a glass jar

I watch them now, how they run from one end of the house to the other and I really do want to keep them here, in this space and time. I had this crazy thought, when my heart was bursting for the right now of them. I wanted to scoop them up and put them in a glass jar that's just the right size to hold them, to screw on the tin cover, just to watch them, to keep them this way. Like lightening bugs. But of course that can't be, they are not boys meant for bubbles or jars, they are my little people, and they're here, free. So free it hurts.

When I try to break free of the inevitable, to fight reality, to stop growth, trapping, controlling, even with the best of intentions, it suffocates. And yet, one part of my mothering heart wants to do it anyway, The Great Protector! But I know it would hurt them too much, bouncing against the rounded glass walls, their little lights going out.

So I think of them as older than now, five years, ten years and more and I wonder what we'll all look like and feel like and how we'll be different. I imagine what they will love to do and I believe in their potential, that they're going to be okay. They'll grow taller and I'll grow shorter. What a strange idea. Me, with so many lines on my face and gray hair. But I can do no trapping of my own life's time either, no halting of my growth. Not by growing complacent or stalling out, not by nipping and tucking and injecting, zapping out my light and the ache of years of wisdom written over me. The perseverance and the fine lines and wrinkles, the curved back and the silver hair, they are all simply signs of wisdom, and to wish that away would make about as much sense as trying to stop the growth of my boys with a glass jar.



This is why the ordinary things, the days and the routines, the seemingly endless sameness, it is all so truly extraordinary. It just is. It must be, the way it all marches on with little feet getting bigger, running from one end of the house to the other.

The things most out of our control, like what an everyday day holds or does not hold, or like growing up and growing old, they are the very most beautiful things. These inevitables, they are a spinning breeze with the tallest and greenest grass and softest moonlight, so we can flicker and glow, free.

monday laser surgery

a pudgy little hand and a little chocolate around the corners of his mouth.
something spilled on his sweatshirt.
long eyelashes.
chubby cheeks.

An IPod and head phones...who knew.

:::::

This morning he took a little Lego light saber and pretended to laser off the age spots on my hands. Isn't that thoughtful? He would say, "This will hurt just a little bit...zzzz...zzzzt."

I was almost convinced it was working so I sat very still.
This is a good start to a (finally) sunny day.

Happy Monday, friends.

on having it all

I've been a SAHM for about five years. Now I have childcare a few days a week for a few hours and during that time I leave the house, my children in good hands, and I work.

But when people ask what I do, I don't really know how to answer. I wish we could all just say "I work" and leave it at that. Yeah, all of us, mothers or not, gainfully employed or not, because life is work. I wish that a work title wasn't just another way for people to gauge each other's worth because we're all worth the same whether that makes some of us uncomfortable or not.

So anyway. I'm working on things, a number of things, writing and editing and creating things. The thing is, only one of these gigs pays me (currently)...and only a little. So all this work can feel less valid, I mean, if I put the pressure of what I think people think of me on myself anyway. (Which is always silly.)

I need to return emails, I'll say. SO MANY EMAILS. (And then I feel like I'm supposed to put my hand to my forehead to make the point that I'm very busy with my WORK.) I need to do some editing. SO MUCH READING TO DO! (Swings other hand to forehead.) I have this post in me that's just begging to be written-how shall I find the time? (Fans self.)

See? It sounds pretty stupid.

I've said a million times that being a part of the online world, as a blogger and editor and speaker and friend (there! there are some titles! So nice of them to come along and make me feel better!), has been such a beautiful thing for me. I know many many people who are making their dreams come true largely because of how social media has benefited them, how they've found their creative footing and had great successes. And so often, people want to know HOW, HOW did that work? How did those people DO that? What is that called?

And I could try to help people understand by saying something like, Well, they had a well-read really cool blog and they tweeted a lot and they had a lot of fans on their facebook page and so people knew who they were and then they did this other thing and people were paying attention. You know, because of their klout score.

Yeah, I could say all of that and it would be sort of true, but I think the simple answer is that the person had "it" already. "It"--a talent or charisma, a drive and a knowledge and creative spirit--and the Internet was simply an avenue to doors that were shut without all the voices of social media shouting loudly the praises of that talent. But people don't really want that to be the answer I give them. They want a formula, maybe for their own road to success, or maybe just to have it all make concrete sense.

But it doesn't.

So I do my best to believe that I have "it" too and I sit with my words and my creative ideas and I work at them and I reach out to the brilliant people I've come to know because I'm here and then together we work toward bringing these ideas to life and I love it. I get to write words here when they strike me and I tuck other words away for a book and yes, there's always a busy inbox. So I'm working. And I'm believing that this is all headed somewhere because it already has and maybe that "somewhere" will have more of a title, but for right now it just doesn't. It's just work.

Dreams can come to be a reality in millions of different ways and the road is almost always longer than we'd like. The Internet makes us want the success now now now...but it takes time and it takes work. So on the days I have childcare, I say that I'm working, and now I'm working on saying that with confidence. And on the days that I feel like I must be taking something from my children by taking some time away, I say it to myself, I'm working, and then I try really hard to believe that it matters enough to be worth that time away. Because it does.

I'm riding this. I have no guarantees. I have not even close to an enormous paycheck or even a title. But I'm moving forward every day with these dreams that keep popping up, I'm daring to put myself out there and I'm taking risks. It makes me feel more alive than I have in a long time and I know my children feel that too. I still get to hang out with Miles and Asher so much of the time, and I get to have a baby girl who will enter this crazy mix while I do my creative thing on the side. So I wonder sometimes, how I could be so lucky, to land in this online space, a place that makes it possible to have the best of both worlds? They say that you can't have it all, not all at once, and I used to believe that to be true, but now I'm thinking maybe I was wrong.

I am a wife and mother and I'm a writer and a blogger and I'm even a creator, in so many ways. This is all work. I love my work. (wipes eyes)

:::::

This post was written largely to me. I've up and had an idea that's become a project that's become a team creative endeavor and man it is WORK. Hopefully I can tell you all about it soon. Today I just needed to think through things out loud. I actually have been feeling peaceful about "doing it all," more peaceful than I ever have in the past. In the past, I was convinced that if I was a SAHM, there was just no way to find time to respond to my creative ideas, my dreams, my goals...that's simply changing for me. And who knows, maybe it will change back? I think that happens to we mothers all the time...

If you're a mom, how does all of this feel for you? Where are you with the 'having it all' conundrum. I don't think there's a right answer. I just love to talk about it.

despite

Back when I quit drinking, I gave Miles an explanation I thought he could understand. Then I was a bit astounded at his ability to understand. (I give him all the credit.)

This morning Ryan looked at his phone and saw it was the 20th. For us, the 20th always sticks out, a number that shouts SOBRIETY! So he said some congratulatory things to me from the other room, calling them out. Miles figured out what his daddy was referring to and came to me, stood next to me and asked, "Does that mean you had another month of not drinking wine?"

"Yes, that's right, honey."

He beamed and bounced a little bit, gave me a quick little side squeeze and ran off to play.

:::::

When I think back on the days when Asher was brand new and Miles was so much smaller, it always stings my heart. It was a hard time, in so many ways. I think of the day that both Miles and I just lost it and then I sat next to him on his bedroom floor and we cried together and talked about how hard it all was, right then. Because it was. We were just so tired. He was two, so our conversation was simple, something that would make sense. I told him it would get better, even though I doubt either of us believed me.

It got worse, for awhile. The constant crying from Asher increased, Ryan's work kept him away every other week and I was starting to drink more. I so often saw the pain and confusion in that little face. I felt the roller coaster of emotion day after day and I know he felt it too. I was so stressed and I carried so much shame because everything was spinning out of control and I felt so helpless. And then we found out about Asher's hydrocephalus and it got harder again, for awhile.

So Miles seemed to feel nothing but hate for his baby brother and who could blame him? His little egocentric toddler/preschooler mind could only understand so much. And sometimes I wondered if any of it would ever ever get better. It didn't feel like it. The daily grind will steal hope sometimes, especially when it's covered in so much extra. And we all have extra, don't we?

I tell you all of that because it will help you understand how much something meant to me earlier this week. My boys were bundled in their winter coats and they were standing so close together. Asher was turned away from Miles, peering from his little glasses and out from under his stocking cap. And Miles suddenly said, "Asher, aren't you so glad we're brothers?" And there was so much gentleness in his voice, so much true love.

Then Asher turned to his big brother with the brightest eyes and answered with a big "UH HUH!!!"

They smiled at each other and looked at each other for a long time.

It got better.

:::::

Yesterday we had some family over and Asher was playing with his big cousin, Zach. They were putting together a Lego train track and Asher said, "I got this for Christmas."

So Zach replied, "I know you did. I was there."

And then Asher said, in his high-pitched voice... "Oh yeah....Awkwaaard." He felt silly for forgetting and he said just the right thing to make that clear. How did that screaming little newborn and that helpless little boy who needed brain surgery turn into this little person who knows when to say awkward? I just don't know.

:::::

These kids, they become so many beautiful things despite life, despite me, you know? I could just weep at their goodness. And I know I haven't entirely failed at this motherhood thing. I know that they've learned some good things from me and through me. I know. And yet what I know even more is that despite all of my failings, they overcome, they mature and they will continue to blow my mind.

They live out redemption and they always embody grace. Just like the rest of us, always moving toward better even in the darkest of things and even when it doesn't feel like it. I'm just so humbled by that. I really am.

past halfway

21 weeks

We are past halfway to meeting her.
Pregnancy, for me anyway, is one of those things that goes
both too fast and too slow,
mixing itself up to be just the right amount of time.

I think back to seeing that faint line on the test, way back in October
and it was yesterday and soooo long ago.

Before we know it, she'll be here and we'll be looking at her like
she was always here
and that seems really far away,
before we know it.

It's just the right amount of fast and slow and then
there will be this soft and holy HELLO.

She kicked right below my belly button right when I typed that. She did. Or maybe it was a hello punch. I'm not sure, of course. But it was just right.

she

Her profile is so much like her oldest brother's profile. I wonder if she'll be more like him, or more like Asher? Or just plain different than all of us? For now all we know is that her profile is a lot like her oldest brother's profile, a boy who will turn six the week after she is born.

Ryan and I walked through aisles yesterday and we talked about six years ago. We carried that registering-for-baby-things-gun that beeps. (Yes, we created a registry for a third baby. We did. For moms and grandmas to know what we need, since we did that thing where we got rid of everything somewhere between colic and hydrocephalus...or maybe that was after...whenever it was it was obviously too soon, but we thought we knew we were done. Stress will do that to you...until time passes...I think I'm rambling like this because registering feels greedy even if it's really not...)

It's funny how we realize now how little we need compared to what we thought we needed those six years ago. Back then, when Miles was coming, I think we beeped everything in every aisle. This time we beeped one or two things here and there and kept in mind that we really don't need much. People would stop us to try to give us advice, assuming that this was our first baby, and we wouldn't correct them, we'd just smile and say thank you.

Because just as much as this isn't new to us, every new person is new. She is new.

She.

I can't wait to see what she'll be like.

Asher and his sister belly

(photo taken with my Droid-Retro Camera app)

voices

I am here alone in a place with Internet access and food, trying to clean up my inbox and clear my head.

But their conversation is turning my limbs light and my stomach in circles. They are men, with gray hair and pot bellies and low grumbling laughs, at the next table. They are reminiscing about the good old days, the "good old days" with women.

Heat is rising in my cheeks and my heart is beating faster and everything in me wants to strangle, to rail, to fight, to scream...to get them to stop, to get them to see.

Here you sit with all these years to know...and you still don't know.

They are talking so loudly...with so much pride, it sounds like bravado, and I feel sick.

:::::

Last night I was randomly struck with a thought, right before bed. I called out for Ryan, to come from the other room and I said, I just had the most terrifying thought.

What?

What if she's beautiful? What if this baby girl is beautiful? That scares me so much because men can be so awful.

I just needed to say it.

:::::

One of them, in here now, he says, Yeah, all I had to do was pull the car to the side of the road and she knew what was coming. They all laugh, that loud laugh, like they're trying to be the most humored, like it's a contest. Then he says, She knew how it was going to end. More laughing. She'd make excuses--oh I need to work in the moring or oh it's so late--but I'd just say yeah yeah yeah...

more laughing. They just keep going, with the stories and the laughing.

Then as quickly as it started, it's over--the topic has changed to the weather, oh it's so cold--and their voices are growing softer and softer, barely audible, and then there's a silence, the kind that takes over after a last breath. A kind of eerie and then holy silence. It's over.

My shoulders relax but only a little and I'm whirling with my history and her future and I'm trying hard to grasp around for faith, to trust.

One of them gets up to leave, pulling up his suspenders and slipping his arms through his coat. He walks by my table, and he smiles at me.

And I want to strangle, to fight, to scream, to rail against it.


Everything in me wants to protect her always, and even more, everything in me wants to give her a voice.

____

*edited to add: I realize that bad things can happen to anyone, not just girls (or beautiful girls for that matter). I simply caught myself in fear and expressed it here. Beauty can draw a lot of unwanted attention, that's just simply where my thoughts began, and then I wrote them out.

forward

He runs at me with his arms out,
he wants to be held.

He takes a break from whatever he's doing
and he says
mommy mommy mommy
over and over while he lunges
from across the room.

It's like he hasn't had water all day
and suddenly he sees a lake
and he doesn't think for a second that
it's a mirage,
he's just certain
that he'll get what he needs.

Sometimes he says
I love you I love you I love you
I wuv yooouuuu
like a deep groaning whine
that's how he says it,
like his heart
is bursting
and he's running out of time
while he runs across the room.

When did I lose that kind of certainty
in the rushing for what I need,
I wonder.
So
I pull him in
and hold him tight
and I say I love you I love you I love you
with an intensity like his
from the way we both feel it.

I won't protect myself in fear of the day that he pushes me away,
Mom...don't!
I will keep saying it
like this,
just how he taught me...
even then.
I will say it over and over
even though it will look and feel like a mirage
sometimes

I will always say it
no matter what,

because it's a lake.

back and forth

Sometimes I have these epiphany moments that aren't even really epiphanies but I don't know what to call them.

Then later, when I try to tell someone or think through my "aha moment" again, it just falls flat and I'm all, well that's really nothing new.

But sometimes the epiphanies that are set on repeat, the ones that come over and over again because I have to learn them over and over again? The ones that seem so simple and plain a little while later?
They're like an old hymn or a favorite movie I've seen a hundred times, the way that parts just grab a hold of me and feel new. Maybe because I forget so easily, but my heart remembers and so it sends a ping! to my head.

Yesterday I was thinking about how strange it is that I knew anything at all Before (Before motherhood or marriage or sobriety), but I suppose I did. I was learning and growing despite myself, my totally ridiculous choices, my immaturity... That's one of my favorite things about grace. The gift of growing in the middle of being stuck.

But then again, sometimes it feels like I knew absolutely nothing at all. The life I'm living now sometimes seems to have put the brakes on what I thought I knew and then it sent all my so-called wisdom flying backwards, reversing down the highway and back to the starting line. This adult life I'm trying to live now, it humbles me and seems to have started my wisdom from scratch.

Last Thursday, the day that marked one year since I've had a drink, I was crying. I wasn't even sure why I was crying and I said so, over and over, "I don't know why I'm crying..." and then Ryan stood next to me and he said so softly and with so much kindness, "Well, Sweetie. You've lived a thousand lives."

All those lives hold so much I don't remember but so much my heart does remember. I am 35 years old, I have two boys and another baby on the way. I'm married and I have a house and a dog and a minivan. I have lived many many movies and sung many hymns, but I don't live in them now. I just want my heart to remember the parts that redeem...and then I want to live right here.







{Please feel free to enter The Pleated Poppy giveaway here.}

thought to self

Something keeps running through my head. It just up and popped in there one day and now I'm trying to cling to it.

Because it's not the big stuff that I have a tendency to sweat. I'm a survivor of many big things, just like most humans...so I have practice at persevering through pain and carrying on.

But I've also had a lot of practice with the daily grind
and yet it still really gets to me so much of the time.
I mean, the thing about the daily grind is that it really won't ever end.
I'm selfish enough to dislike that.

stupid kitchen floor always dirty stupid where's the broom ugh
worry worry worry (enter big thoughts)
why why why are the Legos all over the floor again seriously?
It's 5 freaking 45 what in the world is this child doing UP?
worry worry worry (enter more big thoughts)
oh I get so sick of meals. Three a day? That's too many.
It's 3pm? Really? HOW is it NOT 9pm? HOW?
stop whining! stop fighting! stop whining!
worry worry worry (even more big thoughts)

You know, stuff like that.

This is when I start to trudge and martyr and pout.
It's hard not to do that because motherhood and life, well, they're
exhausting.

Motherhood, if all of its parts could be summed up in one tiny definition,
is
a million little sacrifices all piled up to make one big one.
And as much as it hurts and exhausts so much of the time,
it's also beautiful because it's the very thing I needed most,
to work away at my protective shell, my internal focus and my tendency to dislike
anything that messes with what I want when I want it.
It teaches me what we all need to know. The simple truth,
it's not all about me.

And so I say, as of late, when I start to stomp and sigh,
Heather, don't resent the sacrifice.
And then something softens in me somewhere under all that exhaustion
and frustration
because first of all, the details and repetitive sameness,
they aren't going anywhere, so I'm wasting my time to wish them away.

And as it turns out, for me anyway, sacrifice is a comforting word...
when I stop to see that it's making me more of who I want to be.

goodbye pacifier, hello reminder

Yesterday we decided to be done with Asher's pacifier.

say it ain't so!

(Actually, Ryan decided and I begrudgingly tried hard to see why this made sense on this particular day because yeah, I'm quite easy-going about such things, I'll admit it--I don't get all uptight about what the books or other people say about pacifiers.) (And yes, Asher is 3 and a half and still slept with a plastic thing in his mouth.) (Don't judge.)

So last night was the big night, if only on a whim, and so we prepared ourselves for a fight. We prepared ourselves to get up a lot. We tried to prepare Asher by talking about it throughout the evening, before bedtime.

He argued a whiny attempt at changing our minds incessantly for the last ten minutes before bed, his enormous blue eyes looking up at us, begging. So we tried bargaining and praising and convincing, etc...infinity...

But he continued to say things like, I don't want anything but my paaaaciiiiii. (And believe you me, it was so tempting to say OKAY FINE because he's the cutest little cherub with a nasal-y voice you ever did see.)

I carried him to bed and whispered good things to him. I put him down and told him that he's a big strong boy, just like his big brother and that I knew he could do it.

And then, after all that arguing and whining, he said, "You are right, Mommy." (With a little quivering lip, a big sigh and very sad Goodbye Paci eyes.)

Then he immediately went to sleep and did not make a peep all night long and slept later this morning than usual. True story.

~~~~~

I'm consistently surprised by motherhood. By parenting. By life with kids. We hardly ever get what we expect no matter how we try to prepare or not prepare and no matter how uptight or easy-going we are. All I really no for sure is how totally out of control I am no matter how much I try to control things.

I'm in no way an expert on anything. I mean, I allowed my boy to have a pacifier until age 3.5 (and honestly, I'm totally cool with that), but if I could give one piece of advice (even though I'm truly not much of an advice-giver, since I know that can be annoying) to new parents, this would be it:

Roll with it, friends. Almost everything in the early years works itself out in its own time, it really does. The sleep schedule, the feeding schedule, the potty training and the pacifying. These are simply small things when you look back. So trust your heart-gut rather than the books or even the experts and do your best to...well, relax.

I wish I had done that, from the beginning. And maybe it just takes time for us to learn to do that. But it's not laziness to relax a little. I think it might just be surrender--to life with kids, on its own terms. Of course it's important to remain consistent with discipline and all that, I'm not saying it's not. I'm simply talking about letting go and living out the process and trusting your heart-gut if it's telling you everything will be okay, even if it's not right now.

I mean, really friends. If I don't take on this attitude myself, I may not be able to handle it tonight when Asher has a complete fit over not having a pacifier anymore.

(Look at me, trying to predict the future again. My learning curve...it ebbs and flows.)

while Love goes

Christmas, for me, is about one enormous gift.

On 12/24/08 I wrote,
"I love to imagine the unexpected fulfillment of love that first Christmas, breathing for the first time in the manger. His love filled the air like a scent, and moved through the people who came to touch Him. Love was all around."

Today the boys and I were driving slowly through the dirty and snowy streets to make our way to a new place to eat. We were going to pick up lunch and then head home. I was going to take a break from opening the fridge and staring at its contents for too long, wondering what to make for meal 2 of 3 in this day.

I had my heart set on something fresh and healthy and it felt like a gift, to not have to make it myself. But the parking lot was full, very very full and so I drove through it to go around the block while hoping someone would leave an open space in the meantime. And as I drove I was thinking about other gifts, these amazing gifts I'm continuously given in my life, and the way that I deal with those gifts.

Why is it never enough? I thought. Because I've been in this funk and maybe it's just this time of year and how I've been reflecting on nearly a year of sober living and it's all so much and so heavy sometimes. There are Big Gifts, yes. I see them and I appreciate them and sometimes I still feel so...wrong. Or maybe like the other shoe is going to drop, that thing. Maybe I'm doing that thing, in which I wait for the shoe and shake in my boots rather than just relaxing and being...happy. Maybe it's that, I thought.

And then I said to myself, It's Christmas, it's here and I see the enormous gift and I see all these other gifts and everything in me wants to push it all away.

Why?

Then it hit me and I couldn't believe how simple and obvious it was.
I'm afraid I'm going to screw it up somehow. I'm going to trample on these gifts. I've been really really good at doing that in this life.

I do this thing where I start to believe that I won't do right by my kids or my husband, and I won't get this book thing to come together, never sending even a page to my agent. I'm going to screw it up, I thought.

I've always been so afraid of throwing away gifts because before life with my own family and then even after that gift, I threw away so much. I withdrew, that's what I knew to do. And old habits die hard and sometimes now I still withdraw and I coil up and turn inside myself and I can't look at anyone. I say, Wash your hands-I already asked you twice-wash your hands and Put your coat on-put your coat on-put your coat on-I'm not going to say it again-put your coat on. And I don't like the ugly in my voice and I think it means that I'm failing, that I'm screwing up all my gifts. I watch myself do so much trudging and I figure my value is dropping with every moment that passes in which I do not just buck up already.

But today as I drove around the block, trying to find my way to one small gift of food, I remembered the most enormous gift in my life, this expression of Redemption that came so small and it's free and I complicate it. I can feel it, this love so enormous, sucking the ugly out of the universe like a well-meaning cobra and taking care of me while it goes.

~~~~~

We're back home now and I've eaten my healthy and fresh. A small gift in a hard day. All my angst and hurt, my thoughts, they are prayers and I've been heard amidst the clamor. So in the next three or so days before the Enormous Gift Christmas Day, I'll be doing some metaphorical driving around the block, not turning in and away in fear, but anticipating and believing that there's a place of receiving, just for me.


from 12/24/08~
"He brought a love that only He possessed, one that most people had quickly forgotten how to live. It was the gift of all He embodies, a love beyond our comprehension. One that reaches past our despairing seas, pushes through our hate and anger, and fills us up with love. What a perfect gift."

~~~~~

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds:

"So I'm told, or so the story goes
the people he knew were less than
golden hearted
gamblers and robbers,
drinkers and jokers
All soul searchers
Like you and me
Like you and me"

His heart was full of love
love, love, love
love, love, love...
love was all around


Merry Christmas, friends.

one minute

One minute he was on the couch and the next minute, my youngest boy had somehow scurried off, his bare little feet making not a sound.

(He looks so tall lately.)

I said, Where'd Asher go ? He was just right here. And Ryan shrugged and laughed because talking about Asher just naturally makes a person giggle, even grown men. I went through the dining room and looked through the living room. No Asher. Just silence and the dark except for the Christmas tree lights.

I said, I bet he just up and went to bed!

And he had. There he was, under the covers, turned on his side, his eyes scrunched closed the way they do for the faking of the sleep. It hadn't been long enough for real sleep. He smiled a little and we said prayers and goodnight and then I tip-toed out even thought I didn't have to because obviously he wasn't going to protest. He was ready for bed, and he knew it.

(I'm just in the habit of night-time-soft-walking.)

~~~~~

He is growing up already at age three, just like his big brother, these little men trying so hard to spring past me. I think those mother-thoughts, about how fast it has gone already, and then it strikes me that we're about to start all over again. It will be a long time before this baby that's growing in me walks and talks and there's only a very small chance he or she will put themselves to bed at age three, I think that might be exclusive to the middle child in our particular family. And yet, this baby will walk and talk and make little independent decisions in the blink of an eye.

As any mother of grown children will tell you (me), one minute they're there and the next, gone, slipping silently away to life. It's as it should be, and so fast and so slow like a deep breath.

~~~~~

Today I'm having some time alone and I'm sitting here with soup that came with saltines and the saltines made me think of babies and how they love crackers. Or at least it seems like they do, since we hand them over so often for the distracting and gnawing.

I'm going to have a baby with no teeth. It feels like it's been a really really long time, so much has happened since Asher came. It awes me, how terribly hard and fast these early years in the physical trenches truly are. They are so hard and fast they are sometimes very very slow. And it's like we've just started to walk out of that stage and then BAM, we'll start again. I'm not lamenting this, only part of my mind is, but not my heart. I want this. I'm just observing the ebb and flow of my feelings, letting the anxiety wash over me and away, releasing me to anticipate the joy and the hope.

After all, that's what babies are. Joy and hope,
in silky skin.

And it will go so hard and fast and then the edges will blur and we'll look back and forget all the many details and the stresses. We'll be in the next foxhole, dodging the bullets of educational issues and emotional maturity and it will go on and on, trench after trench.

I know why that's okay. It's okay because I'm the one that will still see that pure innocence in their eyes even when it is not there. Mysteriously beautiful things are slippery things and we struggle to hold on to them all our years. But we mothers, we're given the gift to always see it, the light and the grace and the goodness of our children, no matter what. We watch them unfold through their eyes and we remember the scent of soft skin, the package of joy and hope. It blurs and fades, but it's here in us and so we're with them, on their side. That's how we get and stay there.

So I will take the sleep deprivation
and the constant constant constant needs,
even though it sounds daunting in the comfortable now.
And I will know how fast it all will go even when I don't
because of the hard
that can seem
and is
so slow slow slow.

We have to dig into the trenches to be with them and know their eyes
and then do the thing
that mothers do,
the always thing.

I'm a mother. I will lament the hard daily grind while I do the same with its opposite, the growing up so fast. And it will always be messy and hard and just exactly where I find the most joy and hope, in their eyes.

bears

My boys have been fighting about who gets to sit on the far end of the couch for about ten minutes. There is much growling and gnashing of teeth. Somehow this spot on the couch has become very special and this is a very heated discussion. Each of them have great logic for why they are the one that should sit on that spot.

Humans are just too much.

I'm not intervening unless someone gets hurt. I'm all about not hovering or mirco-managing. Or maybe I'm just feeling extra lazy today. It could totally be that.

Yesterday on Twitter Casey and I were lamenting winter. She's pregnant too and she said, hibernation and gestation is the name of the game. Now that keeps running through my head and making me feel better because I'm an exhausted gestating mother in the winter in Minnesota and I kind of wish I were a bear because that would be a good excuse for all the hibernating I'm doing.

But then I thought about the question my nephew Zach asked about hibernating bears recently. If they sleep all winter, how do they go to the bathroom? I laughed and then I thought the answer was that their bodies probably shut down so completely that they don't even go. But then I thought that maybe they do still go in their sleep and gross. I had never really thought about it before.

What I do know is that I don't even come close to knowing everything. So I can't say for sure about the bears and I don't know which boy should get the far end of the couch or how to get them to see that it doesn't matter.

And even so, I'm glad I'm not actually hibernating and that I'm here listening to squabbling about spots on the couch instead. Until I'm sick of it. Then I'll growl like a bear for it to stop.

just one door

Yesterday it snowed and snowed. So much snow. I shoveled our driveway because the snow is just fluff and I'm a strong pregnant lady. I shoveled again later so Ryan would be able to get in the driveway after work. I swear the snow plows push more snow from the street to the end of our driveway than all the other houses in the world. I'm sure of it.

So then I was tired.

After my first round of shoveling the boys wanted to make cookies so we got out all the ingredients and then we needed the butter to soften to room temperature. Both of them knew what that meant and I was surprised. So I lay down on my side on my bed and was glad for the butter excuse.

Asher found me within 30 seconds and he walked up to the end of the bed and said, Hi Mommyyyy in his sweet and high little voice. Usually his voice is very low so this is funny. Then he added, You look beau-i-fow.

I'm such a sucker. Yes, child, you can get in the bed with me.

I don't know why so much of my martyr attitude went away with the drinking. I can never explain why so many things just poof! went away. And sometimes I'm not even aware of those things or I just can't quite name the good things. Then I sometimes second guess that it's worth it to not drink for the rest of my life. My mind plays tricks on me and does the very cliche, maybe it wasn't that bad...I had such a high bottom...and on and on until I can't see what's so good about sobriety anymore. I don't know how in the world I could ever NOT see the difference, or lose track or forget or lose sight of the gifts. That's just what happens. Addiction is a rotten thief.

These are the things we have to say, we have to just keep talking.
So I said it loud to have the truth spoken because there's no shame in exactly how I feel. It just is.
I told Ellie all about it, about how I can't see the difference so much of the time.
And then she did what Ellie does and she said that she completely understood exactly what I'm saying and that at one point in her sobriety an idea came to mind for her. Then she told me about standing in a room in her mind's eye and all around her are doors. The door to drinking is now closed. SLAM. LOCK. FOR GOOD. So she's just looking at it and wondering what's next or why what's behind it is really all that big of a problem, that drinking life back there, gone quiet.

And then the thing about the other doors is that they are not slammed or locked. Each and every one of them is about to open. Sometimes slowly, over time. Sometimes opening three at a time, maybe even in just one day, with unimaginable surprises. She said she needs to think about those doors. The ones that just would not open without the door closed on drinking.

That drinking door has to be closed because no matter what the amount or how often or how deep the obsession and dependence, addiction is a nasty thief all on its own. A cunning thief that sucks the grace wind right under its door, even when we don't know it.

Yes, I thought, while she was talking. Sobriety is about what is to come. It's about what stands around the corner of the future, one that's possible because the door that lets gifts leak on through and out, missed or ignored, is sealed.

So everyday I'm going to be looking at the doors in my mind's eye, thanks to Ellie. I can already tell you about so many open ones. If you've been around here since I quit drinking, you've seen them too. And then there are many that only I can see, when I'm looking at them, like Asher's eyes at the end of my bed. Yes, I'm the kind of person that always appreciated the blue of those eyes and the lilt in that voice, but new layers of that appreciation came with sobriety. They last longer for me now, those moments of grace. As long as they always were, it's just that now I'm staying with them. I can sit in them longer because I don't have to feel the pull back to that once-open leaky thief of a door. It's closed and locked and I notice it less and less.

This is an awfully big room with many many doors. The one that is closed is just one. A very small one, with its knocks and clawing and scratching from the other side growing quieter. The other doors are big and loud with, You look beau-i-fow and Ellie and a new baby and less martyrdom behind them. There is no end in sight to these doors so I guess if I had to describe grace with an analogy, that's how I would do it.

Doors with no thieves. Endless gifts with no games. A power that shrinks and quiets the darkest of doorways.

~~~~~

Thank you, Ellie. What would I do without my Ellie door?



P.S. You have the whole weekend to enter the Gifts for Life giveaways, friends. (That last one is a dooozy, huh?) Thank you to each of you who have come along. It was a labor of love and I'm so honored to help Bead for Life! Thank you...

there is something past the sickness

My addict mind has often told me that it wasn't that bad, that maybe I don't even really have a problem. And then something happens like the night with the wine for the cooking of the food. The way I was suddenly crying over that smell, suddenly frozen with fear and regret.

Lately these surprise attacks of a clear memory of what it was like come packaged in morning sickness. I'm feeling sick (all through the day) not because I drank too much the night before, but for a much less guilt-inducing reason. The Acorn. My pregnancy. I'm so grateful for the constant nausea since it's a good sign things are going well, growing and creating, cells and neurons zapping and popping and actual organs beginning to make their shapes. And all at the same time, even while I feel that joy, I'm frequently hit with this intense sense memory complete with every detail of a hangover, and it brings up something in me I can't quite name.

All I know is that something sinks in a little more deeply every day, while I sit with my head in my hands to stop the spinning, the churning in my heart and stomach. I can't help remembering. I can't escape it. And my hormonal emotions bring me to a place I need to be...grounded and humbled and reminded, and then grateful and in awe of how life has changed.

The addict mind is really hard to describe. It takes more than months to peel back the layers of denial and deception, to relearn, to change and to...know. I had so quickly and easily forgotten, or maybe even decided to not believe actual hangovers had been a part of my life. So now I sit with the woozy and heavy feelings of growing a person and I realize how often I was hungover. It felt just like this, and I can't deny it anymore. I can see it clearly now, the many days I carried the weight of the night before, behind my temples and at the base of my skull, causing hard work for my neck. How I slumped through those days with so much alcohol sunk low in my churning stomach and ruffling itself with my chills while it coursed through my veins. It was the sickness of my sickness and I thought I hadn't lived it very often. I thought I maybe had a tolerance that held up its fists to the morning after, when I looked at it after getting sober. And now I'm blasted with sense memory, brought to my knees by my sneaky weakness.

I don't know exactly why this brings up so much grief, but it does.

My name is Heather and I'm an alcoholic. I really am. It continues to be a hard reality, but there it is. It's really important to say it often, to be able to have the truth stand up, smack in the face of the denial and the forgetting that can creep in.

~~~~~

Yesterday, plain out of the blue, Miles said, Mama, I want you to know your bravery will always be with you. He worded it just like that. He used the word bravery, and I have no idea how he knew to say such a thing on such a hungover feeling kind of day. But he did.

How often can I say it here? Grace.

I don't feel brave all on my own, but he's right, the freedom I have, this power that comes through me but not from me, it is there. It will be there. It is my own.

And grace is this--I have not missed this: I got pregnant, after three years of pregnancy being a possibility and a desire for our family and it not happening, exactly nine months after I decided to stop drinking. The irony is not lost on me. Nine months. I love nine months.

Grace.

So I sit here even as I type this and I feel the heaviness behind my eyes, the fatigue and the twisting stomach. I feel it from before and I feel it now. It's entirely different while it's the same. It's a mysterious gift of the many this baby is bringing. A gift that looks much the same as how our boys radiate life and joy in the midst of our messy and hard and sometimes churning daily life.

Life. Sobriety. Motherhood. All of it is always both hard and good, all mixed up with grace. Always.

Friend, there is something past the sickness, something far better than can be imagined. I hope your layers of denial and fear will keep slipping away by your turning the truth on them, so you know all of this, as fully as I am slowly coming to know it.

~~~~~

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the meaning of the word serenity and we will know peace. - source

an acorn update

My hCG level went up. It went up.

This is hopeful and good and now I've hit that feeling you get when you come down from a three day adrenaline rush and all you want to do is sleep for three days. But I'm going to go grocery shopping with my two toot knockers instead because I'm hungry.


This is our Acorn...


The Acorn doesn't really have a stem like that, I just drew that in for kicks....but you knew that...

Our little seed is smaller than an actual acorn at this point, but in the right place and on his/her own time clock. (I would like he or she to hurry up and get that little heart going so we can have our hopes confirmed, but for that, we'll have to wait a couple more weeks.) (oooof daaaah)

For now, we're simply choosing to believe that everything is okay. That whole increased hCG thing is really good news.

I know I'm going to be fighting fear more than I did when I was pregnant with Miles and Asher this time around. I don't even really know why. It's not so much my age, but maybe more that I have a deeply rooted concern that my number is up. Which is a bit irrational and also not. I mean, why not us? Why not now? It's a thought I need to deal with, feel and then find a way to let go. I want to insist that we've been through enough in the last few years...but that isn't fair because there are no quotas on pain and nothing makes our family exempt from anything. What I've come to understand is that we won't be protected from all hurts, but we will be helped through all hurts.

Like Lee said with such grace last weekend, there are always only two choices...fear or faith.
I want to choose faith, and I think that means not only hoping, but truly believing, because there's a difference between the two. It's just a really subtle and utterly important difference.

So, my friends, I'm believing The Acorn is going to be alright. I know that's entirely possible, so what's not to believe?

If this road curves me away from that belief, I'll pick up the reigns on the next thing to believe...that no matter what, we're going to be okay.

the acorn

I'm sitting in the space between knowing and not knowing. I don't know what else to do besides pray and wait and write it out. I don't know why I generally feel the need to write it all out publicly. I really don't. I've given up being all that concerned about why I do because when I check myself, I don't feel needy or dramatic or any of the other forms of the self-seeking I'm fighting.

When something is going on in my head and heart, I have a terribly hard time not talking about it. I don't have that ability to hold back and hold close like many people do. I can't see through my thoughts and feelings to small talk or fodder. I just can't.

Maybe I trust too easily or fear too little or maybe I fear too much so I just want to let the words out in a place where they can be heard and digested, to fall on ears and eyes and souls to be shared. Maybe it's just my way, to tell. To put the words out there while I hope that speaking them will take the power from the fear that climbs up and out and hopefully away with them.

~~~~~

When I was at the Creative Alliance event last weekend, Ellie was nice enough to take me into town because I just had to have a pregnancy test. I was feeling pregnant and had taken a test and gotten a very very faint line. I wanted a test for the next morning, so I could see if the line would decide to intensify a bit. I really really prefer confirmation over a maybe-I'm-making-up-the-second-line-because-I've-been-staring-at-this-thing-for-so-long kind of thing.

I found out that I'm pregnant. There they were, two distinct pink lines, side by side like a happy dance duo. Not actually happy dancing, of course...I didn't stare at it that long, but happy nonetheless.

I took the picture below at the creek in Ojai for my Ryan, the morning I took that test. When I got home that night, I challenged him to see the symbolism...


He got it right away. He said, There we are and there's Miles and Asher below us and there's another little guy on the leaf. You're having a baby! *sweetie oh sweetie hug hug*

(I expected him to NOT get my incredibly brilliant symbolic piece of art.)


(I underestimated him.)


(Or maybe he saw this picture on my camera first and was somehow clued in.)...



I am 3-ish weeks pregnant in this photo. But my body thinks I'm 4 months pregnant. I'm pretty sure I heard a sound when my uterus decided to get back to its old tricks by magically expanding in the blink of an eye.

Anyway. Because my belly popped out the way it did in a span of two days and because my heart-gut was talking to me, I had that knowing before the test, but I still so badly wanted the confirmation and I was just so grateful for it and for this teeny tiny little Acorn guy or girl just beginning to form. So I sat there that morning at the creek and I cried and I laughed and I stared up the side of the canyon wall and said thank you repeatedly.

It was a really good day and so many many things had confirmed that I should feel peace. Like realizing that the robin's nest necklace Ellie gave me has three little eggs in it. And hearing Lee read this post during the Listen To Your Mother Salon. And then there were those acorns surrounding my feet while I listened to the creek, how they were the only ones close to me and they were all these different sizes and shapes and colors and just the right number. The teeny one...it was just so teeny. It made me cry harder. (Just so you know, crying over a teeny acorn is a really really good cry.)

My new pregnancy continued to announce itself more and more this past week, impossible to hide. So I was telling everyone, calling my sister, my Grandma and many of my closest friends, and showing my parents the acorn photo. (No. They didn't get it right away.) (But they didn't cheat with the shadow picture either.) We talked to the boys about it this early because they're 3 and 5 and think my tummy is completely hilarious. They have been over the moon excited and completely convinced this is a girl. Miles has reminded me that I have a baby in my belly so I need to eat a lot of protein. I have no idea how he knew this. And Asher has asked what size the baby is every five minutes or so. Teeny tiny I say, and he giggles and asks when it will come out.

Yes, it's been a good week.

Then yesterday and last night I knew something was different. My body and mind and heart were telling me something and I was fighting it with denial like a champ. Until around 9pm when I was suddenly sobbing and telling Ryan I didn't think I was pregnant anymore. Emotions are sneaky. Sometimes they come while the credits of a movie roll in the dark and silence and then they just won't stop because if feels like the truth is coming out or maybe it's just fear. It's so hard to know which one.

Things were happening that seemed abnormal to me, I'll spare you the details. And then when I woke up this morning my stomach was about half the size as it has been, and it was soft and it felt like a fading away.

So Ryan and I went to the ER because I insisted on it even though it's hard to get answers so early. I'm pretty sure the ER Doc thought we were nuts, but I just so badly wanted to know something. As it turns out, we can't. We can't really know something. The only thing he could tell me about my current symptoms is that they're weird. Yeah...So. I'm seeing my doctor tomorrow for an ultrasound and another hCG check (to compare it to today's hCG check--it should be doubled by tomorrow if everything is fine) but even then, we may not know anything until more time goes by.

If this is simply fear that has convinced me of this loss and it's really not true, if everything is just fine, I'm going to be really mad at fear. It's power has tripped up my ability to follow my heart-gut, to believe one way or the other, to trust my knowing.

So I'm working on peace in this moment while I sit here and type this and wonder, trying to strangle worry by words, trying to steal the power from the fear. I didn't know what else to do while I wait to feel either really happy or really sad...one or the other.

~~~~~

You know what? This is still a happy story. I'd like to believe that it's going to be alright. I'd like to leave my mind out of it, for now. This, my friends, is a really long one day at a time, and I'm so grateful I have a place to write it out.

Until tomorrow...

thank you.

mystery

Dr. P. has enormous hands. When we met him about two years ago and knew he would be doing Asher's brain shunt surgery, Ryan joked, How is he going to manage surgery on such a small head with those sausage fingers?

I watched those same hands I've come to know (and maybe even love) as they circled Asher's head at his check-up on Thursday. He knows what he's doing. He knows what he's looking for. He runs his pointer finger and thumb along the valve (shunt) on the right side of The Noggin and he pushes a little to feel for something I don't understand. I was right next to this big man and my boy and I was vacantly watching because the fear I have as Asher's mom always rears its feisty head in the children's hospital. I float through it all while we're there, holding more tightly to that small hand and staring in wonder at x-rays and the yellow tape measure always wound and pulled snug around my boy's crown, for the measuring.

Dr. P. is so smart and exceptionally good at his job. We are in really good (big) hands. Our Asher is a patient in a long stream of people knocking down the door to get to Dr. P. We are blessed.

On Thursday, Dr. P. ran his hands softly through Asher's blond hair and I saw his nails, short as short can be, bitten as far as possible, cuticles mutilated at every edge. And I thought, even the brilliant Dr. P. has something in him that needs out. Of course...

Anxiety, sad stories of children lost and grieving parents, never being able to have all the answers, pressure, information, schedules, questions, fear...

This week was long and hard and I found myself grieving, wanting, failing...sitting around with a house that needs so much and kids that need so much and I felt so inadequate. And all I could do was just sit, looking around at all the needs unmet, getting more frustrated that I can't take the edge off anymore. I can't disappear and zone out with glass after glass of wine. The TV doesn't work for me and sometimes books don't either. I'm left with too much thinking.

None of it would work to bring me peace anyway and I know that. I find peace mostly in one place these days--in the company (online or off) of fellow alcoholics.

I emailed Ellie and I said that I miss drinking, in that moment I did anyway, because it seemed the only thing I could do, and she said this sounded like good news because instead of living in fear that I might drink at any moment, I've moved on to grieving. This was a really wise thing for her to say, as usual.

Drinking doesn't feel like an option anymore and that is an ironic sad goodbye. I've moved on to simply knowing alcohol is not what I really want, but sometimes just wishing I could escape somehow, and that's normal. For everyone. But instead of doing that I'm just sitting in it, in the feelings, sometimes that looks like something close to despair.

It hurts. It sometimes feels lonely and so I don't know what I would do without the knowledge of a higher power. Because I'm a bit afraid of church, I talked to a pastor about his new one with a hope-inducing name--Open Door, this week. He said he's never met a person in recovery who didn't know for certain they were not doing sobriety on their own. He said that whatever the person chose to call it, they knew that something spiritual was happening outside and inside of them. He also said that he wished there were meetings for everyone, and that he thinks church should look like those meetings, unconditional and accepting. I liked that.

Then on Saturday morning I sat with fellow alcoholics and three of them got stoned...Let me explain. Three people received stones with 2 years or 3 years or 4 years inscribed on them in beautiful colors. And we celebrated with coffee and good food and we each talked about the journey of those getting stoned. And there was no way around words like redemption and miracle and grace and faith. We were all in that same place with all different backgrounds with religion or no religion and we were all using those same words.

Some of us have nails bitten short and some of us can't keep our legs from bouncing with nervous energy. Some of us feel shy talking in a group and some of us nervously chatter on too long. Most of us smoke cigarettes and many of us drink too much coffee. And all of us know freedom from it all is entirely possible, if only we let go and release ourselves to the journey, expecting only progress rather than perfection.

When we grapple with spiritual things I don't know that it's proof we're looking for, or even the answering of our questions...I think it may be that we're looking to trust ourselves with a mystery, to trust the possibility that there is something greater than us...we who think only about ourselves most of the time. We twitching, nail-chewing, broken and hurting vessels just waiting to be willing. Willing to be filled up with good, if only we'd sincerely take the leap.

I think maybe we don't know if we can surrender to an unknown spirituality that our minds can't grasp and so our hearts stomp their feet and ask questions that can't be answered instead. And then we try to wrap our personal feelings and experiences around that greater thing. I think God is so big and he keeps trying to throw off these strings we tighten around his ways and maybe all he wants of us is a bit of awe that he can do things like end my drinking with a love I couldn't escape.

Maybe it just starts there and then snowballs into this unbelievable miracle and it's mysterious so we pretend it just can't be so. We say coincidence and we say proof and we fight doing anything blindly until we see that we ourselves are the proof. Open vessels just waiting.


~~~~~

I found hope in a room of broken people, drunks and addicts of every kind, and I could not deny the way our souls string together and come alive with recognition and a deeply rooted holiness. We experience freedom and the hairs on our necks rise up with the words of our friends. We are healing together and we are traveling with purpose. God created us this way, so clearly in need, so that we could reflect his face behind those walls and in our worlds. I am floored by that. I am just...amazed. We are able to sit together and live out love. There are few masks, there is acceptance, there are tears and there is genuine laughter. This is church like church may never be...without condition.

There is this palpable spiritual movement in those spaces, one that makes us unable to live in disbelief. I haven't heard anyone put words to it because it's a mystery. We can't wrap it up nicely and we can't describe something our minds don't understand. It is not religion. It just is.

~~~~~

Dr. P. has enormous hands with fingernails bitten down to the quick. I have no choice but to trust him with everything he knows that I do not. There is no possible way I could fix my sunbeam boy with my will or my way or my knowledge. I have to let go and allow him to work even while I bite my nails and bounce my leg and believe in the mystery of his knowledge.

Faith. It goes something like that. Face to the ground. No other option. Knowing my weakness. Letting go. Believing...because the alternative hurts too much to consider. Trusting. Seeing it through. Awe. And then acceptance that the outcome might not always be what I thought I wanted, but it is always what is best for the mystery.

it's just true.

It feels too flowery to say he's my sunbeam.
But he just is, this boy.

He was very very sad and scared a couple of nights ago.
I took he and his brudder to the firehouse
and there were so many people
in crowds waiting to check out the engines
and lines for the bounce house,
some people sitting and some standing
and in just a flash
he was gone.

We looked up and around
and back and forth
and I felt the panic.

The longest minutes went by
where I thought the thoughts
that kill a mom's insides
and then
there he was.
His face was crumpled
and his tears
were so big
and he thought I left him.

I ran for him
as he held a stranger's hand
and it seemed like a really really
long time
since I'd seen him last.

And it felt too flowery too say it to him
but I said those things you say right then,
I'd never ever leave you
I love you so much
I don't know what I'd do without you
Because it's just true.

~~~~~

I had been really frustrated with myself for forgetting the speaking gig I'd rushed too (late) that morning. Now I was just weary and my heart hurt for my Asher who got into bed saying he was still scared. It was a long and hard day. This morning my Dad said, "Maybe that happened so you'd know the speaking thing wasn't a big deal. Maybe it was a reminder of what really matters."

WORD (to your Father) (Heh...get it? Instead of word to your mother I used father, since he said that stuff...) (You're welcome.).

Today I'm taking Asher to his check-up with his neurosurgeon, Dr. P.
It's a 2 hour drive both ways and Ryan is out of town for work and it's totally worth it. I think we're going to have a good time together, me and my little sunbeam.

~~~~~

This post is a part of I Should Be Folding Laundry's You Capture. Thank you, Beth.

I wrote something about how I know everything over at Mama Manifesto today. You can check it out if you'd like.