Just because you’re not talking about it doesn’t mean you’re not thinking about it …

Christmas, 2009.  The recession is in full-swing, and yet, we had a merry, merry Christmas.  Why?  Because we are optimistic.  My children, ages 16, 14, 11 and 7 have all been raised to believe that life it good.  Life is what you make of it.  Life is NOT about giving IN to but rather, ABOUT MAKING.  We have made dozens of cookies and wrapped dozens of presents … My family has been blessed with MORE than we need and yet, when you look at all of the THINGS, you realize they are only THINGS afterall.  We don’t need THINGS.  What we need is each other.  Someone to care about whether or not you have on long pants or short.  Someone to care whether or not your ears are cleaned.  Someone who knows you well enough to know what food you like, what you prefer, what music you like, what tickles your funny bone … It was a Merry Christmas because this remarkable group of kids I am privileged to be at the helm of … make me so happy deep down inside day in and day out … even when I am at my wits’ end they make me happy inside … It is a Merry Christmas to have someone love you.  I have four children who love me … I have fours someones who love me unconditionally … No, five, that remarkable man himself.  What more do I need?

Is it me or did Christmas come fast this year?  In my neighborhood, people yanked down their autumn wreaths as fast as Thanksgiving was over and up went the lights, festive displays and trees in the windows.  Can it be we need a little Christmas right this very minute?  I know we do at my house!  December first rolls around and my 7-year-old reminded me of it: “Mama!  We have to put up the calendar!” he said to me urgently at the dinner table.  Forkful of food suspended, I looked at him and smiled.  ”You’re right!  I almost forgot!”  While we’ve not decorated at our house just yet (we have to DO it, Mom, we have to DO it! Thomas insisted) we right then and there marched upstairs to the attic to find the box with the Advent calendar and hung it near the kitchen table, as always. Thomas stood there for about an hour moving little items in and out of their pockets … visions of Christmas dancing in his head.  He got me in the mood … Haul out the holly!

Never seen Nashville more lovely than this fall … golden, russet hues everywhere, swirling all around. While I’d love to linger longer on my back porch with the late afternoon sun on my face, I know there’s so much more calling my name … not that it’s more important … it’s just stuff that needs doing.  Like the laundry.  Like the bathrooms.  Like the dinner.  Like the jackets that need inspecting as the days grow cooler … I can just see my kids’ wrists jutting out from the sleeves, especially my 13-year-old who has the longest legs and arms imaginable … so much longer than only last year.  He is a handsome boy in all his lankiness … but how did we get here, I wonder?  Where did the 365 days a year go from the time he was born up till now?! That’s 4,700 something days!  It has all run together and resulted in today.  Today he’s running hard playing soccer here in the backyard.  Today my 7-year-old is having his piano lesson in the living room.  Today my 15-year-old is sharpening her pencil, studying for tomorrow’s Spanish test.  Today my 11-year-old is shooting a capgun on the other side of the yard, holding onto his boyhood.  I have been impatient as I’ve raced from day to day, trying to make things work for all six of us.  If I were a more patient mother, could I slow this all down?  Is it possible to slow down childhood so I could enjoy my days with them even more?  The heck with the laundry.  I’m staying here in the sun and listening to the sound of my life all around me.

My kids can’t wait for the moment when I let them drag our Halloween boxes out of the attic.  I used to do it myself and kinda taught them what to do when they were little, but, well, it’s taken on a life of its own now that they are 15, 13, 11 and 7.  They don’t need their Ma at all!  In fact, I wasn’t even home when the box party began.  Oh, they asked me if they could … that’s about as far as the politeness went.   When I drove home in the afternoon, all of the front bushes in front of our house were spread far and wide with sticky spider web, a graveyard with tombstones was to the left of the front door and there was Fred … Fred, our ghoulish homemade fellow consisting of old jeans and an old flannel shirt stuffed with wads of newspaper and tied at the wrists and ankles with rope, straw jutting out at all orifices, and a styrofoam head with a scary mask plopped over it, hat atop and gray hair framing the face … we love Fred!  Ah, Halloween.  For my kids, the scarier the better.  But for the rest of the folks on our block with lovely mums and pretty decor gracing their lawns … well, we’re just a houseful of nuts, I guess.  The jumbo spider climbing up one of our pillars says it all: Kids are in charge come Halloween at THIS house!

On this day seven years ago I  delivered my fourth baby … an older mom, a wiser mom.  My fourth-born is seven today and he started his day with birthday presents on the kitchen table … running down the stairs in the dim morning light to see what awaited him … will he remember?  Will he remember someday when he’s grown and out of our home the birthday mornings we shared?  Where all of us get up a little early to watch him open presents right after we all sing a bleery-eyed happy birthday song?  It’s HIS day.  No one  is allowed to yell at the birthday boy.  He gets to pick what Mama makes for dinner and pick the kind of cake he wants me to bake … and somehow I will manage to bake that cake so that it smells yummy in his home when he arrives after school today.  One of the best parts of being a mom are the little details and moments you get to create year after year … for your birthday boys and girls.

Was that me that posted all of that nonsense about diving into activities?  That’s funny — this morning I’m praying for rain so something will get canceled!  This is the torture of motherhood … wanting all that is possible for your family but at the same time, not too much.  Sometimes I wish that all we were interested in was going to school, reading good books, enjoying dinner together then going to bed early.  The treadmill of life goes too fast!!!

We are an incredibly active family and somebody oughta stop us!  We’re doing football, soccer, ice hockey, piano, voice, four of us are in two different plays … and we hardly have time to complain … Instead of complaining about being busy — that is such an old, lame excuse! — I am going full-steam ahead toward embracing our active-ness.  We are a household of doers and do we will!  Let’s get past this notion of being “overscheduled.”  In today’s households that means nothing!  We are all of us incredibly active and so dive in, say I.  Dive in I do!

My 15-year-old daughter was just 5 years old yesterday … this reminded me:  Lying on the sofa in the living room with Strep throat making is hard to swallow and a fever of 102, she requested to watch “The Swan Princess,” her favorite animated movie from her childhood.  She hadn’t seen it since she was a very little, little girl.  She watched it, sucking on sore-throat relief suckers and every so often oohing or ahhing over something … She reminisced with her feelings and reminded me of the time when she was my little sweetie 5-year-old who brought me caterpillars and dandelions. While she watched, I sat on a stool in my kitchen, typing away.  I couldn’t help but think that I loved this.  That my little girl was home, not grown and beautifully developed into the 15-year-old that she is … but 5-years-old … and I was a lot, lot younger!

Thoughts on a rainy Saturday morning in September …

About one hour before departure for ice hockey/slumber party pick up!

Just for the record, and because I co-own a small business — a company of productive individuals to whom we offer healthcare  — I want to pipe in that my family enjoys excellent care.  I do not feel at all crushed by healthcare; in fact, I worry that my excellent family and individual care will be tampered with should health care get passed any time soon.  

    While we need reform and more ideas brought forth on how to do that, listen, I can pick up my phone right now and call my pediatrician if I need to.  Whether it’s my own pediatrician or one of the other doctors in her practice, the doctor on call will return my call.  Whenever I need too, if I have a concern about any of my four children,  if I need to bring a sick child in, I can always get him seen!  I take the kids for annual well child visits … sometimes get behind with camp physical stuff … But have never once thought that my healthcare was subpar or that my family or colleagues were throwing copays and deductibles at something that doesn’t work … 

My personal care is excellent.  I get reminders to come in for my annual.  I can call any time and speak to my doctor’s nurse if needed.  I am cared for and I work hard for my coverage.  While completely aware of the income disparities in our country I think it’s appropriate to say we ALL count.  I do not think I should have to revert to lesser care — or even blindly go in that direction without the means to pay for it (speaking of the national debt)!

Eight years ago today I was driving to work at the magazine, coming around at the split of 40 and 65 to get off at what was then Metro Center Boulevard.  I had a bunch of balloons in the car and a black bean and mandarin salad I’d made for our potluck baby shower for Mandy at work who would be moving away to Florida.  My little kids were all at school; the crisp, early September day had barely begun.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was filled with a sense of dread that completely overwhelmed me.  I remember I wanted to cry and then I just kicked myself for letting who-knows-what get to me: busy life, kids, work, go, go, go.  Hey, a mom can cry when she needs to. But I brushed that aside, got off at my exit and drove to our offices … Mothers go through ups and downs all day long … THAT’S LIFE AS A MOM.  So, with colorful balloons and a grin on my face I pulled open the glass doors of Nashville Parent and saw our publisher sitting at his desk — still.  And this is a guy who is never still.  His face was ashen.  ”You don’t know, do you?” he said, picking up on my upbeat demeanor.  ”The World Trade Center was hit by a plane …”  And by the way I said it I knew it was bad.  I thought about my distress on the highway … just moments before … I said, “When?”  He said, “Just a few minutes ago …” I moved through sales to production where we have company parties … everyone I work with — my friends and colleagues — were around the conference table covered with party fixings: lovely lunch dishes, a pretty cake, ice and drinks.  Only everyone was very still.  I walked over to the TV they were watching, all sitting around that table … I saw the smoke pouring from the tower … thought about how I had dinner once at Windows on the World up there … dropped to my knees.   The party was spent that way, all of us, staring, crying, thinking out loud.  Horror.  Children.  Home.  Pain.  People.  Innocent Americans.  Today I remember vividly.  I will never forget.  Or how when I went home that night I hugged my children and thought about how much they didn’t know and how much I didn’t want them to know.   My children were 7, 5 and 3 then.  My youngest had not been born yet. Today they tell me they can remember the exploding buildings.  They remember the sense of danger.  And my daughter, now 15, said this morning that the idea of danger has never left her to this day.