I have a few New Year’s resolutions, some private, and a few that anyone may know:
1. No cell phone use when a family member is in the room. If I have to look at my phone with family, keep it to necessary correspondence and get off quickly.
2. Read every day.
3. Learn family members’ cell phone numbers.
4. Write to my grandmother once a month.
My early years in Arizona were intense and isolated. I didn’t have a lot of friends and I was with the kids all day, every day. I was home schooling and Richard had many church obligations on Sunday and some weekday evenings. One evening, Richard took the three boys camping and Paige was at a friend’s house watching movies. I realized I would be alone all evening, and none of my children needed me.
I sat on the couch, and the silence hovered all around me. The piano wasn’t being played. The dishes were done. No one was asking me for a cup of milk or a bowl of goldfish crackers. The accumulated fatigue from my lifestyle seemed to settle like a frost, and my body, used to constant motion and focus, took its cue and didn’t feel like doing ANYTHING. I couldn’t settle on what to do with this time alone. I had lost excitement for things other than parenting that I loved to do.
I had hit a wall of exhaustion, and it would take more than one night alone to sort things out. But I did. I wasn’t always exhausted, but there was a pessimism that hounded me. I hope my experience can be helpful to someone else.
Now that the fog of those early parenting years is gone, I see more distinctly how stretched I was. To be clear, I loved playing with, teaching, reading to, and spending time with my children. But it was also very difficult. Writing my worries about the kids and my doubts in my parenting choices in my journal was a healthy outlet. I’d come away from a good journal-writing session feeling like the problems were expressed and solutions were on the way. I rarely took time to write about the good things about parenting in my journal, though, and that was something that needed to change.
Being tired, even exhausted, is a real part of being a parent of young children. Difficulty doesn’t necessarily mean something is bad. Those early years are a temporary marathon. If I could do it again, I wouldn’t feel ashamed of my personal need for solitude. I didn’t want to give the impression to anyone, especially the kids, that I saw parenting as a burden. But parenting IS a burden; it is a worthy, beautiful burden, and like any burden, it needs to be set down sometimes. I was wrong to think that taking some time away from the kids was selfish. It taxed my mental health to deny myself time with Richard and deny myself time alone. It created impossible dilemmas in my marriage. My prayers suffered. I could physically do the things I needed to do, but my spirit was faltering. I had developed a bad attitude about so many things.
I found my way out over the next few years by making some very minor adjustments in my life. There is nothing religious in my formula except a search for joy. I didn’t pray more or make huge efforts in temple work. I just decided to focus on the happy side of my story. I was still a stay at home mom with 4 children to educate. Richard was still busy at church. We were still living in the desert. All that changed was my attitude. The change came gradually because I did the following (these are links to old posts)*:
*If you are a parent of young children, perhaps your needs are different than mine. While I needed solitude, maybe you need more time with friends. I needed independence; a housekeeper or regular babysitter would have been too hard for me to accept. You may be different. Perhaps help around the house would be just the thing. Pride and comparison can get in the way of finding joy, too. It seems to me that the best thing to do is make a list of your interests, gifts, limitations, and dreams and make a plan. Finding joy can be as basic as smiling at a belligerent toddler instead of getting angry, or finding time to do something you love, even for one minute.
Smile First
(An updated version of a post I wrote in 2012)
I watched a young child inch his way from the back of a crowded room to the front to get closer to his mother who was speaking at the head of the congregation at church. He sat down on the front row and gazed up at her, anticipating her return. When she finished speaking and began walking to her seat, the child, anxious to be with his mother, uttered a hopeful little, “Mama,” looking for a hug and a joyful reunion. She was embarrassed that he had been walking around during the meeting and her grim face showed that she was upset with him (and maybe the father who had allowed the boy to wander). As she picked him up in a hurried way, he read all of her signs and began to cry. She wasn’t happy to see him waiting for her on the front row, after all.
She did something that is easy to do when a child does something, innocent or not, that draws attention to us in a crowd: she forgot to smile first.
When I saw this, I recognized myself. All children make noise and act out. They should be taught how to behave in church and at restaurants and stores, but I wonder if my children felt rejection when I “shushed” them all of the time. I wanted to be admired socially as a good parent. My children have never been very noisy, but there are other social missteps that they have shown. How many times had I been embarrassed that my child would not participate in an activity with other children or had been an overly picky eater as a guest in someone’s home, and resorted to strongly whispered bribes, pleas, and orders to try to get them to just be like everybody else?
My children, who have now learned how to sit still during a meeting and eat a variety of foods, don’t pose the same challenges that they did when they were little. Is there a principle of parenting here that can be applied to teens? What is a teenage equivalent to wandering around during a church meeting? Clothing choices, hair styles, being disengaged at family social gatherings and mumbling instead of speaking clearly are ways that teenagers inadvertently cause parents some social angst. I’m trying to omit the thought, “What will other people think if I don’t show public disapproval for immature behavior?”
Over the past few years I have remembered this phrase, “Smile first and correct them later.” I’ve made it a point to show my children and the world that I love these kids more than I disapprove of them. It takes courage to stop worrying what other people might think of my parenting if I choose to smile first and to correct them away from the crowd.
Halloween feels different when teens are at parties and there is only one child at home to go trick or treating with. Mark is tremendously fun company and we enjoyed our walk through the neighborhood.
Have you read Bram Stoker’s Dracula? The description of Dracula includes the usual things you see in a classic costume, but one horrible detail is that he had hairy palms. Eww.
Timothy had no words to describe what he was dressed up to be, and neither have I. But the costume had the funny factor for sure.
Mark and I are pretty proud of the jack-o’-lantern we created.
The morning light of November 1 finds my shelves adorned with Pilgrims and Indians and expressions of thanks. Let the celebration of gratitude begin!
I realized the following:
“What are you working on, Mom?”
“Visiting Teaching routes. It’s my job to make these assignments. It’s really hard.”
“Let me see, Mom.” (He looks, shows some awe, and gives me a hug before going back to his assignment.)
This scene was brought to you today by the quality of empathy.
This (edited) movie:
I watched it twice. And liked it both times.
These books:
It’s about aging and dying, medicine and home. It is an important and good read.
This was good because it shatters the idea that we need to build powerful friendships before we can invite people to come to Christ.
This audiobook:
We actually listened to this in August but I keep remembering outrageous quotes. Some sentences you just need to hear to believe. The narrator also has a great Han Solo voice. This is actually not worth your time…unless you are on a long road trip with a preteen, in which case, it is gold.
Richard’s work party was held last Friday evening at a local theme park. Richard was out of town, so we went without him.
We gathered from the far reaches of our current domains to be together. Paige came up from school in Provo and we met Daniel at his job in Murray. Timothy turned down two invitations from friends to be with us. Mark skipped a baseball practice.
After much ado, we were together, driving up I-15 in the old black minivan. I switched songs on the radio based on the commentary from the back seats. Finally, we resorted to the classical station, only to hear Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, its pensive notes contrasting with the mood of the evening. Timothy made a joke about roller coasters in slow motion to match the melody and we all laughed, the frustrations and responsibilities of the day sliding off and revealing a truer version of ourselves.
During that drive, a familiar feeling came to my heart. I felt as I did during our drives in Arizona, seeking homeschool adventure in our old van, years ago. Triggered by the old, well-trod pattern togetherness, we laughed as we heard Timothy and Daniel’s protests against Adele’s songs on every radio station. The voices were deeper and no one was strapped in a car seat, but some essential feeling had come back during the drive.
It made me wonder if I will ever love a stage of life as much those years when we ran around the desert together. It made me sad that I hated the desert so much when we lived there. I didn’t appreciate what a gift that isolation was to our family. I always loved time with the kids, but who knew the backdrop of our adventures would also hold my heart? When will my point of reference for “wonderful” move to a new period in our lives?
I have changed during these four years, living in the mountains. I don’t lead out in adventures with the kids as I used to. Did I impart all my courage to them, or have I redirected my courage to other areas? I have always lived with big fears, but they, too seem to change. A new fear is that the best days with the kids all together are over.
I want to remember this night because it reminded me that despite all that has changed, some essence of our family dynamic remains strong. We still love our times together. I want it to be enough to know that, despite the reality that similar days are rare.
The late summer twilight-lit faces, spinning and rushing through the park that night are a memory I hope will join the ranks of the good old days when I look back on it, years from now. By then, I trust that these bittersweet thoughts will be dulled by time and experience and new joys. The light really was golden on this evening, perfect for capturing and framing good memories.
I just deleted an obnoxious post listing all the things I did yesterday. I listed them under categories: Things I did for my kids, husband, church, community, and self. Here is the breakdown of how long the paragraphs under these headings were:
So why did I delete the post? As I surveyed the intricacies of my day, it seemed to me that a lot of what I do is menial. A lot of what I do is repetitive. In all the listing and doing, I lost sight of the beautiful, most important parts of the day. What I want to remember about August 31, 2016 is not how many errands I ran, but who I ran the errands for and who I interacted with along the way. The most important things I did were not things, they were the interactions and connections I had with others.
Some reached out to me; I reached out to some; Others I visited, called, or wrote.
Here is a list of the people of August 31, 2016:
Wow, I didn’t realize how long this list would be. I am feeling really blessed to be surrounded by so many good people.
August has come, and the schools are sending us emails and mail and phone calls. In an act of solidarity with the spirit of summer, today Mark, Timothy, and I went on a search for Lego figures, specifically the rare Lego babies. We passed Pokémon GO players, fixated on their screens, keeping our heads high and alert for the small yellow packages in stores. On our fifth stop we finally found them, zealously guarded at a counter at a toy store.
The blind yellow packaging made it challenging to know which figure we were handling. We were joined by other seekers at the counter, one clearly more dexterously confident. I would take a good two minutes to handle a package, while our neighbor, who brokered a deal with the cashier to bring out the remaining stock of figures, cast aside packages quickly. When the boys and I thought we found a Lego baby, he offered to feel the package to validate it. Instant friend! Expert in his field. He did not disappoint. We came away with two Lego babies…and several other novice (not pictured) surprises.
Richard takes the boys on grand adventures. Mine are designed to be shorter, less dangerous, and closer to fast food restaurants. It was delightful to be a kid with a couple of my boys, opening Lego packages as soon as we got to the car and exclaiming joy or bewilderment at what we discovered. It was a simple 3 hours, full of conversations, and I’m really glad we found something, or else the boys may not have agreed it was so fun. I was just happy to be with them, and not driving them to school and back.
They even offered to let me keep a Lego baby. My heart melted.