Tag Archives: Raising Children

And the Marry-Making Begins

08 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in Life at Home

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, ,

I woke to the rough sounds of my youngest son’s retching.

“Too much merry-making last night,” my husband muttered.

My better half has an understated way with words, and these, even laced with sleep, were delivered in  his calm, matter-of-fact way, while lying within dark unfamiliar surroundings of a downtown Tulsa hotel.

“Poor Kyle.  Will he be all right by tonight?.” I asked this with my mind racing ahead, thinking of that Best Man’s speech which laid crumpled on the window sill by his bed.

“Yeah.  He’ll be fine.”

I needed to hear these words from my husband of twenty-five years: Shoring up life with a few comforting words — when things go bump and barf in the night —  is what my husband does best.

Of course, thinking of tonight’s wedding festivities, I hope Kyle will be better than fine.  I hope he will be at his tip-top ‘best’, living up to his spot in tonight’s wedding party line-up.  But then, I hope we are ALL at our tip-top best, full of joy, indulging in more than a little harmless merry-making since this is my oldest son’s wedding day.  Have I mentioned — somewhere in a post along the way — that at six o’clock this evening. Bryan and Amy are getting married?

So what will this day bring?  Many merry-making guests dressed in their finest finery.  That’s a given.  Walks down the glamorous lobby aisle, which this morning, was still littered with rose petals from last night’s wedding.

To be sure, a few happy tears — courtesy of moi —  to accompany the speaking of age-old vows of “better or worse.”  Then lovely music.  And probably some that will not seem so to my way of thinking.  A first dance in a grand ballroom will follow  — and a second dance between our bride and her father will lead to the third between my son and me.  And if the DJ has been able to locate it, we’ll dance to these sounds of Carly Simon.

And then the “just marrieds” will cut the cakes baked by the bride’s oldest sister. a pastry chef in Kansas City.  And who knows what else?   Except that like the rest of life, the best moments will come unexpected and completely un-rehearsed.

I write this line thinking of Don’s mother who longed to be part of this evening’s marry-making, who instead is home in her own bed, weak as a kitten from a three-week ordeal that began in ICU and ended in a hospice center.  True to the worst of life, this was not unexpected.  Janice’s battle with cancer entered its ‘fourth-stage’ earlier this year — and this, solely out of love for Janice, who prefers to speak of the ‘betters’ than the ‘worst’ of life,  has been one of the ‘unmentionables’ flapping around my life of late.

Better and worse.  Light and dark..  Life and death..  In health and sickness — even the sort self-imposed from too much merry-making.  These opposites help define one another, don’t they?  And like in the case of my husband and I, who like Bryan and Amy, are a couple of “opposites-attract”, perhaps they also refine one another.  And who knows but that maybe, one day, this soon-to-be married couple will regard the other as their ‘better half.’  As I do my husband.

I do I do  I do.

A Colicky World

25 Friday Feb 2011

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

I’ve not thought about Libya until today.

And though I’m somewhat ashamed in admitting my truth, I realize I always draw boundaries tighter when my husband leaves town — as he did this week.  Maybe it’s a carryover from helping raise four children.  With one of us away, the other always tightened focus to keep a busy two-parent home afloat.

However, having a smaller world view is also, for better or worse, part of who I am; I tend to lavishly love the ones I’m with – when in Texas, it was friends; now that I’m home, it’s family.  Moreover, I attempt to live free of what will steal my peace.   For example, I avoid violent films because viewing them robs me of an ability to sleep – for a long time.  I can still remember in full gory detail a Dirty Harry film I saw in my late teens.  And now, without nudge to prompt them, my thoughts pull up the year I became a teen, when I saw Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood at the drive-in theater with my family.  Just writing the words of the film’s title flash up a slicer scene I shiver to remember.

So while I’m a dreamer, maybe it’s less by nature than nurture.  Maybe it’s what the world has made of me, the way I’ve learned to cope and live within a broken world.  I tell myself I don’t live life with my head buried in the sand but rather high up in the clouds — dreaming all sorts of good dreams of a better world – one full of beauty and truth and love.  But perhaps I’m  kidding myself; and it’s only silly semantics.

So this week, while my radius didn’t reach as far as Libya, it did extend a mile uptown to embrace not only my new home but more importantly, my new not yet two-month old granddaughter who suffers from gut-wrenching colic.  Poor Reese Caroline —  when she draws in her legs to cradle her belly.  She hurts without knowing the reasons why.  I wonder — is she frightened too?  And pity her mother who tries to comfort her without knowing how to offer relief – this time; because this time will not be like last time or the time before that.

This little girl cannot sleep by herself for pain and sometimes cannot eat without pain.  Medications have lessened the hurt without eliminating it.  Sometimes her special sensitive diet helps.  But there are no magic tricks left in the doctor’s bag – the only thing that seems to consistently work is never putting the baby down.  The photo above was last Monday’s “Kodak Moment”, when Kara shared her joy with family of a baby FINALLY sleeping solo.  Yet ultimately, I know, in spite of all the love and support my daughter has in the world in and outside her walls, Kara has to feel terribly alone in this.  Surely she must feel like it’s her and Reese braving the battle against colic, with the rest of us standing  somewhere on the sidelines.  Helping the best we can – waiting until the baby’s digestive system matures.

So.  I didn’t pray for Libya this week but I did for little Reese.  And I sat with her  to give my daughter a break from the scary front-lines of motherhood.  And though I was not the one my granddaughter wanted, I rocked her in my arms anyway.  Sometimes I sat in the rocker and other times I rocked her walking laps around the house.  And when walking alone didn’t work, I sang a silly little made-up song that seemed to bring comfort.

God love you.  God love you.  God love you, Reese Caroline.

I sang it over and over and over until ten or twelve laps around, Reese stopped crying to listen.  Until quiet dissolved into peace.  And drowsy eyelids fluttered shut.  Small facial features relaxed.  And relief came for both of us.

This morning, as I thought about Libya, I felt small.  I felt small for having my mile-wide radius.  I felt small for not realizing how the Libyan people were living in a colicky world too — for surely they too draw up their legs in bunkered down homes that no longer feel safe.  I felt small in thinking how violence in their real world – rather than one made of imagination viewed with the price of admission — had rocked away their sense of peace and well-being.  Like any on the front-lines fighting colic, I imagine the Libyan people too are suffering from a lack of precious sleep.

Oh Libya! I know you must feel terribly alone now.  How I long to reach out my arms to bind and comfort you, even by singing off-key my small silly song:  God love you.  God love you.  God love you, little Libya.  And how I wish I could whisper softly in your ear that it will be all better soon, once your system for life matures.  Yes, I do.  I really do.

Starched and Pretentious

24 Monday Jan 2011

Posted by in Life at Home

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Nothing I served trumped her first taste of oatmeal mixed with bananas.

Which is surprising, given the time I spent in the kitchen that first week Kara and her newborn were home from the hospital.

Not the chicken fajitas I made for their first supper.  Not the quiche and lovely fruit salad I fed her on Friday.  Not even the roast beef dinner with all the trimmings on Wednesday or all those pimento-cheese and chicken salad spreads I stuffed into fresh baguettes for lunch.  Nothing I made measured up to that seventy second microwave oatmeal, which I learned only later, was Kara’s favorite meal of the week.

But looking back on it, why am I surprised?  Even now, I recall how Kara’s eyes widened with her first bite.  And how an inescapable “yum” followed her second.  And as I reflect upon it more, I realize Kara’s response to bananas mixed with oatmeal was not so dissimilar from my own — though unlike Kara, I tried very hard to keep my pleasure under wraps.

It was years ago that I was sitting in a fancy restaurant at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in mid-town Manhattan.   And except for the fresh flowers at the center of the table, I was quite alone.  Like all the other thirty-something aged business executives waiting to give breakfast orders to a team of waiters as starched as the table-cloth that brushed my dress-for-success attire, I was in a hurry.  And I wanted something that could be prepared quickly — that might already be waiting in a pot to serve.

And since it was a gray winter day, I wanted something warm.   And maybe because I was feeling anxious, anticipating the jump-through-hoops, three-ring circus meetings I would soon be part of, I wanted something comforting.  So when the waiter came, I ordered simple coffee and oatmeal.  And he, looking up from his order pad, asked whether I might like bananas on top of my oatmeal.  And covering my surprise — because I didn’t want him to know I’d never heard of bananas on top of warm cereal — I volleyed back a quick and confident ‘yes,” deciding  I could eat around some slightly cooked bananas if I didn’t like them.

It’s funny that what happened that day at the office is not nearly as memorable as what happened at breakfast.  But I imagine it was just another day of my pretending to know all the answers to a set of highly creative “who-thinks-up-this-stuff” kind of business scenarios.  I learned early in my tax career that it wasn’t good to speak words like, “I don’t know”, when talking to people who paid big bucks for you doing just that.   So I stalled when answers didn’t fall off the top of my head, hoping those who were asking would get sidetracked.  It wasn’t all that hard.

Except it was.  Because after a while of pretending to be this or that, it became easy to forget what was true and what was false, and which was really important.  And I find it interesting that what I remember today about those five stressful years of my life, is a  simple breakfast meal I had one day before going into the office.

What we remember is often interesting.  There are times when I can’t remember where I’ve placed my keys.  And yet, how easy it is to recall in rich detail that first serving of bananas and oatmeal right down to the starched white tablecloth.

Can it be that we remember those moments when our senses are most engaged — whether it’s taste or smell, like a favorite food from our childhood — or hearing the sounds of  a certain song which transport us back to a different time in our lives — or the way something or someone once made us cry?

And on the flip side, how easy it is to forget moments — like where in the heck we’ve placed those keys — when operating on autopilot, or when living a lie as I once did, pretending to be what I was not.

Right now I’m wishing I had said “Yum” all those years ago, sitting by myself at that pretty table  in the Grand Hyatt restaurant.  I wish I’d said it loud enough for all my fellow starched-shirts to hear my unsophisticated surprise.  But since I can’t rewind time, I’ll do the next best thing.

“Yum”