Logan has had an awful twenty-four hours. His ears are hurting so bad that he is quite literally screaming in pain, and his throat is suffering the effects of prematurely losing the scabs that had formed. He is back to full dosing on the pain meds. Any and all prayers for a speedy recovery appreciated.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Seasons and Gears
Here's something that's been on my mind for the past month and a half: seasons. Could be because of the actual physical shift of seasons that I've just watched take place around me, but I think that my mini-meltdown in the beginning of September was actually the impetus for this latest round of navel-gazing. Or, it could be Jana's recent post and our subsequent email exchange. Or Jo turning ten. Well, at any rate ...
I've always heard, in Christian circles, the term "seasons" bandied about as a means of identifying the stages of life that we all seem to pass through. I am not big on Christian-isms in the first place (actually, I'm not big on "isms" in general), but this one has always struck me as especially absurd. Why? Because to say that you are leaving a specific season implies, to me at least, a gradual, graceful transition that truly slips by without relative ease.
Have you personally experienced this in your life? Because I sure haven't.
As a matter of fact, most of the people I know would categorize their personal transitions as anything but gradual acclimation. There's the mom I know who has been married to her high-school sweetheart pastor for the last seventeen years. Guess what? She just got booted from her married season in to her single season when adultery was revealed in her marriage. There's my mother-in-law, who has yet to accept that she has entered the autumn years of her life and shouldn't mother hen like she was living in the summer months. What about my Jo, who still hasn't come to terms with the fact that she can't ride in the Playskool car anymore?
And then there's me.
The Lord has been dragging me, kicking and creaming, into the next season of parenting for approximately four years. Four years. Thankfully, I serve a patient God who has persistently prodded and pushed me out of my safety zone rather than giving me the big, muddy boot in the behind that I deserve. I've seen the signs, but to be honest, I didn't like them. I put on my blinders (think of the kind that mules wear on roadways) and remained on course as I saw it. I liked where I was, and who I was. I liked where all the pieces fit.
The fact is, I am not a mother to littles anymore. Heck, even if we are blessed to adopt those little people that I feel so comfortable parenting, I still have to buck up and be a mom to one rather wise ten year-old girl who is no longer content to hang out in the kiddie pool of life. I have to spread my own wings and fly out past the comfort of friendships that are awesome ... but don't water my soul and fertilize me with mentoring.
You have no idea how hard this is for me to write, but I have realized:
I no longer belong in the preschool wing.
I am not need physically by anyone right now.
It is doubtful that I will ever give birth again.
I am not the mom with the cute young family.
I am not that mother anymore.
The season has shifted, and I didn't notice. The buds have opened, the blossoms have faded and everything is green. Summer is here.
Rather than feeling like I have emerged, fresh and dewy, from one experience and am ready to take flight into a new one, I feel stunned. I didn't so much shift seasons as shift gears. It was abrupt, it was rude, my spirit groaned out with an un-oiled grind, and I found myself trying to fit my shallow spots around the pegs of the new norm. There have been moments when I doubted that things would ever run smoothly again. Awkward spots where I've found myself floundering even among the familiar as I've tried to go back to be the person that I was two, four years ago.
It doesn't fit anymore.
So here I am, on the other side, looking back at the little wheel that was my life and realizing that the changes I am experiencing now are going to reverberate years. This is it. The new norm. The next gear.
I hope I can find the oil can, or I'm in for a jerky ride.
I've always heard, in Christian circles, the term "seasons" bandied about as a means of identifying the stages of life that we all seem to pass through. I am not big on Christian-isms in the first place (actually, I'm not big on "isms" in general), but this one has always struck me as especially absurd. Why? Because to say that you are leaving a specific season implies, to me at least, a gradual, graceful transition that truly slips by without relative ease.
Have you personally experienced this in your life? Because I sure haven't.
As a matter of fact, most of the people I know would categorize their personal transitions as anything but gradual acclimation. There's the mom I know who has been married to her high-school sweetheart pastor for the last seventeen years. Guess what? She just got booted from her married season in to her single season when adultery was revealed in her marriage. There's my mother-in-law, who has yet to accept that she has entered the autumn years of her life and shouldn't mother hen like she was living in the summer months. What about my Jo, who still hasn't come to terms with the fact that she can't ride in the Playskool car anymore?
And then there's me.
The Lord has been dragging me, kicking and creaming, into the next season of parenting for approximately four years. Four years. Thankfully, I serve a patient God who has persistently prodded and pushed me out of my safety zone rather than giving me the big, muddy boot in the behind that I deserve. I've seen the signs, but to be honest, I didn't like them. I put on my blinders (think of the kind that mules wear on roadways) and remained on course as I saw it. I liked where I was, and who I was. I liked where all the pieces fit.
The fact is, I am not a mother to littles anymore. Heck, even if we are blessed to adopt those little people that I feel so comfortable parenting, I still have to buck up and be a mom to one rather wise ten year-old girl who is no longer content to hang out in the kiddie pool of life. I have to spread my own wings and fly out past the comfort of friendships that are awesome ... but don't water my soul and fertilize me with mentoring.
You have no idea how hard this is for me to write, but I have realized:
I no longer belong in the preschool wing.
I am not need physically by anyone right now.
It is doubtful that I will ever give birth again.
I am not the mom with the cute young family.
I am not that mother anymore.
The season has shifted, and I didn't notice. The buds have opened, the blossoms have faded and everything is green. Summer is here.
Rather than feeling like I have emerged, fresh and dewy, from one experience and am ready to take flight into a new one, I feel stunned. I didn't so much shift seasons as shift gears. It was abrupt, it was rude, my spirit groaned out with an un-oiled grind, and I found myself trying to fit my shallow spots around the pegs of the new norm. There have been moments when I doubted that things would ever run smoothly again. Awkward spots where I've found myself floundering even among the familiar as I've tried to go back to be the person that I was two, four years ago.
It doesn't fit anymore.
So here I am, on the other side, looking back at the little wheel that was my life and realizing that the changes I am experiencing now are going to reverberate years. This is it. The new norm. The next gear.
I hope I can find the oil can, or I'm in for a jerky ride.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Just Say No
Logan is slowly but surely regaining some of the characteristics that make him such a wolverine to begin with. The thick, white scab on the back of his throat is enough to make me gag just looking at it but hey, those white blood cells are doing their job. He is slowly weaning down on his pain medication. This means less incidences like this one in the bathroom at 2 a.m. night before last:
Logan: "You don't have to wear that hat."
Me (in pjs, and certainly not wearing a hat): "Sure, babe. Whatever you say."
Logan: "You should just take it off. I don't like it."
Me (still not wearing a hat): "Let's just potty and get back in bed, buddy."
Logan: "I don't want to potty. (whining now) I want you to take off your hat. It's bothering me."
Me (tired and losing patience): "Touch my head, son. I am not wearing a hat."
Logan (with his hand on my bent head): "Wow. Your hair sure is soft, mom. (eyes fluttering and rolling back) Did I pee yet?"
I've seen my five year-old stoned, and it is not a comforting thing. He seems to enjoy it just a little too much for my teetotaler taste. Let's just pray he never figures out what else folks roll up and smoke.
Logan: "You don't have to wear that hat."
Me (in pjs, and certainly not wearing a hat): "Sure, babe. Whatever you say."
Logan: "You should just take it off. I don't like it."
Me (still not wearing a hat): "Let's just potty and get back in bed, buddy."
Logan: "I don't want to potty. (whining now) I want you to take off your hat. It's bothering me."
Me (tired and losing patience): "Touch my head, son. I am not wearing a hat."
Logan (with his hand on my bent head): "Wow. Your hair sure is soft, mom. (eyes fluttering and rolling back) Did I pee yet?"
I've seen my five year-old stoned, and it is not a comforting thing. He seems to enjoy it just a little too much for my teetotaler taste. Let's just pray he never figures out what else folks roll up and smoke.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
A Fate Worse Than Death
Another installment about my family. This one sheds light on my grandmother's background.
Papaw used to say that he had saved Mamaw from a fate worse than death: life as a Pope or a Smythe. “Every last one of them is a thief, liar or murderer,” he always reminded her.
In other words, he didn’t hold his in-laws in very high esteem.
There was some truth to his assertion: the Popes--a sprawling, brawling clan that Mamaw was raised in--was linked to just about every bad thing that had happened in the holler since memory began. The Smythes weren’t much better. No one knew where either family had originally come from (a sin among people who define themselves as much by where they’ve been as where they’re going), but they had had roots in the hills for generations longer than most other families. Not that this gave them any sense of refinement; they were known to be roustabouts, drinkers, gamblers and dancers. They were also cheats: a boy hired to work for them would most likely never see a nickel of his promised pay, or the sympathy of anyone else, for that matter. Everyone knew that the Popes and the Smythes were trash, and if you got mixed up with them then well, that was your problem.
Mamaw, of course, had no say to whom she was born, and unfortunately for her, she was both a Pope and a Smythe. Her mother, Sarah Pope, had given birth to her shortly after her own fifteenth birthday, an unwed Holiness girl brought to shame through her own wild ways. Mamaw's father was a Smythe. He was an older second cousin, already married and responsible for the three children that union had brought about. When news of the birth spread throughout the holler, more than a few folks shrugged their shoulders. What more could you expect out a Smythe and a Pope?
Horrified at her daughter’s very public and clearly unrepentant sinning, Mamaw’s grandmother took full charge of the newborn, who she named Naomi. Maybe a good, Biblical name would give her some sense, she reasoned. Her husband--a strong Christian himself--reminded her that it sure hadn’t done their own little girl much good, but it couldn’t hurt much either.
And so my grandmother was raised by Mamaw and Papaw Pope, who had somehow escaped the curse of their surname and managed to lead fairly uneventful and steady lives. The same couldn’t be said for little Naomi’s mother, Sarah. Set free by her parent’s willingness to bear the burden of her baby, Sarah fled from the holler in the middle of an September night. Only later did people realize that Andy Smythe, the brother of her former lover, was gone, too.
Andy owned a truck. That’s what most folks figured made Sarah take notice of him in the first place, because they clearly weren’t cut from the same cloth. He was a tall, looming man built like a wall, with shoulders wider than his waist and a smallish head set straight onto those shoulders without much hint of a neck. No one had ever considered him handsome--even by the standards of the day-- because, well, most people had never really considered him. Andy kept pretty well to himself. He hauled coal in his truck, farmed, fished and drove his Momma and Daddy around visiting on Sundays. He drew about as little notice as a bootlegger, but a bootlegger was actually trying to be invisible. To Andy, it just came natural.
Sarah did notice him though--apparently as much as people were noticing her. By all reports, she had shed every last vestige of respectability after the birth of baby Naomi. Everyone had known that she’d had a tendency to wildness in her from the time she was a little girl that begged for lace collars on her dresses, but it had been held in check by her Daddy’s belt and the good preaching at Calvary Holiness Church. Now that she’d walked through the shame of giving birth unwed, though, it was as if the shell of appearances had been burned away, leaving behind what had been hiding all along. Sarah had gotten her wiry figure back almost as soon as the midwife had cleared the door with her sack of blue half runner beans, and took to frequenting the card room that ran nightly in the back of the hardware store. More than once she was seen sneaking through the dark late at night with men stumbling from too much drink. Women in the holler started squinting their eyes when her name was mentioned. Everyone knows what that squint means in rural Kentucky: whore.
“I think she knew she was done for in these parts,” Mamaw says now. “Weren’t no use in acting like a good girl, when everyone knew she wasn’t.”
Sarah never told what it was that drew her to Andy Smythe, or what it was that drove her to leave with him that autumn. Not given to self-reflection or many words, she was happy to let conclusions be drawn and all sorts of rumors circulate around her well into her old age. The closest she ever came to admitting to the truth of what went on that summer came the last time I saw her alive. She was recovering from a broken hip, living with Mamaw and Papaw in an uncomfortably dependent state that nearly drove her mad even at over ninety years old.
“Let me tell you about that truck, Baby,” she said, using my family nickname. “That was ‘25, and trucks back then wasn’t as flashy as they are now. It was sticky with coal dust and smelled like a mine. Now, that truck that me and Andy got us in ‘75 ... that there was a truck I’d stick with a man for.”
Papaw used to say that he had saved Mamaw from a fate worse than death: life as a Pope or a Smythe. “Every last one of them is a thief, liar or murderer,” he always reminded her.
In other words, he didn’t hold his in-laws in very high esteem.
There was some truth to his assertion: the Popes--a sprawling, brawling clan that Mamaw was raised in--was linked to just about every bad thing that had happened in the holler since memory began. The Smythes weren’t much better. No one knew where either family had originally come from (a sin among people who define themselves as much by where they’ve been as where they’re going), but they had had roots in the hills for generations longer than most other families. Not that this gave them any sense of refinement; they were known to be roustabouts, drinkers, gamblers and dancers. They were also cheats: a boy hired to work for them would most likely never see a nickel of his promised pay, or the sympathy of anyone else, for that matter. Everyone knew that the Popes and the Smythes were trash, and if you got mixed up with them then well, that was your problem.
Mamaw, of course, had no say to whom she was born, and unfortunately for her, she was both a Pope and a Smythe. Her mother, Sarah Pope, had given birth to her shortly after her own fifteenth birthday, an unwed Holiness girl brought to shame through her own wild ways. Mamaw's father was a Smythe. He was an older second cousin, already married and responsible for the three children that union had brought about. When news of the birth spread throughout the holler, more than a few folks shrugged their shoulders. What more could you expect out a Smythe and a Pope?
Horrified at her daughter’s very public and clearly unrepentant sinning, Mamaw’s grandmother took full charge of the newborn, who she named Naomi. Maybe a good, Biblical name would give her some sense, she reasoned. Her husband--a strong Christian himself--reminded her that it sure hadn’t done their own little girl much good, but it couldn’t hurt much either.
And so my grandmother was raised by Mamaw and Papaw Pope, who had somehow escaped the curse of their surname and managed to lead fairly uneventful and steady lives. The same couldn’t be said for little Naomi’s mother, Sarah. Set free by her parent’s willingness to bear the burden of her baby, Sarah fled from the holler in the middle of an September night. Only later did people realize that Andy Smythe, the brother of her former lover, was gone, too.
Andy owned a truck. That’s what most folks figured made Sarah take notice of him in the first place, because they clearly weren’t cut from the same cloth. He was a tall, looming man built like a wall, with shoulders wider than his waist and a smallish head set straight onto those shoulders without much hint of a neck. No one had ever considered him handsome--even by the standards of the day-- because, well, most people had never really considered him. Andy kept pretty well to himself. He hauled coal in his truck, farmed, fished and drove his Momma and Daddy around visiting on Sundays. He drew about as little notice as a bootlegger, but a bootlegger was actually trying to be invisible. To Andy, it just came natural.
Sarah did notice him though--apparently as much as people were noticing her. By all reports, she had shed every last vestige of respectability after the birth of baby Naomi. Everyone had known that she’d had a tendency to wildness in her from the time she was a little girl that begged for lace collars on her dresses, but it had been held in check by her Daddy’s belt and the good preaching at Calvary Holiness Church. Now that she’d walked through the shame of giving birth unwed, though, it was as if the shell of appearances had been burned away, leaving behind what had been hiding all along. Sarah had gotten her wiry figure back almost as soon as the midwife had cleared the door with her sack of blue half runner beans, and took to frequenting the card room that ran nightly in the back of the hardware store. More than once she was seen sneaking through the dark late at night with men stumbling from too much drink. Women in the holler started squinting their eyes when her name was mentioned. Everyone knows what that squint means in rural Kentucky: whore.
“I think she knew she was done for in these parts,” Mamaw says now. “Weren’t no use in acting like a good girl, when everyone knew she wasn’t.”
Sarah never told what it was that drew her to Andy Smythe, or what it was that drove her to leave with him that autumn. Not given to self-reflection or many words, she was happy to let conclusions be drawn and all sorts of rumors circulate around her well into her old age. The closest she ever came to admitting to the truth of what went on that summer came the last time I saw her alive. She was recovering from a broken hip, living with Mamaw and Papaw in an uncomfortably dependent state that nearly drove her mad even at over ninety years old.
“Let me tell you about that truck, Baby,” she said, using my family nickname. “That was ‘25, and trucks back then wasn’t as flashy as they are now. It was sticky with coal dust and smelled like a mine. Now, that truck that me and Andy got us in ‘75 ... that there was a truck I’d stick with a man for.”
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Infertility is...
Hating the phrase, "...and we weren't even trying!" even when you love the people that are saying it.
Friday, October 12, 2007
One of those quizzes
My Blog Name is: Mary Grace/Books and Bairns
But people usually call me: Depends on who they are, now doesn't it? Dh calls me "Woman," dc call me "Mom," or (my preference) "Momma."
I was born: In a rather sooty part of southeastern Michigan
Until I wound up in: The more mountainous part of the wet Pacific NW
My occupation is/was: editor on a variety of projects that I now consider far too boring to relate to most folks. But at the time, boy, was it fun!
My favorite color is: red.
My favorite hobby is: writing, reading and cuddling with my honey.
My favorite season is: fall, when the leaves change.
A few favorite books are: "To Kill A Mockingbird," by Harper Lee, "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," by Rebecca Wells, "Oral History," by Lee Smith, "East of Eden," by Steinbeck, "Rainey," by Clyde Edgerton, most of the "New Stories from the South" collections.
Some of my favorite music is: (I admit that I'm all over the board here, people, so be prepared!) Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Third Day, Travis, the Beatles, the Verve, Wilco, bluegrass gospel, CCR ... (have I scared you yet?)
My favorite kinds of movies are: independent films, documentaries, epic adventures (such as LOTR), or silly comedies with little to no redeeming value (such as "The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.")
My favorite food indulgence is: chocolate molten cake.
My favorite drink indulgence is: hot chocolate, but friends have turned me on to pumpkin spice lattes and caramel macchiattos. Too bad I am too poor to indulge regularly!
My favorite dessert indulgence is: ummmm.... chocolate molten cake? Or J's pumpkin spice bars. YUM!
One weird thing about me is: I can pick up and drop accents at will.
One of my fantasies is: living on acreage, running a little farm and raisin' babies.
One of my pet peeves is: people who just don't get it.
But people usually call me: Depends on who they are, now doesn't it? Dh calls me "Woman," dc call me "Mom," or (my preference) "Momma."
I was born: In a rather sooty part of southeastern Michigan
Until I wound up in: The more mountainous part of the wet Pacific NW
My occupation is/was: editor on a variety of projects that I now consider far too boring to relate to most folks. But at the time, boy, was it fun!
My favorite color is: red.
My favorite hobby is: writing, reading and cuddling with my honey.
My favorite season is: fall, when the leaves change.
A few favorite books are: "To Kill A Mockingbird," by Harper Lee, "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," by Rebecca Wells, "Oral History," by Lee Smith, "East of Eden," by Steinbeck, "Rainey," by Clyde Edgerton, most of the "New Stories from the South" collections.
Some of my favorite music is: (I admit that I'm all over the board here, people, so be prepared!) Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Third Day, Travis, the Beatles, the Verve, Wilco, bluegrass gospel, CCR ... (have I scared you yet?)
My favorite kinds of movies are: independent films, documentaries, epic adventures (such as LOTR), or silly comedies with little to no redeeming value (such as "The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.")
My favorite food indulgence is: chocolate molten cake.
My favorite drink indulgence is: hot chocolate, but friends have turned me on to pumpkin spice lattes and caramel macchiattos. Too bad I am too poor to indulge regularly!
My favorite dessert indulgence is: ummmm.... chocolate molten cake? Or J's pumpkin spice bars. YUM!
One weird thing about me is: I can pick up and drop accents at will.
One of my fantasies is: living on acreage, running a little farm and raisin' babies.
One of my pet peeves is: people who just don't get it.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Post-Op
Logan is home--tonsil- and adenoid-free. The surgery went quickly, and the pre-operative procedures (IV, bp check, explanations, etc.) were extremely child-friendly. Logan handled it all with relative poise ... and lost all sense of five year-old decency once the heavier drugs hit his system. :-) To be expected!
Afterwards, he was treated to the ultimate joy: a video on the history of the White House, featuring a tour and introduction by George W. Bush. You really have to know my boy in order to understand the significance of this treasure! "Pooh and presidents," we laugh sometimes; two of Logan's most intense passions are pretty far apart on the spectrum of childhood interests. As far as we're concerned, the video was like the hand of God sweeping down into the recovery room. I mean really, why else would a video like that be there, among the copies of "Pinocchio," "Beauty and the Beast," "Men in Black," "Air Bud," and the like?
Afterwards, he was treated to the ultimate joy: a video on the history of the White House, featuring a tour and introduction by George W. Bush. You really have to know my boy in order to understand the significance of this treasure! "Pooh and presidents," we laugh sometimes; two of Logan's most intense passions are pretty far apart on the spectrum of childhood interests. As far as we're concerned, the video was like the hand of God sweeping down into the recovery room. I mean really, why else would a video like that be there, among the copies of "Pinocchio," "Beauty and the Beast," "Men in Black," "Air Bud," and the like?
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