The RDP prompt for today is kindness. I searched my draft folder and found this incomplete post that had been written in October 2011.
When I read it this morning, I remembered some of the difficult circumstances of that time. It was years before my brother died, years before I was helping care for my mother, years and years before my father died.
Just because I wasn’t dealing with death, it doesn’t mean life was easy. I had my hands full in other ways. My children at that point ranged in age from 7 to 26. I was homeschooling two, had one in public school, some in college, some working, one married.
Without further ado, here is the unnamed post which I will call “Growing Pains.” If it feels incomplete, maybe it is.
One of the most profound things I heard Andrew Peterson say was not at Hutchmoot, but at a concert in Cortland. He was talking about his books, the Wingfeather Saga. (Note: he was still in the process of writing the series. The final book wasn’t published until 2014.) I didn’t write this down or record it so it may not be verbatim, but I think it’s fairly close. He said,
The main character in these stories is a boy named Janner. When I started writing, I saw the man he would become, but I knew that he would have to go through many trials and difficult situations to become that man. I knew that he would have to suffer some terrible things…
I have been thinking about some of the difficulties my own children have had to endure. They are rather small in comparison to Janner’s battles with Fangs and Gnag the Nameless, but they shape my children nonetheless.
And then I started thinking about that whole idea conversely. If my children didn’t suffer anything, how would they turn out?
For instance, in order to develop perseverance, they need to stick with difficult situations and work them out. If I allow them to quit every time the going was hard or not fun or required something of them, they would become the kind of adults who always take the easy path, who quit, who are unreliable.
In order for them to develop compassion, they need experience some hard times and also experience unwarranted kindness to them. I imagine that the guy in the Good Samaritan story who had been attacked by robbers didn’t later cross to the other side of the road to avoid helping someone who was different from him, although without his experience, he may very well have looked the other way instead of helping.
The poem is made up of quatrains with an aabb rhyme scheme. Syllable count 3-7-7-1. Lines one and two rhyme on a two-syllable word; lines three and four rhyme on a monosyllabic word.
I am so proud of you. Each of you has pursued something that you love. Some of you have found a career. Some of you are still searching, but I feel like you are on the right path and that’s the biggest part of the struggle.
Remember when you were growing up and I was doing a pretty crappy job of homeschooling? Sometimes I look back on that and am amazed at how far you’ve gone in spite of me.
Did I check your workbooks? Once in a blue moon.
Did I make sure that you wrote those book reports? Not nearly often enough.
Did I follow through on those papers you were supposed to write? Sometimes. (Epic fail in that department was that time I bet one of you that some contestant would not win on Survivor. “If they win,” I said, “you don’t have to do finish that paper.” What an idiot bet. Of course, they won.)
When you complained that something was too hard or that you couldn’t do it because you thought you weren’t smart enough, did I tell you that it’s not how smart you are, it’s how you’re smart? Yes — often enough that it elicited eye-rolls whenever I said it.
But I truly believe that with all my heart. Each one of you has a unique set of gifts and talents. If you can learn to put those to work, you will feel fulfilled with whatever your career choice is.
The first time I heard the expression “You do you” I didn’t like it. I thought it was said in a condescending way, with a hint of a sneer.
Of course that was years ago and I don’t remember the exact words leading up to that expression, but here’s the gist of what I remember — That thing that you’re talking about doing is the kind of thing I can’t picture any sane or normal person even dreaming about. It’s absolutely nuts. But, you do you.
Yesterday, I sat in the lobby of the gym and was telling someone about you. “I’m so proud of them all,” I told her. You’ve started your own business, pursued higher education, settled in new areas, changed career focus a few times as you hone what you really want to pursue, studied and studied some more, overcome difficult life circumstances, found delight in new areas, and followed your dreams.
I am so very very proud of you. You’ve all done a really good job being you.
Love,
Mom
We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?
Advent sidenote: The ultimate you-do-you is seen at Christmas and at Easter. Jesus’ life is bookended with chapters that don’t make sense. I know this didn’t actually happen, but can you picture the eye-rolls in heaven when the plan was revealed — a virgin mother, traveling near her due-date, turned away from the inn, and the Son of God bing born in a stable. That thing that You’re talking about doing is the kind of thing I can’t picture any sane Son of God even dreaming about. It’s absolutely nuts. But, You do You. And He did.
This weekend I was getting some things ready for a bridal shower for my oldest daughter and came across a notebook in which I had written this quote: “This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be.” ~~ William Willimon
I looked up the source of the quote and read through the whole article which you can find here: From a God We Hardly Knew. In short, it is a Christmas message about Isaiah 9:6 — “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” — in which Willimon makes the point that Ahaz, in the original context, was looking for an army and instead God promised a child.
A bridal shower and Mother’s Day seem appropriate days for me to think about my children. I heard from all eight this weekend. Plus all three daughters-in-law. I am rich indeed.
And I never could have imagined this.
Ever.
There was a point in time when I had been told that I wouldn’t have children without using fertility drugs.
Okay, I thought, a family is not in my future.
One of my favorite professors in college had encouraged me more than once to pursue medical school. “I don’t usually do this,” she had said. “I’m usually trying to dissuade students who think they want to be doctors.”
But I got married two weeks after graduating college. I supported my husband while he finished his schooling and began his first job. Once he was settled in, I began thinking about medical school and figuring out which classes I still needed — Calculus and Organic Chemistry. I contacted the nearest university to find out how to enroll.
Then I found out I was pregnant.
When you’re in high school, the guidance counselor never suggests motherhood as a career track. When you’re in college, the career office doesn’t suggest it either. Honestly, it wasn’t even a blip on my life radar.
Yet here I am today to tell you that being a mother — a full-time stay-at-home mother, who decorated funny-looking birthday cakes and washed-dried-and-folded mountains of laundry, who read the same books over and over until I could “read” them with my eyes closed, who played road-sign spelling games to entertain on long road trips and refused to get an entertainment system in our minivan because I WAS the entertainment system, who shopped at yard sales and thrift stores and sorted through bags of hand-me-down clothing because living on one income isn’t easy — being a mother was, and IS, the absolute best thing in the whole world.
Children are the gift I didn’t know I needed.
In addition to all the dandelion bouquets and crayon artwork, I received from them the very best lessons in patience, kindness, forgiveness, generosity, understanding, perseverance, creativity, humor — and that list could go on and on.
There’s a part of me that feels like I need to apologize. I know that not everyone has this opportunity. Not everyone can have children. Not everyone can afford to stay home. Life happens in different ways to each of us.
But I’m not going to apologize. I’m simply going to be grateful.
Yesterday, I talked with a friend who had been a guidance counselor. I had asked his advice regarding one of my kids who needed a little direction.
“What’s your goal?” he asked.
I answered with the goal I have for the child in question.
“No,” he said. “That’s your goal for your child. I want to know your goal for Sally.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Just think about it,” he said, and waited about 2.5 seconds before he moved on. But he circled back to that question a couple more times.
“This feels like a guess-what-I’m-thinking question,” I said one of the times.
“What are you looking for?” I asked another of the times.
In the end, I felt incredibly frustrated.
What’s my goal? Sheesh. (I wrote that just before bed last night, still trying to process the whole conversation. Then I wrote about another 250 words expressing the same sentiment.)
…What are we even talking about? Are you asking about my goal as a parent — which has been my primary job for the past 38 years? Are you asking about my goal at the gym? Or at the house where I still have a thousand things to do? Is it my goal for today? This week? This month? This year?…
To be kind? To be a lifelong learner? To love my family?
What’s my goal? Seriously? I don’t know.
This is going to make me crazy.
I walked to the post office this morning. It’s about two and a half miles there. I thought and thought and thought while I walked.
Karl once told me that one of the doctors he works with has three goals for every day: to learn something, to teach something, and to laugh. I wish I was clever enough to come up with three succinct goals like that. Even if I had, I don’t think it would answer the question being asked by my friend.
Anyway, my three would be something like to listen, to see, and to be kind.
Again, I’m sure it’s not what he was looking for.
I copied another Thomas Merton quote into my journal the other day. “Therefore if you spend your life trying to escape the heat of the fire that is meant to soften and prepare you to become your true self, and if you try to keep your substance from melting as if your true identity were to be hard wax, the seal will fall upon you and crush you. You will not be able to take your true name and countenance, and you will be destroyed by the event that was meant to be your fulfillment.”
Merton was talking about sealing wax and the way it will crumble if it’s not adequately prepared for the stamp. Mary had just sealed a bunch of envelopes with wax. In fact, that’s what I had walked to the post office to mail. The seals were beautiful because the wax had been melted and was ready to receive the imprint.
But to say that preparing my heart for God’s imprint on it is my goal doesn’t sound right either. Plus, I don’t think it’s what my friend was asking.
Walking is such good therapy, especially walking on a country road, where the deer bound off into the woods when they see me coming and the ducks fly out the giant puddle in the cornfield in groups of 6 or 8 quacking and complaining at the inconvenience of my passing. A deer skeleton lay in the ditch. Last week, it had probably been covered with snow. A small collection of broken car parts were strewn about the ditch a little further down the road. A lone Lexus symbol at least told me what kind of car it had been. I wondered if the deer and the car parts came from the same mishap.
In the churning of thoughts about all these things — the deer, the ducks, the skeleton, the Lexus, the hawk circling over the field, the winter’s worth of garbage now revealed in the ditches — I kept circling back to the question: What is my goal?
Career goals for a stay-at-home mom are not a thing. Some days feel like survival. Some days feel like you won the lottery.
When my oldest son was born, what was my goal? To see him grow up, become independent, productive, happy. To help him discover what he loves and what he’s passionate about. In the late ’90s, he loved computers and knew he wanted to do something related to them. We had dial-up internet and I told him that if he wanted time on the internet, he would have to get up at 6 AM because I didn’t want him tying up the phone line all day. Doggone if he didn’t get up at 6 every morning so he could have his hour on the internet. Now it’s his livelihood.
For each of the kids, that has been the puzzle. I would watch them and ask them, “What do you love?” Two have gone into nursing. One works in the realm of outdoor recreation. Three are currently in college or graduate school. One is still figuring it all out.
I feel immense gratitude at the fact that most of them have found their way.
I love talking to them all on adult levels. I love when they call me. Or come visit. I love family Zoom calls and game nights.
I think my goal, maybe, has always been to have adult children who still love me in spite of the thousand mistakes I have made as a parent, to have children who are settled and happy with the choices they have made with their lives, to have children who still occasionally want my advice, to have children who share their lives with me.
I’ll try that goal on my friend and see if it works.
I vaguely remember several months ago Mary telling me about this thing. It was some YouTube people or something. But it was in Schenectady.
“Go ahead and get some tickets,” I told her, “and we’ll figure it out when it gets closer.”
It got closer.
And closer.
I forgot all about it.
About a week before, Mary said, “Remember that thing?”
I didn’t.
She reminded me.
“I don’t know how we can do it,” I said. “Could you try to sell the tickets?”
The morning of she came to me with the saddest of sad faces. Don’t misunderstand — she didn’t beg. I could see that this was important to her so I came up with a plan. It turns out we’ll-figure-it-out-when-it-gets-closer means that I drive her.
“What is this thing we’re going to?” I asked while driving that night. Mary tried to explain, but I am NOT of the YouTube generation. I don’t understand it. At all.
We arrived in Schenectady, parked the car, and Mary said, “I think we should just follow all the teenage girls.”
So we did.
Truthfully, I still don’t know what it was I went to. Screaming girls? Two guys on stage? The closest analogy I could come up with is Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
I feel asleep during the show. At one point I think they showed a picture of the most disinterested parent, and I was surprised that it wasn’t a picture of me.
But I tried.
And I rewrote “The Things We Do For Love” in honor of that night.
“Hey, Mom, remember when I bought a couple tickets
To hear some YouTube guys putting on a show?
You said that I could go, so I bought two.”
(The things we do for love, the things we do for love)
“Hey, Mom, I need someone to drive me to the show now.
Remember? YouTube guys? Their names are Dan and Phil.”
I looked at Mary’s face and knew this was
A thing I’d do for love (the things we do for love)
Like driving to a show, when you know
It’s a long way to go
And your eyes are drooping ‘cause you’re pretty tired
But you love the teenage girl that’s by your side
At the Proctor girls are squealing
And I get a sinking feeling
Whooo are Phil and Da-an?
How do I stay awake?
Ooh — I’m feeling groggy. Must not doze.
Like driving to a show, when you know
It’s a long way to go
And your eyes are drooping ‘cause you’re pretty tired
But you love the teenage girl that’s by your side —
At the Proctor girls are squealing
And I get a sinking feeling
Ooh — I love my daughter
Ooh — but Dan and Phil?
Ooh — I couldn’t tell you which was which
And so I fell asleep while Dan and Phil were on-stage.
I saw the paint balls and the guy strapped to the wheel,
But I can’t tell you much about the show –
‘twas a thing I did for love (a thing I did for love)
Dan and Phil — photo credit Gage Skidmore, from 2014 VidCon
In case you’re not familiar with the original song —
Yesterday I ran into someone at the pool that I hadn’t seen in years — Bridget‘s father.
Bridget was on the first team that I coached and I still think back on her fondly. In fact, I had just been telling Laurel about Bridget the other day.
Bridget held all her team records with open hands. When Helen was quite young, Bridget told her to go break all those records. It was such a gift, so encouraging. Helen went on to break quite a few of them.
Anyway, Bridget’s father, Mike, asked about my father. I told him that I was staying with my father to take care of him.
“It’s such a privilege, don’t you think?” he asked.
I nodded in agreement.
Those were words I needed to hear.
Sometimes caregiving doesn’t feel like a privilege. It feels more like a chore. When I was home with small children, there were days when I would look out the window and long for the freedom to go do something, anything besides laundry and cooking and changing diapers and wiping noses.
I used to bring my kids to the gym for a playtime we called “Kiddie-gym.” The pre-schoolers would climb around on the mats and throw balls and scoot on scooters. The moms would sit and talk.
One day one of the moms talked about trying to find childcare for her twin two-year-olds so she could go back to college for a graduate degree. The mom next to me leaned close and whispered, “After all she went through to have those children, she’s abdicating her responsibility.”
It’s true that the woman with the twins had used in vitro fertilization. It’s true her husband had a good job so she didn’t need to work. But abdication? It seemed like a strong term to describe a mother furthering her education. Abdication was what a king did when he gave up his throne.
My take-away from that conversation, though, was that motherhood was on par with royalty. It was an honor and a privilege to be a mom. On my looking-out-the-window days, longing for something else, I would remind myself of that. I would lean in and embrace the wearisome work because not everyone has that privilege.
This morning a woman complained to me about the child-care hours at the gym.
“They don’t open until like 8:15 AM and they aren’t even open every day,” she said. “What if someone wants to work out before they go to work?”
“Maybe their spouse or significant other can watch the children,” I suggested.
“That discriminates against single moms,” she replied.
“Being a parent involves a lot of sacrifice,” I said, but I could see that she didn’t appreciate my answer.
I was glad for my conversation the previous day about care-giving being a privilege. It reminded me to stop thinking about the things I can’t do, but to appreciate the things that I can.
I can find the Jumble in the newspaper.
I can change the channel to Jeopardy.
I can fix over-easy eggs.
I can help with crossword puzzle clues.
I can drive him to the doctor or to get a haircut.
I can rescue photographs from the garbage.
I can remind him of people’s names.
I can tell him at 3 AM that it’s time to go back to sleep.
I can keep him in the home where he has lived for over 50 years.
“I ran away once and you didn’t even notice,” one of my children told me accusingly.
It brought back a flood of memories.
I ran away once. Slighted once too often by my siblings, unappreciated by my parents — I knew it was the only thing I could do. So I put a loaf of bread in my backpack, along with a flashlight, a jacket, and a pack of matches, and headed up the hill behind our house.
The first bit was steep and prickly with wild raspberry bushes. I huffed with exertion and didn’t stop to enjoy a single berry.
I hiked past the little spring-house that had been the source of water for the house before my parents dug a well.
Finally I reached a grassy knoll and sat down to rest.
I waited for someone to come looking for me. Surely someone would notice I was gone.
I waited, imagining the shock and the worry. My mother would ask each sibling, “Have you seen Sally?” and the worry would grow.
They would look all around the house and the barns. She’d probably make Peter or Jimmy climb into the hayloft to see if I was there.
But they wouldn’t find me.
The tall grass on the hill was perfect for putting between my thumbs and whistling — but I stopped myself. Someone would hear it. Then they would know where I was.
The grassy knoll, it turned out, was also an ant hill so I moved to a little mossy spot near a tree.
I pulled out my loaf of bread and ate a slice — not because I was hungry, but because I was bored. Plain bread is also boring, I discovered. I wished I had brought a jar of peanut butter. I put the bread away because I knew it would have to last me at least a week.
As I started to stretch out in the moss for a little rest, I nearly placed my hand in a pile of animal droppings. Abruptly I sat up again. Hugging my knees, I started to cry. Surely I was the most unloved child ever.
House with the garden behind it
But down the hill was my house.
And my family.
And my dog.
And our passel of cats.
I climbed to my feet and headed back.
My mother was working in the garden, picking beans or peas.
“I ran away,” I announced to her as I got closer, “and you didn’t even notice.”
She straightened up and looked at me. “You need to be gone more than 20 minutes if you want me to notice,” she said.
And she went back to work.
All that passed through my mind when my own child told me about running away.
I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t repeat my mother’s words.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Child with suitcase and backpack from Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah! by Allan Sherman and Lou Busch, illustrated by Jack E. Davis
Whenever I go to a pool, my eyes are drawn to the record board.
It’s kind of funny, because I haven’t always been a fan of the record board. Helen still holds over 20 age-group records at the pool in Cooperstown — the earliest from when she was 8 years old, and the latest from when she was 13. Then we moved, and she started racking up high school records in Greene.
Margaret in the middle
A couple of years ago, I caught one of the swimmers in my group staring at the record board in Cooperstown.
“Do you know Helen Zaengle?” she asked.
“I do,” I told her. “She’s my daughter, and she’s Laurel’s sister.”
“Wow,” Margaret said. “She has a lot of records. I’m going to break some of them.”
That was the moment my feelings about the record board changed.
Helen was very good at swimming from a young age. She loved winning races — although there was one time when she asked me why she couldn’t get a rainbow ribbon (the ribbon handed out for participation); all her ribbons were blue.
The record board wasn’t posted at the time, and, quite frankly, I think Helen and I were both unaware of all the records. When the record board went up, part of me felt a little embarrassed because I never sensed that Helen was swimming for the glory of the record board or all the accolades. She swam with the truest sense of the amateur — a love of the sport.
But I worked in the pool these last few years with all those records at my back, and I tried not to look at them. Don’t misunderstand — I am very proud of Helen, but not because she rules the record board. I just think she’s wonderful.
Margaret helped me to see that the records are goals for other swimmers, not to induce pride, but to produce hard work.
Michael Phelps said, “Goals should never be easy,” and Margaret took that to heart. She’s 10 years old now and continues to push herself harder than her peers. She still hasn’t made it to the record board, but I have no doubt that she will.
Laurel swimming breaststroke
Last year, Laurel made it to the record board, by breaking a record that had been up there since before Helen was even born. 11-12 100 Breaststroke.
This year Laurel was studying the records to see if there were any she was close to.
“How about that one,” I said, pointing to 13-14 200 Breaststroke. “I think that one is do-able, maybe not this year, but next.”
The name next to the record: Helen Zaengle.
Helen called me right up. “I heard you told Laurel to break my record,” she said.
“Heck, yes, I did,” I replied.
“I think that would be great,” she said.
She holds her records with open hands, bidding other swimmers to take them, and I think that makes me even prouder than all the records combined.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 