Monday, December 29, 2014

The Day the Girls Found Out

We told the girls about their impending sibling on Saturday, December 14th.  We’d been waiting to make sure everything looked okay (we saw the baby’s heartbeat on the 5th, so we are hopeful!), and also because we didn’t know how long our precious heathens could keep a secret (we didn’t plan to tell our parents until closer to Christmas).

But both of the girls had stumbled upon me throwing up on several occasions (Allison said, “Mommy, are you okay!?  I hope you feel better.”  Nicole said, “Mommy?  Why you keep doing that?” in a disgusted voice), so we felt like we better fess up sooner rather than later.

The night before we told them, I wrote Allison a note:




Chris drew a picture for Nicole which featured our family of four plus a baby:


The Crazies.  Also, ignore the misspelling of Coco.

We folded both of the notes and placed them in envelopes with the girls’ names on them.  The next morning, I told the girls that we had a little surprise for them, sort of like an early Christmas present.

“We get to open it?” asked Coco.  I told them we would once Daddy was awake.  Weirdly, Daddy awoke not long after.  I think it might have been the combined efforts of Nicole sitting on his face, Allison pulling on his leg, and them both yelling, “Get up, Daddy!” at approximately 10 decibels.

Once we were all downstairs, I had the girls sit in front of the Christmas tree.  I filmed as Chris handed the girls the envelopes.  Nicole opened hers, tossed the note on the floor, and said, “That not a present,” in a very disgruntled sort of way.

Allison read hers aloud and though she didn’t jump up and down and scream like I had predicted, she did have a huge smile on her face.  We explained about the baby to Coco, who immediately said, “I want a boy baby!”

Allison, Chris and I cast our votes right after her [girl, boy, girl].  We started talking about what we would call the baby.  Allison suggested “Lyla” if it’s a girl, and Nicole’s first suggestion was “Candy Cane”.  Shortly after, she changed her mind in favor of “Tootsie Pop” as a first name and “Hello Kitty” as a middle name. 

Allison told Nicole that the baby was in my tummy, but Nicole wasn’t buying it.  “No.  Probably Daddy’s tummy,” she said, shaking her head.

Then Allison asked how the baby had gotten in my tummy, and I quickly asked if they wanted to see a picture of their baby sibling.

I showed them the ultra-sound images the doctor had given me.  I pointed out the head and the arm nubs and the body, but Nicole was still quite skeptical.  “That not look like a baby,” she said.

Later, after the girls had been ‘helping’ Chris rake leaves, Allison ran inside.  “I can’t believe we are going to have a baby!” she said excitedly.

Little Lyla Tootsie Pop Hello Kitty Claussen is going to have the best big sisters ever.




Sunday, December 28, 2014

Oi! Intriguing!

Back in November I took a pregnancy test.  It was a Friday, and too early to have anything to worry about, but I took one because I wanted to lay to rest this building but irrational thought that I was pregnant.  I’d had some pretty impressive heartburn on Halloween, which is something my non-pregnant self never experiences.  Also, I kept falling asleep by 9:00 pm.

It wasn’t even the type of sleepy that begins around 7:00 pm after an exhausting day and slowly culminates.  It was more the kind where Chris would ask, “Hey, do you want to watch a movie?
“Sure, that sounds good.” [Roll opening credits]
“Zzzzzzzzzz”

And laying my irrational thoughts to rest with an early pregnancy test totally worked.  Until that second faint line appeared.

I stared blankly at it for a good 30 seconds, but it didn’t go away.  I blinked a couple of times.  The lines were still there.  I shook the test gently.  Still two.  Then, having exhausted all of my voodoo skills, I said a few things under my breath that did not become a mommy-to-be.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t upset at the thought of a new baby.  In fact, Chris and I had pretty much convinced ourselves we wanted a third.  We had just thought we’d wait a year before trying.  Only two weeks earlier Chris had mentioned that he definitely didn't want a baby until he finished his masters program.  Even so, I was cautiously ecstatic.  I wondered how Chris would take it.

I waited out the hours before Chris got home from work with extreme impatience.  I know some moms-to-be think up cute or clever ways to tell their significant others about an impending bundle of joy, but I have never been one of them.  Historically, I’ve just blurted out the news before Chris had a chance to take his coat off, and it didn’t seem like now was a good time to change.

So the moment Chris walked in the door, I said something like, “Hi, honey, how was your day?  We need to talk,” in one big breath.

Those four little words, “We need to talk,” can strike fear into the bravest of men.  “What?” Chris said, “What’s going on?”

Suddenly I decided to play it coy.  Or maybe I’d just been rendered speechless.  I pulled up a picture of the test on my iPhone 4, which took quite a while because the 4 is archaic.

When the picture finally appeared, I handed the phone to Chris.  He glanced at it and said, “Ooohhhh.”

It wasn’t an “Ewwwww,” as in, “Why would you show me a picture of a stick that you peed on?”

And it wasn’t an “Ooooohh,” as in, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

It was just, “Ooohhh,” as in “Oi!  Intriguing!”

I stared at Chris for a moment, and he looked back at me.  I spoke slowly in case he was in shock: “Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, I know what that means.  Of course!”

“And….”

“And what?”

“Well, are you…happy?”

“Yeah, it will be good.  How often are those tests wrong?”

"Not often.  Should I take another test?"

"No, I don't think so.  Let's just wait and see."

"Umm, okay."
  
[The next day I bought a two pack of tests at Target.  Both times I watched the plus sign appear before my very eyes.  One test is not often wrong.  Three tests are almost never wrong.  If I weren't a mathematician, I'd leave off the 'almost'.]

Anyway, we spent a few more minutes talking about due dates/whose fault it was (July 18th/His), and we both agreed it was pretty exciting, timing be darned.  Then the heathens came into the kitchen and all of the usual chaos ensued until bedtime.

Upstairs, there was another brief round of, “Hey, you want to watch a movie?” [him] followed by, “Zzzz” [me].  And then I woke up at four in the morning able to think of nothing but this possible baby.

I thought about how Allison and Nicole would love having a baby in the house, and what room we could use for a nursery.  I thought about adding another hook in the girls’ bathroom for the new baby’s towel and how I would need to switch some pictures out of frames to include the newbie.  I wondered where we’d put guests once the guest room was a nursery and whether we’d need a bigger kitchen table.  I worried about my job and childcare and needing a mini-van and the alarming possibility that this baby could be a boy.  I pictured us holding a footie-pajama-ed bundle of cuddliness, family pictures of five, and Thanksgivings thirty years from now with a house full of people and our three beautiful children rolling their eyes and smiling about their neurotic mother.

I couldn’t go back to sleep, and I spent the following day thinking, “I can’t believe I’m pregnant,” forty gazillion times.

Chris woke up just before eight o’clock, stretched, and put on some work clothes.  “I’m going to go work on the neighbors' deck.”

Mars.  Venus.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Gonna Be a Fine Day

Though medical forms and genealogists may refer to him as my paternal grandfather, to myself, my sister, and all of our friends he has always been ‘Opi’.  He passed away on July 2nd, 2014. 

It was an exceptionally cool day for Missouri in the summer.  The temperature topped out around 77 degrees and the humidity was almost non-existent.  It was the kind of day about which Opi would exclaim, “Wow, what a great day.  Boy, doesn’t Missouri have fine weather?”  I’m not sure if he would have said that last part to everyone, or if it was a sentiment he reserved for me.  I was raised in the mild climate of Washington State and complained frequently about the unbearable Missouri heat; Opi good-naturedly stood up for his home state every chance he got.

I still picture him sitting in his rolling desk chair (it was better for his back) at his kitchen table.  He is wearing his sweatpants, a flannel shirt and his zip up red sweatshirt jacket.  His hands, covered with age spots, are deftly breaking up the dark chocolate for the little square tupperware that was kept perennially on the table.  Though the bulk of the responsibility of keeping and maintaining their lifestyle had gradually fallen to Omi, Opi, as far as I know, was always the breaker of the chocolate.

My regrets about his death are ordinary.  I should have visited more often.  I should have called more frequently.  I should have told him how much I loved, admired, and respected him.  For the past several years, I have been meaning to get down to Rolla to interview Opi about his life.  I wanted to hear about his childhood, his young-adulthood.  The way he existed before me, and his life before he became Opi.  Of course I can’t ask him about those things now, and I feel robbed of what I’m sure would have been a remarkable story.

Milton Monroe and Maria Louise, before they became Omi and Opi.
Instead, I am left with only what I remember about my grandfather’s life.  But that’s a story worth telling too.

Opi graduated from the Missouri School of Mines, which was later known as the University of Missouri-Rolla and is now known as Missouri S&T.  He worked in the field of metallurgy, and to be honest, I never knew exactly what that meant.  My point of pride was that I could pronounce ‘metallurgy’; the actualities of the job were never really a concern for me.

Opi has been retired since my earliest memories of him.  My sister remembers him leaving for work in the mornings, with a lunch that Omi packed for him, but to me he has always been one half of ‘Omi and Opi’, endlessly available to play with my sister and me during our trips to Missouri and their trips to Washington.
Opi, our endlessly available playmate.
Omi and Opi came to our house almost every year for Christmas.  My sister and I always bought Opi a big tub of Andes mints as his present.  He set it on top of the fridge during his stay and Laura and I would mill around the kitchen asking for one every five minutes.  I actually don’t remember it being every five minutes, but now that I have kids and know something about their attention spans and persistence for candy, I think it is an accurate assumption.  We were always allowed to have a mint with Opi during his coffee breaks, which weren’t every five minutes, but still pretty frequent.

Every morning, Opi did his ‘morning exercises’.  I would lay down on the floor next to him and pretend to do sit ups or push ups until I got bored and ran off to undoubtedly antagonize someone else.  My parents, my grandparents, and my sister and me would play Mille Bornes at night before bed.  Laura was usually on the ‘girls’ team while I played with Opi and Dad on the ‘boys’ team.  I never minded being the honorary boy.

My family went back to Missouri about every other year during Laura’s and my summer breaks.  The visit to ‘Hard Scrabble Hill,’ as we called Omi’s and Opi’s was, especially when we were younger, a highlight of the trip.  Opi used to put on a pair of special shoes and get out a platform he made and clog.  If I remember correctly, he was pretty good.  Laura and I would stand next to him or on the platform when he finished and try to mimic his footwork.


In the evenings, Opi would place cookies that Omi had baked on a plate on the table and say, “help yourselves, these are for general consumption.”  My cousins would later nickname Opi ‘General Consumption’ and he was soon joined by ‘Major Nuisance’ and ‘Private Public’.  

Sometimes Opi would hook up an old trailer to his tractor and let my sister, my cousins (once they were old enough), and me hop in.  We’d sit delightedly in the back while he pulled us all around the property.  Opi taught me how to identify poison ivy (leaves of three, let them be) and how to listen for the calls of katydids and whippoorwills.  (To this day I thought that katydids were birds.  You can imagine my unpleasant surprise when upon googling the spelling I discovered they are actually insects.)  At night, we’d stay up late catching lightening bugs in our hands, marveling at how warm it was even after the sun went down.

As we got older, my sister and I spent less and less time outside with Opi and more time inside, away from the heat and humidity.  We became busy with our own teenage lives, high school and then college, and our visits to Hard Scabble Hill became less frequent.  But in the winter of 2003 I decided, on a whim, to apply to grad school at the University of Missouri-Rolla.  I was accepted, and I moved to Rolla, Missouri that summer.  Omi and Opi were thrilled with my close proximity, and I loved having family near by.  At least three times a week I would go to my grandparents’ house for delicious home cooked meals and their charming company.  We would sit in their cozy, dimly-lit kitchen and discuss everything from my classes to politics and the latest ‘Car Talk’ show on NPR.

I began to know and appreciate Opi through an adult perspective.  He had a sharp but easy wit, and I loved to make him laugh.  He would throw his head back and chuckle in a distinctly ‘Opi’ way.  He had hundreds of lines of poems committed to memory and could recall them at the drop of a hat.  It is perhaps an insult to this fount of learned by rote poetry that the only one I can remember is the following haiku he learned on car talk:

Four wheel drive pick up
I remember his last words:
Hold my beer, watch this!


Opi’s love of poetry was matched by his love of music.  He sang songs I’d never heard of before in his low melodic voice, and it was not uncommon for me to walk into the kitchen during my time in Rolla and find him waiting for me with his iPad to play me his latest favorite song.  One evening he asked me, “Have you ever heard of this Baba B character, Rebecca-lein?  Boy, he is a big guy.  His music is really neat!”

The songs that reminds me most of Opi are, “Fine Day” and “Sun Arise” by Rolf Harris.  We probably listened to “Fine Day” dozens of times together, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Opi sang it to himself every morning.  I think he just got it stuck in his head and would hum or sing it almost subconsciously until the next time he played it.  If Opi had a theme song, ‘Fine Day,’ with its didgereedoo and upbeat sound, would be it.

Omi has always been an excellent cook, and I think both Omi and Opi have always really preferred to have their meals cooked at home.  But there was the occasional Tuesday that Omi had her German luncheon at her house.  On these days, Omi would pack Opi an apple and send him off to Arby’s for lunch.  “She kicked me out again,” Opi would fake-grumble.  I met him at Arby’s when I was able, and we’d visit over our roast beef sandwiches.  When I had to return to my classes or my schoolwork Opi would say, “Gee, I wonder if I can go back home yet?”

In my second year of grad school I invited Omi and Opi to the movies.  We went to Forum Cinema, Rolla’s only theatre.  I would be willing to bet money that before then, they hadn’t been to a movie in at least twenty years, and they probably didn’t go again after.  We saw Elf, and Opi insisted on paying for my ticket too.  I sat next to Opi, and I can remember him throwing his head back and chuckling on a couple of occasions.  After the movie, when we were back outside and squinting into the over bright sunlight, Opi remarked cheerfully, “what a dumb movie!”  Elf has since become one of my all time favorite movies, and I think of Opi each time I watch it.
UMR Graduation, December 2005
When I graduated, I moved away from Rolla, and again became busy with life away from Hardscrabble Hill.  Chris and I got married and eventually moved to Florissant, Missouri, which is where we lived when Opi turned 80.  I was seven months pregnant at Opi’s birthday party, and although he knew I would attend, he was not expecting my parents or my aunt and cousin to be flying in as well.  Opi was sweetly bewildered to see his family showing up at the door.  “What a pleasant surprise,” he said.  “Where did you guys come from?”

At 80, Opi was still pretty spry.  Though he had lost some of his height by then, he was not as stooped as he would become; he had more energy than he would in later years.  But I remember the change in how he would answer when I’d ask, “Opi, how are you doing?”

Whereas he used to say, “oh, pretty good” or “very well, thank you” or “can’t complain,” it was about this time that the answer became most often, “fair to middling”.  But he said it in good spirits.  Always.

The last time I saw Opi was over memorial day weekend, 2014.  My parents and aunt had flown in again, and though Opi was often snoozing in his ‘inner sanctum’ (the back bedroom where he rested), when he was awake he was happy.  I think he got a kick out of watching the girls running in and out of the kitchen, and he was content to sit out on the front porch and enjoy the view from the home that he and Omi built together.
The view from Omi's and Opi's front porch.
The day that Opi passed away, Allie asked me why I was sad.  “Well, he was very old,” she said knowledgeably.

“I know,” I answered, “but I still really miss him.”

“Me too.  But you know where he’ll always be?” she said, patting my chest lightly, “in your heart.”

Which of course is pretty cheesy, but none-the-less true.


Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Eight Years



March 18, 2006

Yesterday was Chris’ and my eighth wedding anniversary.  I can remember some of the previous seven, but not all of them.  On our first anniversary, we celebrated by taking a long weekend to Bull Shoals Lake in Arkansas.  We stayed in a little cabin on the lake and because it was off-season, we had the place mostly to ourselves.
Year old cake with a kiss.
We went on a couple of hikes, played board games and cards, and watched a movie or two on the little box TV mounted in the corner of our living room.  We ate year old wedding cake and day old Oreos.  We relaxed and talked and enjoyed each other’s company.  We were 25 and child-less, and although we had jobs and bills and a one bedroom apartment to tend, we were care-free.  It still felt like we were play-acting at being adults.  I cooked and cleaned and diligently put away money into our savings account; Chris worked his 40 hour work week at Boeing and maintained our cars and appliances.  We fought over whether we should stay in or go out, and how much of our free time should be spent together or apart.  But we would always make up, make out, move on.

By our second anniversary, we had Allison.  She was just four months old and a truly horrendous sleeper, but we were already enamored with her.  We no longer fought about free time, because there wasn’t any.  We were no longer playing at being adults, but learning how to be parents.  I asked my Aunt Pam to watch Allie so we could go out to dinner to celebrate year two of marriage, just Chris and me.  We dropped our baby off in her pumpkin seat with a bottle and the diaper bag and drove the few miles to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.  I can’t remember what I ordered or what we talked about (probably Allie), but I remember feeling both liberated and lonely.  I had done my hair and make-up and squeezed into a pre-pregnancy dress.  Chris and I were just a young couple out on a romantic date and I felt pretty and lucky to be with my handsome husband.  But by the end of dinner I desperately needed to nurse and we wanted to see how Allie was doing, so we rushed back to my Aunt’s and Uncle’s.  Allie fell asleep on the way home and miraculously stayed asleep when we carried her into the apartment.  Her anniversary gift to us was sleeping an unprecedented six hours straight.
2nd Anniversary
We moved from Florissant, Missouri to Renton, Washington in the Fall of 2008.  Chris’ job with Boeing required the move, and I couldn’t have been happier.  He was working 60 hour weeks and often weekends, but I was surrounded by friends and family.  My mom came and spent the day with Allie and me every Tuesday, and she babysat for us after Chris got home.  We had date night every single week, and we knew we were spoiled.  For our third anniversary, we spent our first entire weekend away from Allison.  My mom and dad kept Allie while we drove down to the Oregon Coast.  We stayed in a hotel right on the beach of Yachats.  Chris, exhausted from working long hours, was content to stay in our room and read or nap.  I had a spa treatment on the third floor and soaked in the whirlpool overlooking the ocean.  We walked along the beach and into town.  Mom called to tell us Allie had her first ear infection, and while we were concerned, we knew she was in good hands.  She also said her first clear word, ‘yes,’ which she enunciated carefully and slowly: yee-esh.
The view from our 3rd anniversary hotel room.
Our fourth anniversary is one I can’t remember clearly.  It would have been 2009; we were still living in Washington, though we had moved from our apartment to a rental house we found on Craigslist.  I was two months pregnant with Nicole, but we were still reeling from the miscarriage we had in November, hoping that this baby would be okay.  My morning/afternoon/evening sickness was so bad that Allie spent an inordinate time in front of the TV watching Sesame Street, Word World, and Sid the Science kid while I lay on the couch eating corn chips and drinking coke to keep from throwing up.  I’m guessing we celebrated our anniversary by going out to dinner or to a movie, but I honestly don’t remember, and I can’t find any pictures that commemorated the event.

In June of that same year, Chris’ job moved us to Maryland.  We had decided to drive, and I can remember tearfully piling into our SUV and pulling away from my parents’ house.  Allison had an ear infection, an eye infection and a bad cold, but she handled the drive like a champ thanks to our portable DVD player.  I was six months pregnant and miserable with a cold and the remnants of morning sickness.  I was in a cough medicine induced fog until about the 5th day of our trip when I finally felt well enough to realize what an incredibly long drive it was.  Chris drove the entire time, all nine days, from Arlington, WA to Lexington Park, MD: almost 3,000 miles.  When we reached our destination he was rewarded with an incredibly cranky two year old and equally cranky wife.  We both spent the first week and a half alternately crying and complaining.  Sorry, hubby.  But that’s what you get when you take your fairly pregnant wife away from her family and transplant her into a state with 105 degree heat indexes and no relatives.

Nicole was born in October, a week late but perfectly healthy, and we settled into life on the east coast as a family of four.   By the time March rolled around, we had a few friends in the area that I trusted to watch the girls while we went out to dinner at a locally owned restaurant with a bay view.  However, Nicole and I both woke up sick on the 18th, and we exchanged our night out for a night in with early bedtimes for the kids and a mediocre dinner cooked by yours truly.  I actually would have been hard pressed to remember this anniversary, our fifth, but I mentioned it in a blog.  I also made Chris a movie compilation of our first five years together, which can be seen here if you have six minutes to waste.

The next three years passed in a blur of moving (again--this time back to Missouri), buying our first home, pre-school, kindergarten, holidays and everything else that keeps a family of four ticking along.  Though I have vague recollections of the St. Pat’s parades that must have preceded our anniversary each year, I really couldn’t tell you what we did to celebrate years six and seven of marriage. 

Anyway, this brings us to yesterday, March 18, 2014, our 8th anniversary.  We knew it was coming and we spent some time reminiscing the night before, but we didn’t discuss any plans.  At about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I called Chris to deliver the happy news that we were, for the second time, victims of credit card fraud.  Because that is the kind of phone call you make when you’ve been married for eight years.

At the end of the call, I asked what Chris wanted to do for dinner.  He suggested going somewhere in Historic Downtown St. Charles, and I agreed readily.  I debated doing my hair and getting dressed up, but it appeared that both kids wearing pants would be the priority.

Look Mom, we are wearing pants!
By the time I finished cajoling kids into pants, socks and coats, Chris was home and we were able to leave for dinner.  Nicole talked the entire way, and Allison kept trying to fall asleep.  We joked about how we spent the first three years of her life trying to get her to sleep only to have her fall asleep at the most inopportune moments now.

We picked a restaurant at random and walked in.  It was completely empty but for us, so we had our choice of tables.  We all squeezed into a booth, but not before the girls had a nice long fight over who would sit by mommy and who would sit by daddy.

While we waited for our food, we had a rock, paper, scissors tournament.  Chris came in first followed by Allie, then Nicole.  I came in dead last.  Which is fine because despite being a pretty obnoxious winner, I’m a very graceful loser.

After the tournament, Allison and Nicole took turns singing “Let it Go” at the tops of their lungs.  Nicole in particular has just the one volume: loud.  Very loud.  You may not understand what she is saying, but you can be darn sure she is saying something.

When dinner was over and Nicole had asked for ice cream for the umpteenth time, we decided to make our way back to the car.  The river was just about fifty yards from the car, so we walked over to take a look.  We passed the, and I kid you not, “Never Die Garden.”  Apparently the garden had survived both the drought of 2012 and the flood of 2013, but it looked like the winter of 2014 had pretty much finished it off.
Never say die!
Our last stop of the evening was at Dairy Queen for blizzards for Chris and me and cones for the girls.  Nicole won the prize for the slowest, not to mention messiest, ice cream eater in the history of the world, a title I believe she held with pride.
1st Prize.
Our marriage has changed over the last eight years.  There is less romance.  Fewer grand gestures of love.  Chris eats sunflower seeds in bed and leaves his socks in little balls on the floor of our closet.  I let the water run the entire time I’m doing dishes and am prone to irritability and crankiness.  My palms no longer start to sweat and my heart doesn’t race every time that I see my husband.

But we have acquired much in the last almost decade.  We have a shared history now, inside jokes.  We are at ease.  Comfortable.  Happy, mostly.  I still think Chris is kind, smart, hilarious, and good looking.  So much so that I’ve always thought he’s a bit out of my league.  I see him in the line of Allie’s jaw and in Coco when she raises one eyebrow.  It has been eight years since we said ‘I do’ and it hasn’t always been easy, but it has always been worth it. 

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Go ahead, tell lies on Facebook.

Lately I’ve seen an article trending on Facebook about how we all lie through our status updates and pictures.  We only post snippets of our day: smiling children, adorable pets, selfies of us dressed up and posed to look our best, and lunch and coffee that looks too good to be true.  Apparently, it makes other people feel bad when they see that our lives are so perfect.

Except when did Facebook need to become an accurate representation of our entire lives?  I post pictures and anecdotes mostly so that my long distance friends and family can keep up with the happy and precious moments of our lives that they may otherwise miss.  Also so that I can remember those moments.  I have a very poor memory.
The type of picture I usually post.


Of course I post the pictures where the kids are smiling.  Of course I update my status only if something funny happened or we are doing something interesting.  But I don’t consider it a lie by omission so much as a public service.  For instance, Nicole pooped on the floor during bedtime three nights ago.  I did not update my status.  I did not post a picture.  You’re welcome.

Relaying our best moments isn’t new.  Back when I wrote emails, I tried to fill them with mostly interesting and optimistic news.  Before that, I wrote notes to my friends during my more boring classes.  I tried to make them entertaining.  And if I was going to go to the trouble of writing an actual letter and spending money on a stamp, you can be sure it had something worth sharing in it.  Well, mostly.  There was a brief time in my pre-teens when I sent a ton of letters to a friend that pretty much all said, “Hi, how are you?  I am good.  I am having dinner now.  I have to go.”  Sorry, Kelsey.

I like to think that even cavemen are guilty of sharing only the good stuff.  That cave painting of Grog killing the mammoth with his spear?  He probably sat on a rock for three weeks poking the dirt with a stick when he suddenly looked up and saw a really old Mammoth keeling over.  That’s not exactly the kind of story you want to tell around the campfire though, so go ahead, Grog.  Tell it like you wish it was.
The type of picture I usually take.

Also I take these.














I’m not saying use Facebook as a place to build your house of lies.  But if you want to share just the good stuff, go ahead.  If you want to share the more mundane happenings, do that too.  I promise I won’t assume your life is perfect if you only post pictures of your family that look like they belong in a JCPenny catalog.

I know your kids are not smiling all the time.  I know that sometimes they are chasing each other with blankets wearing nothing but underpants on their heads and last night’s spaghetti on their faces.  I know your cats and dogs are not always sleeping sweetly in boxes that are too small for them.  Sometimes they are peeing in your shoe when you don’t pet them and leaving hairballs on your pillow.  I know that your significant other isn’t always making you pancakes or fixing your sink.  Sometimes he is just ‘helping’ by lifting his feet so you can vacuum under them.

Sometimes my kids are cranky.

Often my kids don't wear pants.

Maybe instead of “stopping the lies” by posting “real (and shitty) family moments” on Facebook we can just acknowledge that no matter how many perfect-happy-shiny posts we make, nobody is perfect.  We can concede that Facebook, like Fox News, rarely has the whole story.

Please, keep posting all your sunny-happy-perfect-life-is-good pictures.  Keep posting all your epic-fail-I-should-have-stayed-in-bed status updates.  Keep sharing hilarious memes and serious news stories.  Because let’s face it: the more you post the more time it takes me to catch up on all of it.  And the more time I can waste on Facebook, the less time I have to do things that are actually productive.  It’s pretty much win-win.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

The Book of Allison


I have long considered myself to be agnostic.  I’m not ballsy enough to disagree with the six billion people plus that believe in some higher power, but I’m also not willing to join the one billion plus atheists of the world and say that without a doubt there is no higher power.  Is this a cop-out?  Maybe.  But whatever.  I’m reserving judgment.

When it comes to the question of the existence of a god (or gods) my short answer is, “I don’t know.”  Because who am I to argue that roughly two billion Christians are wrong?  Or that one and a half billion Islams are right?  Or that one billion Atheists are right?  Or that any number of supporters for any given religion or non-religion are right or wrong? 

What I will argue is that the question is moot.  Whether or not there is a higher power should not affect the way that we live here on earth.  We should strive to be good and kind.  We should treat others in a way that we would like to be treated.  We should help others when we are in the position to do so.  I intend to teach my children these values without the aid of any specific religion.  I want them to aim to be good and kind not in the hopes of being ‘saved’ or of a rewarding ‘after-life’ but because they are human beings and they are capable of making their choices responsibly.

Anyway, my point is, my kids and I don’t spend a whole lot of time discussing religion.  We’ve spent countless hours talking about and demonstrating kindness, manners, tolerance and respect.  We speak about valuing ourselves and others in an effort to raise kind little girls who will become passionate and considerate women.  We spend even more hours answering the girls’ numerous and varied questions about everything under the sun.  And sometimes those questions, or the answers to those questions, involve God and religion.

The first time God entered our conversations was about two years ago, when Allison asked where humans came from.  Though I’m sure there are abundant explanations throughout the world, I’m really only familiar with two of the theories.  I explained to Allie that some people believe that God created the first two humans, named Adam and Eve, and that other people believe that humans evolved from apes.  Allison looked skeptical.  It’s funny; when I simplified our origins down to those two choices, I could see which one my four year old, in her world of Disney and Santa and magic, found more plausible.

That’s when it dawned on me: being a Christian had the potential to make my life as a parent much easier.  Instead of blundering through lengthy-sort-of-correct science based answers to questions like “Why is the sky blue?” and “How did Audrey’s guinea pig have babies?” I could simply say, “God did that.”  When the kids inevitably ask why Haley/Kayley/Skyler from school can have a puppy/x-box/piercing I could say vaguely, “Well, God works in mysterious ways.”  And one day when my teenage girls are crying that life is not going the way they thought it would and that they don’t know what to do, I could comfort them with the knowledge that God has a plan for them. 

Having God around is kind of like having an elf-on-the-shelf all year long.  Because if you hit your sister, God is watching.  If you throw mommy’s antique drawer handle down the heater vent, God knows.  And if you even think about calling that mean boy at the skating rink a name, God hears.  Oh, and when you are finally old enough to go out on a date with a boy?  God is watching that too.  Obviously I get that Christianity, and any other organized religion, is not about easing the difficulties of parenting.  Still, you can’t deny the perks.

Allison’s religious information as of yet has really been on a need-to-know basis.  If she asks a question, I try to answer it as honestly and correctly as possible.  She knows that many people believe in God, and that we should be quiet during the before dinner prayer at her grandparents’ house.

This past Christmas, her knowledge of Christianity grew exponentially.  Every year, our neighbors set up a gargantuan Christmas light display complete with Santa, The Grinch, candy canes and a nativity scene.  It was an unusually warm December morning before school that the girls ran across the cul-de-sac to see ‘the baby’.

“Who is that baby?” Allie asked.

“That’s baby Jesus.  He was born on Christmas; a lot of people celebrate his birthday,” I replied.

“I have a birthday too,” announced Allison.

The short ride to school was peppered with questions.

“Will you tell me everything you know about the Baby G-fish?”

I explained that Jesus was a man who lived a long, long time ago and that he did many very kind things for all different types of people.  I added that many people believe that Jesus is the son of God.

Allison thought for a moment.  “Did Geee-zus ever get married?” she asked.

“No, he never did.”

“Oh.  I bet there were a lot of women who wished they could marry him.”  She paused.

“And men,” she added fairly.  That’s my girl.

It was a few nights later that Allison, while we were all seated at the dinner table, announced that, “We could do a pray this year at Christmas Eve!”
“Do you mean a prayer?” I asked.

“Yes!  Well, it doesn’t have to be a pray.  We could say the pledge of allegiance.”

I’m not proud of it, but I burst out laughing.  Chris laughed too, until we noticed Allie hiding her head in her arms, clearly embarrassed.  He recovered first.  “Do you know the pledge of allegiance? “ he asked her, trying to coax her back out from behind her arms.

She recited the pledge flawlessly, and we praised her exuberantly in an attempt to make up for having laughed at her moments before.  I think it was the abundant praise that resulted in the whole family joining hands around the Christmas tree practicing for the big night.

Allison and Chris looked up at the tree, straight faced, and began, “I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America....”  I glanced down at Coco, who was swaying back and forth slightly and mumbling, but staring respectfully at the tree.  To my credit, I did not laugh audibly.

Later, while Allison worked diligently on creating our Christmas Flag, Chris pulled up a scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas on youtube which mirrored our ‘Christmas pledge.’  It was just as funny when it happened to them.


The latest anecdote from the Book of Allison happened just a couple of weeks ago.  We were in the car listening to the song, “You can’t get to heaven on Roller Skates.”  Allison was singing along until she wasn’t:
    “Well of course you can’t get to heaven on roller skates!  But you probably can in a car.  With a trailer...in case you want to spend the night.”

Clearly, my daughters' religious information is not complete.  But that's okay.  They may decide to become Christian, agnostic, atheist or something else.  And that’s okay too.  I would love for the girls to one day take a class that examines some of the world’s religions, and heck, maybe I’d take it with them.  Like my parents told me, “Education never hurt anyone.”
Education.  See?  Painless.