Confrontation Sensation

I hate feeling like I can’t do anything right. No matter which way I turn, whatever I say, it’s going to be wrong. Or received wrong, at the least. How do I get past this? I shouldn’t have to deal with this as a grown adult. This stuff is so childish.

I hate this feeling that I get in the pit of my stomach, this sick, aching, burning sensation. I know what it is. It’s the Confrontation Sensation. The feeling that I should say something, but what? And what does it matter? I can keep laying down, taking it, trying to work around it. Or, I can call it like it is, call it on the carpet, and lay it all out once and for all. Either way it’s wrong. And either way, it’s never over.

I’m not feeling sorry for myself, not really. Just feeling sorry in general, and wishing that being sorry was enough. Even when half the time I don’t know what it is I’m sorry for.

A Corner Table

Have I mentioned that I hate change? Those of you who know me well, will know that, at least.

Jessi and I started a “play date” of sorts over 4 years ago. Ty and Chloe were still in their Graco infant car seats, not even old enough to take part in the playing. Eli, Ashton, and Kaelin toddled around... Eli still in love with The Wiggles, Ashton still in curls, Kaelin’s hair still falling in wings. Barely old enough to walk, much less play together. And yet they loved each other. And, probably (ok, well definitely...), Jessi and I used the whole “play date” thing as a way to get some sanity.

Ty and Chloe choked on their first french fries on those play dates. Potty trained, learned to climb, played American Idol, shared their first little kiss.



Missy joined us over a year ago. I, of course, already having established that I hate change, wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to our circle, and to me.

That little corner table in Chick-fil-A has seen a lot. Too much. So much, in fact, that if it were human, we’d be forced to kill it. It’s seen a lot of laughter. Inside jokes, flirting, hysterical, insane *FREAKOUT* moments, drink spills, food spills, and quite possibly some blood spilling too.

Our table’s seen a lot of tears, as well. Probably more than any table has a right to. Tears over divorce, over fights, over unexpected pregnancy, and first days of school. Tears over birth, and death, and loss. Tears over broken hearts, broken promises, even broken nails if it caught us in the wrong week. It’s seen hugs, and cold shoulders, high fives, and fist pumps.


I’m going to miss my little corner table. It’s been a friend, a safe haven, a reason to get through the week. It’s helped forge two of the strongest friendships of my life.


And I’m still thinking maybe we should kidnap it... just to keep it from talking, of course.

An Elephant Never...

I hope you don’t get offended if I call you an elephant.

You see, at a recent Bible study, we were encouraged to let others into our lives, to trust in and lean on each other. This isn’t really an uncommon exhortation at a Bible study, and one I’ve learned to shrug off along with other advice that I feel doesn’t “apply” to me, such as color coordinating your laundry hampers, and planting flowers in your front yard to spruce it up.

However, this particular speaker got around my shrugging shoulders, by using an analogy I’ll never forget (Ha! Elephant joke...).

Elephants are some of the most family oriented mammals, along with humans and primates. They stick together. Not just out of necessity. Out of affection. Out of a desire, even a need, for companionship.

The speaker told us that there have been proven cases that when an elephant has been wounded or incapacitated, unable to walk, to keep up with the herd, the herd will slow down or even stop altogether to ensure that she can stay with them. Not only that, if she falls and cannot get up, the other family members will come beside her, lift her up, and hold her up until she can walk again. In essence, saving her life, because the weight of a wounded elephant will keep her from getting back up again if she falls.

Wow.

I wonder if that injured elephant wished they would just leave her to die. I wonder if there were times when she was so hurt, so weary, so miserable, that she would have rather they just left her in the dust, to fret and mourn. I wonder if she lashed out at her sisters, her friends, trying to shove their shoulders away from her, screaming at them, hating them for forcing her to be strong.

I wonder if she ever told them thank you.

If you have ever been one of my elephants, and you know who you are, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If it were not for you, I wouldn’t - couldn’t - have gotten back up. All the numerous times I have fallen in the dust, wounded, weary, unable to keep myself moving, you have been there for me. You’ve forced me up. You’ve wrapped your arms around me, stood with me, shoulder to shoulder, and never let me collapse back into that dusty heap. Even when I tried to shove you away, when I lashed out at you with words that I didn’t mean, you stayed.

Thank you for staying.

I love you, my elephant.

Lessons From an Almost Grown-Up

A few months ago a friend encouraged me to enter an essay contest in a magazine, with the topic being "When Did You First Realize You Were a Grown-Up?" Well, I entered, but didn't win (thanks for the vote of confidence, though, Missy!)... So here is the essay I wrote (I've changed it just a little bit to bring it up to date):




When I was 19 years old, Jeremy and I were faced with the daunting task of informing our respective parents that I was pregnant. My future mother in law was kind enough to inform me, “You’ll have to grow up in a hurry now!”
There was a scary thought. Growing up. Oh sure, I was about to be married, but that was just playing house. Having to take care of a baby? This was something completely foreign to me. I spent my entire pregnancy in mortal terror of this concept of “growing up”. Like Wendy Moira Angela Darling, I wanted to stay young, and the inevitability of motherhood was as horrifying as Mr. Darling’s dire edict banishing his daughter from the nursery (although in my case, I was being banished TO the nursery). If Peter Pan had come knocking on my window that night, I would gladly have flown out after him without a backward glance.
Still, I braved my way through it, shaking in my proverbial boots every step of the way (or rather, my comfortable walking shoes and support hose). Perhaps a part of me thought that when they laid that little whimpering bundle in my tired arms, I would feel the grown up effect starting to work. On the contrary, I felt smaller, younger, and “scareder” than I’d ever felt.
It’s been over six years and two more kids since that life-altering occasion, and I’m still waiting for this momentous evidence of “growing up”. As a mother of three, I feel like I’ve got the part down fairly well. I feed my kids when they’re hungry, bathe them when they’re dirty, kiss boo-boos, and cuddle them at bedtime. I give them the “No cookies for breakfast speech”, and Lord knows I’ve got the “because I’m the mom and I said so” speech down.
Before I had kids, I thought I had it all together; I thought I was a full-blown adult, ready to take on the world and all it’s problems. Now I realize I can barely handle my own problems, much less the problems of a universe tilting out of control. Every morning I wake up, feeling like that scared 19-year-old girl starting all over again. There are so many things that can happen in a day to bring back that feeling of complete bewilderment, of total helplessness. A flat tire while my husband was out of town, and which I had no clue how to change. A mouse in my pantry (also while my husband was out of town; why does it always work that way?), and I couldn’t for the life of me get that trap set. A terrifying moment in Target when I couldn’t find my 3-year-old daughter: she had had a potty accident and hidden in the clothes rack because she was embarrassed. All these things add up to a huge deficit in my feelings of “grown up-edness”.
I’ve tried to pinpoint a moment when I thought maybe the growing up had begun: Was it the first time I paid car insurance? The first time I looked at my youngest brother and realized he was almost a foot taller than me? Or the time my 5 year old son asked me how old I was, and when I responded, “25”, he said, “Oh. Ouch!” Or when he started kindergarten and I realized my family of late sleepers would have to wake up at 6:30 in the morning every day for what seems like the rest of our lives (There was a responsible grown up moment at it’s very worst). Maybe the first time I really started to feel grown up was when I went to the ABC store all by myself and bought my first bottle of liquor all for myself (You may laugh, but this was actually very recent). Sometimes I watch the little teenage girls in the mall, and marvel at their youngness. I always feel like I’m stuck at perpetual 17, until I see those girls. Then my age hits me with the force of a 50-ton tub of anti-wrinkle cream. I remember being 17; thinking I was so grown up and I owned the world. It’s a scary day when the 17 year olds look young. Really though, all this is relating getting older to growing up. And we all know that age does not equal maturity. I really believe that growing up happens in a different way entirely than simply growing older.
I feel grown up when I make cookies with my kids. I feel grown up when I see my son teaching my baby girl how to play peek-a-boo. I feel grown up when my daughter grabs my hand and asks me to help her twirl. I feel grown up when I sense that deep love stir in my heart, warm my stomach, and claw its way up to tighten my throat with emotion every time I look at my kids (Okay, let's be honest: maybe not every time). I feel grown up every time I manage not to have a temper tantrum when I walk in the house and it looks like a toy store has thrown up all over it. And I feel grown up when my parents tell me they’re proud of the job I’m doing as a mother, when most days I feel as though it will only take one more mini-crisis for me to crack under the pressure.
These may seem like boring, insignificant, every day life occurrences to some. But I believe that that’s where the real growing up takes place. When we can sit through twenty-seven games of Candyland; when we can let go of a ten year old grudge just so we can teach our kids about the true power of forgiveness; and when we finally realize that growing up really isn’t all about the when but the how. I suppose that when I embraced that simple truth, the growing up really began.

On Raising Grace-challenged Daughters

Clumsiness is a rather aggressive gene in my family. It runs rampant in the women on my mother’s side.

It’s unfortunate that I seem to have passed this gene on to my girls. Ashton can navigate a cluttered room, jump over a basket of laundry, do a kick-flip off the side of the couch and land it without a scratch. Poor Chloe, however, cannot so much as walk across a flat surface without tripping over her own pigeon-toed feet (which also runs in my family).

I myself, cannot walk through a room without getting injured somehow. Most of the time I realize I have bruises with no memory of how they got there. Growing up I was always gangly and knobbly-knee’d. Unfortunately I haven’t outgrown the “gorilla arms” of my adolescence, inviting even more accidents- my elbows and hands are my most commonly injured appendages. I like to think that I’m “endearingly clumsy”. True, Jeremy does often call me a klutz, but it seems to be said more out of exasperation than affection.

And now it seems as though Atleigh has inherited the Klutz Gene just as strongly. At first, I attributed it to her young age, her “toddlerhood”. Then, I thought maybe she had a cold, affecting her balance. But after having witnessed her fall out of a shopping cart, off the couch, out of the SAME folding chair four times, slam the toilet lid on her fingers, drop a toolbox full of Matchbox cars on her foot, poke herself in the eye with a hairbrush, step on HER OWN fingers, and pull a shelf-full of books down on herself, all within the last 24 hours, I have been forced to accept that she too, will live life with the ability to find an injury-inducing corner in a round room.

I guess the only thing I can do is prepare her for a lifetime of bruised shins and tingling funny bones, and teach her the proper way to hiss “SHhhhhh-OOT” under her breath when there are children around.