let there be an oasis in the middle of this great expanse, and let it be called ‘Inside,’ and let Us separate the ‘Inside’ from the ‘Outside.’”

So God put up four walls and a lovely flat roof and separated the Inside from the Outside. And God saw that it was good.

Then He told the mother, “You shall have dominion over all the Inside. You will put flowers on the table and crochet afghans for the bed and tame a cat to sit in the window.

“And you will lure the man Inside by baking things that smell good and occasionally undressing. Once the Man comes Inside, you will make him take off his dirty shoes and talk about his feelings.

“But if the Man leaves his greasy tools on your counter or uses your best knife to trim his toenails, you will send the Man Outside.

“And you will lure your children inside with bedtime stories and cozy blankets and sugar. You will teach them to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and not to put their fingers in their noses.

“But if the Children shave the cat and turn your best tablecloth into a slingshot and release something scaly onto your bed, you will send the Children Outside.

“Then, you will sip a cup of tea, make quiche for dinner, and paint something.”

The woman smiled.

So it came about, after a surprisingly short period, that the Children spent a lot of time Outside.

And the Man built himself a garage.

Kya Outside, making weapons

« Previous Page