kids Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Stay Up Late Nights

This is how we rolled

I sat on the old plaid couch in my living room, nursing loud, slurping newborn twins in the presence of a dozen or so women who had come to my home for a baby shower.

It was awkward, to be sure, but I was too tired to care.

I had slept with the twins on me the night before, and the night before that. It was the only way they would sleep. When I put them down, they cried, and I cried too because my arms ached with holding them and my breasts hurt from nursing them and all I wanted was just a few seconds to have my body to myself.

But then the sun came up and I smeared concealer under my eyes and tried to hide my still-round figure under a maternity skirt and a once-flattering sweater. My hair, which had been falling out by the handfuls since the boys were born, spun in crazy spirals on my head, and a smattering of hormone-induced pimples blazed on my chin.

I sat there in the middle of dear friends and tried to appear normal. But I was on survival mode. Overnight, I had become the mother of five children, and I was reeling.

But there we were, just a few weeks after my babies were born, the incision in my abdomen still aching, celebrating the miraculous birth of my boys. It was miraculous, truly, and I had not forgotten. I was just so tired.

Maybe those dear women knew it. Maybe they could see right through the mascara. They did not come with silly games or demand details I didn’t want to share. As I nursed the twins, they quietly went around the room and gave me words of encouragement and advice.

Some of them did not have children, and their words were the kind that reminded me of the treasure I had in those sleepless nights.

My five babies

Some had grown right out of motherhood, and theirs were the words that reminded me to cherish those baby grunts and the closeness of infancy.

Then there was the woman who obviously did not notice how tired I was, or how hard I was trying to keep it all together. That woman looked right at me, the newly minted mother of five, and said, “The best piece of advice I can give you is to spend time with each of your children one-on-one.”

Her words flooded over my already-drowning spirit. One-on-one? I didn’t even get to spend time with myself one-on-one.

It was ridiculous to expect that from me! Obviously, she didn’t remember the days when it was a triumph just to get the cereal served, and she could never understand what it was like to mother five children ages five and under.

Micah and Paul, my twin boys

I smiled politely, thinking I’d throw away that piece of advice after everyone left.

But I couldn’t.

Deep down, I knew the wisdom of her words. In fact, I longed to implement her advice. How I wanted to hold one child on my lap and listen to one child’s dreams.

It’s just that somewhere during those busy, little years, I began to view my children only as a collective whole. The days were so full. They all needed food and water and trips to the bathroom and noses wiped and clean underwear. It was easier to line them all up and get it done, assembly-line style, than it was to consider if any one of them needed a little more of me than that.

Of course, I knew my children needed more of me than that. They needed to be cherished, valued, and understood as individuals, not because they were my children, but because each one of them is my child.

I wanted Faith to grow up knowing that I liked her. I wanted Jonathan to be assured of the fact that I longed to spend time with him.

I wrestled with that advice for a few months. Then finally, I found a way to make it work in our crazy, busy life.

I gave each child one night of the week to stay up late with me. For fifteen minutes after bedtime, we did whatever that child chose to do. We made cookies or snuggled into my bed and read a book. We took walks in the neighborhood. We learned to draw. We made up leprechaun stories.

Making cookies with Micah

We made memories.

It sounds so precious but the truth of it is, it was hard. After attending to my children all day, I found it almost painful to give them even fifteen minutes of my attention. It was a sacrifice, an intentional sacrifice, to spend time with my kids one-on-one at the end of the day.

The only reason I didn’t give it up is because Stay Up Late Nights are one of the best things we ever built into our family culture. What started out as a way to meet my children’s needs for individuality turned into an answer to my unknown need to know them individually and to enjoy their uniqueness without distraction.

Stay Up Late Nights gave me that. It’s been years now since we started and most weeks, my children would say that their night–their Stay Up Late Night–was the highlight of their week.

It is the highlight of my week too because I need it. I need to remember that being the mother of five children is indeed hard.

But being the mother to Faith, Jonathan, Kya, Micah, and Paul is one of the best things in the world.

Playing horses (and arachnids) with Paul

The Very Worst Pianist

The building was crawling with parents and children who had all come to that one place on that one day for an annual event that tests the skills of young pianists like my oldest daughter.

It was our first year there, and we were lost.

Insufficient maps sent us weaving through the building like ants carrying sacrificial bits of sheet music in our hands. Fragments of scales and bits of well-rehearsed compositions floated up from the rooms while everyone waited in crammed hallways for the next child to play.

I had no idea there were so many musically inclined children in all of Washington. “This piano thing is really catching on,” I whispered to Faith as we squeezed our way through jutting elbows and perfumed women and clusters of children who wished they were still in bed.

She nodded anxiously, hugging her red music folder to her chest.

I grabbed her around the shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “It’s going to be fine,” I said, even though I had no idea why room 5B wasn’t next to room 5A and it was very likely she was going to be late to her first event.

“Yep,” she said simply.

She was one brave girl, and I was proud of her. I figured I was the proudest mother of all the proud mothers in that place, and some of those women were acting like the mom of Mozart.

I was not the mom of Mozart, and I knew it. I was the mom of the very worst pianist in that place.

Yep. The very worst.

The night before, and not a moment sooner, I realized how unprepared Faith was for this competition. She sat on her bed, shaking with sobs, and told me all about it. She didn’t have her music memorized. She couldn’t play her classical piece well, even with the music, and the contemporary piece needed so much work, it wouldn’t be ready to play if she had a whole week to practice.

“It can’t be that bad,” I said. “Why don’t you play them for me.”

She did, and it really was that bad.

It was so bad, she couldn’t get through a single line without a mistake or ten. Halfway through the second piece, just when things were getting interesting, she broke down and started crying all over again.

“See?” she said.

I did see. I saw how I had completely failed to help her with her piano. I saw how I had been so distracted by house repairs and a kitchen remodel and all the work involved with moving that I had totally neglected her upcoming piano competition.

In fact, that was the first time I’d listened to her play her pieces. It was the first time I had sat down with her and looked at her music and made sure she was ready. Did I know she was playing a song called Skeleton Bones? Nope. Did I know she had to brush up on her scales and chords because she was going to be tested on them? Nope.

I had totally blown it.

To complicate things, she had blown it too. She had failed to practice even though her teacher reminded her every week. She had rushed through her pieces and hadn’t worked on the tricky parts because the weather has been grand and it’s much more fun to play outside.

And she doesn’t like scales.

“We messed this up,” I admitted.

“I know!” she sobbed. “I feel terrible about it!”

I felt terrible about it too. My daughter’s eyes were red and her face was splotchy and she was crying uncontrollably on her bed because of it. But there wasn’t much that could be done about it with less than twelve hours to go before the competition.

“I think you have two choices,” I told her. “You can stay home, and we’ll try to be better prepared next time, or you can go and do your best.”

She sniffled loudly.

“Unfortunately, your best is not very good right now.” I thought it was best to be honest. “You’re probably going to make a lot of mistakes. You know that. But you can go and play what you can, and maybe you can even learn something.”

Faith nodded. “I think I’ll go,” she said, and promptly started crying again.

“You don’t have to,” I said, secretly hoping she would change her mind. I mean, it was really, really bad. I could just imagine her bursting into tears in front of the judges and suffering permanent psychological damage because of it.

“No, I’m going to go,” she said, letting the tears stream down her face.

It was one of those instances when I wished I could say, “It’s not going to be as bad as you think.”

But I couldn’t say that.

So I hugged her instead and said, “You know, Faith, very few people get to be the best. If you think about it, most people are just average. They’re just okay.

“And every once in a while, you get to be the worst. Every once in awhile, you get to be the person who makes everyone else look good.”

She nodded.

“You’re just going to have to be the best person-who-makes-everyone-else-look-good you can be.”

Faith grinned. “I will.”

The next day, she came out of the first competition and smiled. “Well, that didn’t go very well,” she laughed. “I don’t think I’ll get a ribbon.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she shrugged, and I marveled at her, this kid who could mess up with more grace than her mother ever could.

“It was actually kind of fun!”

We went through the day like that, with me waiting in the hallways with other parents, listening to the sounds of perfectly-played pieces and knowing it was not my kid playing those notes. Every once in awhile, a dissonant sound was played, or a child tripped across the keys and fell flat, and all the parents in the hall looked at each other and thought, “I hope that’s not my kid.”

Except for me. I smiled and thought to myself, “Don’t worry, everyone. That’s my girl.”

Faith, playing at her first piano recital

At the very end of the day, I was allowed to go in with her and listen to her play her final piece. The child right before her was a maestro. His fingers looked like they were made of ivory. Faith leaned over and whispered loudly, “Mom! He’s really good!”

Then it was her turn. She sat down at the bench and began to play, but it wasn’t long before the music was lost and she couldn’t remember what came next. She growled at the keyboard in frustration and punched at keys that were not the right ones.

We’ve gotta work on the growling, I thought.

Deep inside, my stomach flipped. I couldn’t breathe. I thought about my mother-in-law, who paid for all of her lessons, and my sister-in-law who had been teaching Faith for nearly two years. I thought about the mother of another one of my sister-in-law’s students who was sitting in the same room with us listening to my daughter botch the whole thing, and I looked at my daughter who was in serious jeopardy of bursting into tears and I did what most moms would do: I thought about myself.

My failed parenting was shining through loud and clear, and I wanted to sink right into my folding chair.

Just then, Faith managed to finish the piece with one triumphant chord that mostly sounded right. Everyone exhaled and clapped respectfully.

We all stood up. I turned to say something conciliatory to Faith, but she was already running up to the child who played before her. “You played really, really well,” she said to him, her face shining. “I mean, really well. You did a great job.”

The other boy look surprised. He couldn’t say the same thing back to her so he mumbled, “Thank you,” and looked down at his hands. Faith skipped back to my side. “He was so good,” she said.

For the hundredth time that day, I marveled at Faith, a child whose first thought after a performance like that was how well the other kid played, and how much she couldn’t wait to tell him so. She was not proud of her own performance, but she wasn’t ashamed of it either. She knew she had done her best, such as it was, and that was good enough for her.

It certainly was good enough for me, although it stunned me to see something good in her that I find it so lacking in myself.

“I’m proud of you,” I said, “really, super-duper proud of you. I couldn’t be more proud of you if you played all your songs perfectly.”

“Hum!” she sang happily.

“You’re the best person-who-makes-everyone-else-look-good I’ve ever seen.”

She smiled.

“I just wish I knew where you learned it.”

“Um–from Dad.”

Ah. That explains it.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: 41

Moving to Ft. Bliss

Who’s up for a road trip?

We got the news on Saturday. For over three weeks, we have been waiting to hear where Jeff’s first duty assignment as an active duty chaplain will be. It was a good sort of waiting, like waiting for Christmas, because every place was exciting and new.

But still, three weeks is a long time to wait to see what is under the tree.

The kids and I looked at maps of all the Army installations around the world and dreamed about the possibilities. We could be moved right down the road to Ft. Lewis, which would make it easier to say good-bye to Nana and Papa, or we could be sent across the ocean to new adventures in Japan or Germany.

“I just hope it’s not Texas,” Jeff would say when the topic came up. He had been stationed in San Antonio in his Air Force days, back when he was young and single and almost as incredibly handsome as he is now. If I had known him then, I would have snatched him right up.

But I wasn’t there because I didn’t know him then.

Because of that, and a few other reasons, San Antonio was miserable. San Antonio was the reason he got out after three years instead of four. San Antonio was the reason Texas did not make the list when Jeff’s recruiter asked him where he’d like to be stationed.

So when I got home on Saturday from a day out with Faith and Jeff met us in the driveway with a big grin and the news, “Well, I heard where we’re going!” I did not expect him to say El Paso, Texas.

El Paso, Texas?

I choked on a laugh and repeated the words because I thought he was joking.

“Are you serious? Texas?”

“I would not make that up,” he said. “We’re headed to Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Texas.”

“Ft. Bliss?” The name made me explode, it seemed so funny to me. Ft. Bliss. God has a sense of humor.

Jeff was smiling too so I grabbed him around the neck and kissed him because it was so wonderful to know. Texas! Suddenly it didn’t matter that San Antonio was not his favorite place on earth. This was not San Antonio. This was Ft. Bliss!

Joy rushed in with the knowing, and we both felt the thrill of knowing where the next two years were going to find us.

“We’re going to Texas! We’re going to Texas!” the kids whooped and hollered in the driveway.

All except for Kya, who burst into tears and ran into the house.

But we could not stop laughing. God was not going to let us off the hook with this whole faith thing, not now, not ever.

“Where is El Paso?” Jonathan said, wrinkling up his nose like the word tasted funny in his mouth.

“Let’s find out!” I said, and we all ran for the classroom atlas that we keep stowed away in the school cupboard. We flipped open the pages to the state that will be our new home in just a few weeks, and found El Paso. There it was, right in the foothills, within spitting distance of Mexico, with miles and miles of desert all around.

I looked out at my lush green yard and the beautiful view of the ocean and the snowy mountains and I laughed again. I was going to need to buy more sunscreen.

But what an adventure!

“We’re going to learn Spanish,” I told the kids, “and go to Mexico! Just wait until you see it!”

It’s been nearly twenty years since I lived in Mexico, but it has not been so long that I have forgotten what it was like to walk through the shanty towns, what it was like to drive by the street kids, dressed in rags and high on paint thinner. It has not been so long that I have forgotten the warmth of the people and the richness of the culture. It has not been so long that I have forgotten how much I loved it.

I was going to get to take my kids to Mexico!

The kids were thrilled about the Mexico part. Not so much the Spanish. Spanish sounds a little bit like school, and that was an unfortunate reminder that schoolbooks are packable.

“What’s it like in El Paso?” Faith asked.

“Well, there are lots of rocks, and swimming pools, tons of tarantulas and scorpions…” I paused for a second and wondered if it was a good idea to embellish the amount of venomous creatures in and around El Paso. I wasn’t exactly sure there were tons of them, and I could just imagine God giving me a house infested with them just because I promised it to the kids.

So, that would be great.

“Will I be able to catch lizards?” Jonathan asked. He was practically foaming at the mouth. Arachnids the size of dinner plates and scaly things that bite are his favorite.

“Probably.”

“What kind?”

Jeeze. “Well…”

“Does everyone have a swimming pool?” Kya asked, saving me from having to recall anything beyond an armadillo, which isn’t even a lizard, but I couldn’t think of iguana for the life of me and I suddenly felt insecure about whether or not Gila monsters lived in Texas. I should have paid more attention when Planet Earth was on.

“Will we have a pool?” Kya pressed her hand on my arm, tears still glittering in her eyes, and looked at me intently. This could be the deciding factor on whether or not she moved to Texas with us or packed up her princess paraphernalia and moved in with Nana for the next two years.

“Oh, Kya, of course…”

Jeff looked at me and shook his head. The thought of pool maintenance weighed heavier on his heart than her puppy eyes. The man is made of steel.

“…of course…I don’t know yet,” I said slowly. “We’ll see.”

Jeff looked at me again, only this time his face was very clearly communicating something like, “There is no way on earth we are getting a house with a pool,” but he said, “I saw a picture of the one on post, and it looks pretty great. It has a water slide and everything.”

Nice save.

Her eyes grew wide.

“Awesome!” Jonathan yelled.

The living room erupted into shouts and cheers and various forms of interpretive dance. Kya threw her arms around me. This is going to be okay.

And of course, it really is going to be okay. I looked at my children and I thought about all the places Jeff and I have lived, both before we were married and after. Our lives have taken us all over the world, and while we both have lived in places we did not love, we have yet to find a place on this earth where God’s mercies do not reach. All of those experiences have shaped us into the people we are today.

I can’t wait for my kids to have some of those adventures.

So. We are going to El Paso, and it’s going to be great!