family Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

The Happiest Place on Earth

The happiest place on earth

A surprise is brewing here in the Glover house. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime blow-your-mind surprise for the children.

And they have no idea. If you’re the kind of person who can’t keep a secret, just stop reading right now. You’ve got to keep it in until Monday. If you can do that, then raise your right hand. Take the oath of silence. Got it? Okay. Proceed.

It all started a few weeks ago when my mother-in-law called to tell us that Jeff’s aunt and uncle wanted to take the three older children to Disneyland for the week. They were going to bring Nana along too, just to make sure the kids were comfortable since Uncle Fred and Aunt LaVonne are twice-a-year relatives and the kids might feel better going to California with someone they know better. Besides, everything is better with a Nana, even Disney.

Disney! Ahhhhhhhh!

I was stunned when I heard it. Never in a million years would we be able to take our children to Disneyland. Maybe if we were stationed in California we could take the kids there for a day, but to fly? And to stay for days on end? That was out of the question. It’s one of the realities of having five children. Some things should not even be wished for.

But that is not the way Uncle Fred and Aunt LaVonne think. They have always had hearts big enough for crazy wishes, and even though they have grandchildren of their own to spoil and love on, they have hearts big enough for a few more. Even five more.

But all five children were not going to Disney, only three. I hung up the phone and let that thought sink in. Only three children would be going to Disney, three children when all five were old enough to know what was going on and what was being left out.

I went to bed that night but I couldn’t sleep. What a beautiful gift we had been given. It was so beautiful, it almost hurt. It hurt because all of my children couldn’t have it.

It hurt because my twins would know they were being left out, and I didn’t know how to justify that. We are the kind of family that does everything together. From dawn to dusk, my children share the same space, the same activities, the same experiences. On the rare occasions when one of them is gone, the others languish like they’ve lost a limb.

The one who is singled out doesn’t fair much better. When I took Jonathan out for his birthday, he often paused his constant chatter about birds of prey and knives and speculations about how fast he could run to sigh dramatically and say, “I wonder what The Others are doing now.”

I wonder what the others are doing now…

The twins were going to notice. They were going to feel it. And I ached for them over it.

I ached so much, I almost couldn’t let the other three go. It felt selfish and mean to hold something back from the older ones just because the little ones couldn’t have it too. How could I deny my children the experience of a lifetime? But then I thought of those boys, those sweet boys who practically can’t function without Kya, their social coordinator, and Jonathan, their wrestle-buddy, and Faith, their story-reader and horse. Yes, horse.

I put my head on Jeff’s shoulder and cried it all out.

“Life isn’t fair,” he said in his I’m-going-to-make-it-okay voice. “Sometimes, it doesn’t come out the same, and the sooner our kids can learn that, the better.”

I got that. Really. I did. We have never tried to treat our kids as equals; we have treated them as individuals with different needs and different gifts. Sometimes, that means one of them gets a new pair of shoes and the others don’t.

But this is Disney. This is not just a new pair of shoes. This is the-greatest-thing-that-happened-in-my-childhood kind of thing. This is the stuff that will cause my twins to dye their hair blue and tattoo mouse ears on their bodies when they’re twenty-three. If I ask them why they’ll say, “You never took us to Disney.”

Cut out my heart.

Run away! Run away!

“We need to let them go,” Jeff assured me.

I knew it. I just didn’t know how to live with it.

So, I’ve kept it a secret. I’ve kept it a secret and I’ve poured all my creative energies into making this epic experience even more epic. It is Epic Supersized. I am doctoring my heart by planning the most amazing surprise my older kids have even known. They have no idea where they are going. They do not know they will be spending a week with Nana. They do not know they will be flying on a plane! They do not know they will be landing in California and spending three luscious days at the Happiest Place on Earth.

Here in my little laboratory (pronounced la-BORE-uh-tory), I am crafting up a Disney storm. Wait until you see the pixie dust I’ve concocted. You will die.

Somewhere in all my plotting and scheming and crafting, it has become okay. I guess that’s one of the ways to cope when life isn’t fair: you add glitter.

The other half of my brain is planning a week of precious memories with my littlest loves. Oh, the places we will go! They will not know that their siblings are at Disney. It’s better that way, I think. They will have time enough to know it when their sisters and brother return. They don’t need to be jealous about it while they’re gone.

All they will know is that they are loved.

And isn’t that the best thing to know when life isn’t fair?

Eight Years of Living

Yesterday, Jonathan woke up to eight years of living quietly slipping into nine. It’s a strange thing to watch it ebb away day by day, leaving so little changed, until one day it is gone altogether and a new year has begun.

This was the year of third grade, of lost teeth and a military haircut like Daddy’s that almost broke Mom’s heart into two. It was a year counted out in 52 one-dollar bills from helping Mrs. Smith with her chores each week, and parsed out in rows and rows of yarn knit together in the sugary presence of a grandmother who ran out of grandchildren before she ran out of cookies.

It was the year of being the man of the house, of counting and waiting and being brave while other boys, bigger boys, got to have his daddy instead of him.

It was an Army year.

Daddy said it was work but there were obstacle courses and war simulations and MREs and one amazing ride in a Black Hawk, and it doesn’t take a genius to know what’s playing and what’s not.

It was a year of bike crashes and skinned knees and chopping down a real tree with a real ax all by himself while Mom tried not to watch from the kitchen window and Dad said lots of words about how it would be fine because there’s nothing better for a boy than chopping down a real tree with a real ax. That’s something a man could do, and being eight, almost nine, is just half-way to being a grown-up man.

Mom turned away when he said it because it couldn’t be true.

But there was a grin on the face of an eight-year-old boy, almost nine, when he hauled that heavy green stump up the hill, triumphant, that made his mother think he was already more a man than she had realized, and a little bit of that baby boy of hers slipped away while she wasn’t looking.

He was born on an Easter, the first-born son of a mother who was trying to be brave about having two children nineteen months apart when she didn’t think she hadn’t quite recovered from the idea of having any.

He was a week overdue, growing fat and heavy inside a mother who felt fat and heavy, and fearful too. She wasn’t sure she could do it, could have a baby in the normal way when the first had been turned upside down and had to come out with the help of surgeons and white lights and room that was all at once pure and mean.

She wasn’t sure she could have another baby when the sutures in her heart were still so fresh. The rawness of dark memories and wicked tears stung her mind, and she wondered if she was healthy enough to love a second baby when the love for the first had just begun to drip in. She wasn’t sure she had enough to spare.

But it was Easter.

And the angels were dancing on a stone that was too heavy to roll away and there was life creeping back in where the stench of death hung low. There was redemption and the miracle of resurrection revealed to harlot eyes.

It was Easter, and that mother was the first to feel the miracle flush across her face.

The nurses placed that heavy baby boy across her chest, and there was no terror and there was no fear because the miracle was too big and there wasn’t any room left. It was pushing out the darkness and sweeping up the remnants of guilt and sadness over what had been and left hope for what was yet to be.

That little boy grew up into smiles that were too big for his face and a laughter that was too big for the room. He loved everyone, and he loved his sister most of all, so much that he filled up some of the love she was lacking for him until one day, she realized she loved him right back. They were thick as thieves, Faith and Jonathan, Jonathan and Faith.

Their mother would hold them together on her lap with story books all around and wonder why God would bother to raise the dead when the living were all around.

Perhaps it is because He is the only one who can.

Yesterday, when eight years slipped quietly into nine, that mother stopped a moment and thought about it all, holding it up in her heart because it was too precious to put down anywhere else. She thought about how some things can ebb away, little by little, so you hardly even notice. Then one day, you look, and it is gone, and something better has taken its place.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: 38

Red Hair Like Me

100 Days of Motherhood: 35

Mom, can I sit on your lap?” Paul asks, stroking my arm.

His face looks a little more big-boy than I remember because just yesterday, Daddy took a scissors and snipped until bright red curls covered the kitchen floor. It was necessary because the boy could barely see.

But I’m partial to bright red curls and baby-faced boys, and I can’t help feeling a little sorry about how grown-up he looks.

“You want to cuddle with me?” I say to the grey-blue eyes that look up at me.

Paul nods, making his face long in an attempt to look as pathetic as possible.

It works every time.

I nab him up into my lap and squeeze him tight. Paul’s dimple shows because I fell for his trick.

He drapes a lazy arm around my neck and says, “You smell adorbubble,” and gives me an impish smile that lifts up the freckles on his cheeks and makes me want to kiss them. I can’t resist that.

“Ack! Kisses!” he squeals, but he turns his cheek toward me instead of away.

We sit together rocking, we two. His hair tickles my nose and he strokes my arm and I think about how I have almost used up all the cuddle time I have been given because he is bigger today than he ever was before. Soon, he won’t fit on my lap. It is almost over, and I don’t want it to be over, not yet.

I wonder at how I’ve changed, how these five little people have worn away the parts that didn’t fit. When I first became a mother, the constant closeness with another human felt suffocating. Someone was on me all the time, and I was desperate to be able to carve out a little space in the world to be alone.

I’d listen to the clock in the hall and watch the birds fly outside the window while I waited, weighed down with nursing or a child who wouldn’t sleep and I’d think about how I couldn’t wait to put that baby down, shake out my arms, and be free.

Now here I am, holding on to this boy who loves to hold on to me, and I do not want to be free at all.

Time is funny that way. It wears you in. It makes things fit that once rubbed you raw.

Of all my children, it is Paul who has worn down my independence the most because it is Paul who lingers closest. It is Paul who is so unlike me in his need for nearness. It is Paul who makes me think I’ll miss these days when I can hardly get a moment to myself.

Soon, I will miss these days.

I stare at his face and try to remember the first time I saw him. It is a hazy dream because of the medication and the fierce lights of the operating room that made it hard to open my eyes, but if I try, I can be right there in an instant.

“This one has red hair!” the nurse exclaimed. Just seconds before, Paul’s twin had flown by my eyes. I had only a moment to stare in wonder at Micah before Paul came bellowing through, but that was long enough to know that Paul had red hair and Micah did not.

“Do any of your other kids have red hair?”

“No!” I said, and laughed out loud because I had always wanted a redhead, and it was just like God to give me that frivolous little gift just because, at the end, like a love note pressed into the hand when the good-byes are being said.

That red hair was just for me.

Paul knows it, and he holds it in his eyes like a secret. “We have red hair, right Mom?” he says, and grins with a grin that is two parts mischief and one part reckless, unbounded joy. He can’t hold in a giggle. It bubbles up from deep in his belly and ripples through the house.

I smile every time I hear it because that is Paul.

Paul who thanks God every night for the pretty horses and Jesus dying on the cross. Paul who once burst into tears in the middle of Rite Aid because Kya told him she wouldn’t marry him that day. Paul who can’t talk to me without touching me. Paul who wiggles and squirms next to me in church until I am exhausted and he is content because he knows we are close.

We are not very much alike that way, I’m afraid.

Sometimes, I step back when he reaches out for me. Sometimes, I tell him he must stop tugging on my pants. Sometimes, I tell him I want him to go outside.

Then he looks at me and says, “But Mom, if I go outside, you will be all-a-lonely,” and the mischief goes from his eyes and I know he’s aching for me because he is too little to know that we are different.

He can only see how we are the same. He wants us to be the same.

And I wonder at God who has the sense of humor to give me a boy with my red hair and a personality so unlike my own. It is the truer gift, I know, to give me a child who can’t let me indulge the selfishness and independence that is my tendency.

Because Paul has sharpened me, like iron to iron, and I have become a little less reclusive, a little less independent, a little less ready to shake out my arms and be free.

By the grace of God, we are becoming more the same.

In fact, I think I’d like to stay here for a while. Maybe there is time to linger a little longer with a little boy who has red hair just like me.