Coffee: A Love Story

My father always drank his coffee black, so when I started drinking coffee it never occurred to me that I should adulterate it with anything like milk or sugar.

I can’t remember exactly when I drank my first cup, but it was sometime during my freshman year in college. I poured my coffee for purely practical reasons: as a freshman, I’d made the remarkably naive choice to take an Italian class that met at 8 AM, five days a week. Although the smell of coffee evoked pleasant memories of childhood breakfasts, I had no particular affection for the taste — at least, not for the weak, generic stuff mass-produced by the college dining hall. My interest in coffee was utilitarian: I needed it to stay awake.

The affection came later, around junior or senior year. It happened the day I met my friend Dahna at the cafe in our little college town (yes, THE cafe — there was only one), and she said, “Why don’t you try a skim hazelnut latte?” When I tried a skim hazelnut latte, a love affair began: I discovered that if I added enough milk and flavoring to coffee then I loved it, I craved it.

This youthful love affair with skim hazelnut lattes lasted through much of my twenties. For the better part of a decade, I drank at least one skim hazelnut latte per day. Like most youthful love affairs, it was somewhat superficial — based on covering up coffee with a sweet exterior. It also wasn’t particularly healthy: there were the dark days when I discovered that a large enough skim hazelnut latte could serve as a meal replacement. And it was a costly habit; at this time, I was either single or newly married with a postcard-sized kitchen, and the idea of brewing my own coffee simply didn’t occur to me. I BOUGHT every single one of those skim hazelnut lattes, and I bought most of them at upwards of $3 each. When I think back to how many wells I could have built in Africa, how many third world families I could have supplied with livestock, or how many children I could have supported through school with that money, I’m a little ashamed.

The turning point came when Erick and I moved to Berkeley, California. The kitchens in the three rentals we lived in during our stay in the Bay Area were somewhat larger than postcard-sized. We were living off of the combined salaries of a graduate student and a part-time nonprofit employee. And we started having kids. The sensible thing to do was clearly to start brewing our own coffee.

Berkeley, California is a stressful place to drink coffee. To give you an idea of the Berkeley food and drink culture: the church we attended during our time there (and LOVE to this day) had a wine tasting in order to select the best wine for communion. You can only imagine how far people took their quest for the best cup of coffee; if you weren’t drinking a cup of individually-brewed, organic, fair trade, shade-grown, slow-roasted coffee, you might as well be drinking Maxwell House. (Believe me, in certain circles this was a major topic of discussion, and you would be judged).

But Erick and I were too distracted by babies and PhDs to keep up with the ever-changing Bay Area coffee trends. Each morning, we’d use our auto-drip coffeemaker to brew a pot of Peet’s Coffee, which we’d drink black with breakfast. I consider this the point at which I entered my coffee adulthood; when good, strong, black coffee stole my heart away from the expensive, frou-frou alternatives. Now, on the rare occasion that I find myself in a cafe, I’ll order a skim hazelnut latte as a dessert drink — I find them too cloyingly sweet to be anything else.

That would be my happy ending, except that, like most love stories, this one features a period of separation followed by renewed, increased love and appreciation.

You see, less than a year after I fell in love with home-brewed black coffee, I got pregnant. Like most first-time pregnant women, I wanted to do everything right, and all of the pregnancy books will tell you to take it easy on the coffee. Because caffeine is a stimulant, it increases the mother’s blood pressure and heart rate, and has also been found to increase the fetal heart rate. And I don’t do decaf — I can’t explain it, I just don’t. In my opinion, drinking decaf is about as pointless as eating white chocolate (apologies to any white chocolate lovers out there).

So I gave up coffee for nine months. And that was okay, since I’d only been drinking one or two cups a day prior to pregnancy. I had no withdrawal, no headaches or shakes. But did I miss it? You bet. Was I right back on it shortly after giving birth? OH, YES!

And it was during that first year of motherhood, when I was reunited with coffee, that I discovered another facet to love: not only did I enjoy the taste and appreciate the wakefulness provided by coffee, but COFFEE MADE ME A BETTER MOTHER. A better person, actually. Prior to my morning cup of coffee I wasn’t just sleepy — I was numb. The day stretched before me like one long, joyless, impossible task. But add one cup of coffee and I was Carol Brady. Coffee made everything okay — at least for thirty minutes following breakfast.

When I became pregnant for a second time, I decided: I’m not giving up coffee ever again. I care about blood pressure and heart rate — really I do — but the happiness of my little family was more important. Did they deserve nine months of Carol Brady, or nine months of Lurch? (Interesting, completely unscientific side note: Guess which pregnancy ended with an emergency delivery due to high blood pressure? My first, coffee-free one. Hmmmm….)

And so it goes. These days, I put a filter and six scoops of Green Mountain Coffee’s Vermont Country Blend into our coffeemaker before bed. First thing in the morning. when I come downstairs for some solitary reading/writing time, I add the water and let it drip. The smell alone is enough to start my day off right; drinking my morning cup is like lifting a veil between despair and hope. And SOMETIMES, as a guilty pleasure, I’ll reheat what’s left in the pot and have a second cup during the girls’ naptime.

I love you, coffee. And if you’re reading this and you don’t drink coffee, or don’t like coffee, that’s okay. But I hope you have a little coffee-something in your life!

All the Days and Nights

playdough ice cream — Look for the candy gems….
*Photo via*

“Once upon a time there was a man who asked himself, ‘Where have all the days and nights of my life gone?'”

-from “All the days and nights” by William Maxwell

The past month was rough on our family’s immune systems. In early March, Fiona, Georgia, and (to a lesser degree) Erick were knocked out by a fever/upper respiratory virus. The next week, Georgia developed her first ear infection. And THEN, days later, Fiona, Campbell, and (to a lesser degree) Erick were taken down by one of the nastiest stomach bugs I’ve ever witnessed.

Throughout most of this (until the stomach bug knocked me out for a couple of days), I was the only Gong left standing. This was a REALLY mixed blessing. I’m happy to care for my sick loved ones, but it’s a lot of work: running around with food trays, bringing books and markers and DVDs, changing pajamas and bed linens (I did about 25 loads of laundry the day the stomach bug hit), forcing antibiotics into a screaming toddler. Plus, there was always ONE healthy girl to be entertained separately from her sisters.

For several weeks, I barely left the house. Playdates were cancelled. School was missed (which makes me verrrry grumpy). The days seemed endless, but at the close of each day I felt a nagging frustration that I’d accomplished nothing.

I started thinking about time. Time is a strange thing, because it seems to work in two ways at once. And my experience of parenthood has only served to highlight time’s dual nature.

It’s like this: The days ARE endless. My first thought each morning is usually, “How am I going to get through this one?” I do get through it, like we all do, by putting activities on the calendar, running errands, preparing meals, washing dishes, doing laundry, reading to the girls, and keeping them supplied with coloring books and stickers and craft materials. But every day there’s a chunk of time — sometimes it’s the entire day, sometimes it’s just the hour before dinner — when the clock seems to slow, when I’m counting the minutes until Erick gets home, when I wonder how I can possibly usher us all through the next hour (or two, or three) without losing my mind.

And yet, time flies. The phrase is overused because it’s true. It’s as if, somehow, all those endless days get smushed into a space capsule at the end of each year and blasted forward at light speed. The last thing I remember, I was holding a brand new hairdryer in a Macy’s bag and meeting a guy I barely knew at Grand Central Station so he could come to an Indigo Girls concert with some friends of mine…and now we’ve been married ten years, we own a home in Vermont, he’s a college professor, and we have three kids and a dog.

I’ve only had children for five years, but I already know that older parents speak the truth when they say, “It goes so fast!” The last thing I remember, you were no bigger than a doll and your eyes were closed but your tongue was sticking out when they handed you to me in the delivery room…and now you have the longest legs I’ve ever seen and you’re a big sister to two and when you grow up you say you’re going to be a swim teacher/singer/mommy.

Life is a series of endless days that fly. So how do we get through the endless days, those eternal minutes until dinner? Are we each destined to become someone who asks longingly, Where have all the days and nights of my life gone? Does every parent inevitably become the empty-nester who says wistfully, Enjoy every minute; it goes so fast!

Maybe. And maybe that’s not a bad thing; the idea of looking back over time and feeling that it’s flown doesn’t particularly bother me. What does irk me are all the days, here and now, when I think, This day seemed endless, yet I’ve accomplished NOTHING.

Because, as we’ve all heard, time flies…when? WHEN YOU’RE HAVING FUN! But these days — these endless days that will someday be the sum of my time that’s flown — let me tell you: most of them aren’t “fun.” They are lunches to pack and dishes to wash and children to dress and relationships to maintain and bills to pay and errands to run. Even when I purposefully create “fun” moments — painting, baking, craft-making — they’re honestly not much fun for ME; there’s a lot of preparation and clean-up for a few minutes of messy joy. There are transcendent moments, sure, but the majority of the day is dragging drudgery.

To look back and realize that time flew and you didn’t have fun seems to me a recipe for regret.

Unless…we’ve forgotten that what we do today IS fun. Perhaps it takes the distance of years to realize: All those endless days and nights, those times when I thought I accomplished nothing — those really were FUN.

How to capture that future perspective, and transport it into the present? Can we live each endless day while holding the hope that this may someday look like flying fun?

I’m not big on Pollyanna-ish denial of reality. Let’s face it: some days will just not EVER be fun. We lose loved ones, we struggle with depression, we clean up bodily fluids from every member of our family.

So I’m trying to think of my days like ice cream. In particular, Fiona’s favorite flavor of ice cream: Playdough (sold at a deli in town). Playdough is a horrifyingly sweet concoction; the ice cream base is something like “vanilla cake,” but Fiona doesn’t get it for the ice cream. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her touch the ice cream portion of this flavor. She gets it for the colored “candy gems” mixed into the ice cream, and she’ll spend enormous amounts of energy digging through the ice cream with her spoon, tracking down every last candy gem.

Our days are like Playdough ice cream because every day, no matter how terrible, has at least one candy gem in it. You may have to go digging for it, you may not find it until the day is past, but I promise it’s there. Maybe it’s something as basic as: I’ve never been more thankful for a working washer/dryer, because I just did 25 loads of vomit-stained laundry today. Candy gem!

I’m going to take my plastic spoon and go digging at the end of each day, so that I won’t have to wait until the time has flown to appreciate all my days and nights.

Squish

A picture of four mud-soaked and delighted children was recently posted on the Facebook page of a children’s museum that we frequented when we lived in California, under the caption: This is how kids should be playing.

I chuckled when I saw it, with a mixture of amusement and bitterness. In that instant, here’s what I thought:

-This is what my own kids, and our dog, have looked like for the past month.

-YES, at my core, I do believe that’s how kids should be playing.

-It’s very easy to sit in Berkeley, California — where THERE IS NO MUD SEASON — and say that’s how kids “should” be playing. Never, in the five years I lived in the Bay Area, did I see kids who really looked like this.

It’s mud season here in Vermont, that fifth season that marks the transition between winter and spring. The snow melts, the ground thaws, and until the trees burst open green leaves we spend weeks squishing through inches of mucky mud.

Click here to continue reading my mud season reflection over at The Addison Independent.

Daddy Ears

My husband, Erick, has what we jokingly refer to as Daddy Ears. Here’s what I mean:

In a house with three children, we have plenty of “Miss Clavel” moments — Miss Clavel being the nun in charge of the Parisian girls’ boarding school in Ludwig Bemelmens’s classic book Madeleine. Remember? “In the middle of the night, Miss Clavel turned on her light and said, ‘Something is not right!'”

In our house, there are cries in the night, and bumps, and potty emergencies. The noise announcing these crises may range from a whimper to a shriek, but I can guarantee that noise will pull me out of a sound sleep and send me running down the hall.

These days, our dog, Gracie, is always a few steps ahead of me. Gracie usually sleeps in her doggie bed downstairs, but she has the sharpest ears in the house and she loves her girls, so she comes barreling upstairs at the slightest sound of upset. (When she knows that things are really bad — a terrifying nightmare, say — Gracie plops herself down next to the bed in question, where she’ll sleep protectively for the rest of the night. Never have I understood so well why the Darling family in Peter Pan used a Newfoundland as their nanny).

Guess who never, ever comes running, who rarely cracks an eyelid at these moments? Erick. Once I’ve put out the fire in question and returned to bed, I’m impressed if he turns to me and mumbles, “‘It okay?” Usually he’ll slumber on, blissfully unaware.

That’s because Erick has Daddy Ears.

Point of clarification, before I get in trouble: We call them “Daddy Ears,” because in our house it’s always the mommy who comes running in the night, while the daddy snores. This may not be the case in other houses. I’m sure there are some daddies who are the first responders. For that matter, there are plenty of homes in which there’s only one parent, and it’s up to that particular mommy or daddy to handle all nighttime emergencies.

But in our house, we have Daddy Ears.

One more point of clarification: Erick is an amazing father. Really, I couldn’t ask for a better co-parent — when he’s awake. During the daylight hours, Erick is fully engaged with his daughters. His job keeps him busy, but he makes a point of being home for breakfast and dinner. He tries to limit his weekend work, and frequently takes all three girls out of the house on Saturday mornings to give me a break. When I have moms’ nights out or book club meetings, Erick has no problem handling the dinner/bath/bedtime routine solo.

When Fiona was born, we got a lot of advice about how to include Erick in the newborn experience — like introducing the baby to the bottle as soon as possible, so that Erick could take over one middle-of-the-night feeding. Erick gamely went along with this plan, and since Fiona was such an exceptionally tiny baby that she had to be fed through a dropper for the first few weeks of her life, his help was invaluable. Of course, we were both completely wasted with exhaustion, but I was such a believer in this equal-opportunity parenting that, when one wise family member (and experienced parent) advised us: “Do NOT make Erick do nighttime feedings; someone has get sleep!” I was horrified.

It wasn’t until we were expecting our second child — who, thankfully, was less tiny than the first — that Erick and I began to re-think our newborn parenting duties. And the re-thinking stuck.

In this time and place, we (rightly) strive for equality in the division of labor within our relationships. Having children, like marriage, forces us to wrestle with what “equality” actually looks like. At the beginning of my marriage, I defined “equality” as “doing the same things.” In other words, if I was cooking and cleaning, then Erick should be cooking and cleaning, too. It soon became clear that this wasn’t a good model for us; Erick is the better cook, I am the better cleaner, and our ability to complete these tasks shifted based on who was working and when.

The same proved true when we had kids. When Campbell — and later Georgia — arrived, Erick no longer participated in nighttime feedings. Since I nursed the girls for most of their first years, Erick was of limited usefulness to begin with. Then there’s this: I can function with far less sleep than Erick. Also this: When Erick did nighttime feedings and the baby woke up in the night, I’d shake Erick awake, then lie awake until I knew the baby was fed and back to sleep. Nowadays, there’s also this: Erick has to report to work in a public place every morning. And Erick himself will honestly tell you that no matter how many nighttime bottles or daytime cuddles he gives, he never feels very connected to any of our children until they’re about one year old.

And that is why, when our fourth child is born, Erick will not be taking paternity leave.

This arrangement makes sense for us. Do I sometimes glare at Erick across the breakfast table after I’ve been up every two hours all night? Of course. Do I sometimes feel snarky when Erick comes home from work and I ask, “How was YOUR day?” — meaning, really, “Did you enjoy sitting at a desk, eating leisurely meals, and interacting with adults?” You bet. But I’ve learned that Daddy Ears work just as well as Mommy Ears, they just function at a different frequency — like when a tickle pile is required, when chocolate chip pancakes need to be made, and when Mommy really needs a break.

So, there will be no paternity leave with Kiddo 4. On the contrary, about one month after this baby arrives Erick will spend three weeks conducting research in Africa. And I’m really okay with that. I’ll have lots of help: We have two sets of amazing grandparents who’ll be here for most of the summer, and we have a very supportive community of friends. (I’m seven months pregnant, and people are already bringing us meals, which is either an indication of how kind they are or what a mess I am).

Then, by late summer, I’ll have a pair of Daddy Ears sleeping next to me again, although it may be a few more months until he realizes there’s a fourth child in our house.

Stuck in the Middle

Everything about this season feels stuck in the middle, in between what’s been and what’s coming….

Don’t get stuck here; click to continue reading over at On the Willows.

Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News!

[In an odd bit of timing, this post (written a couple weeks back) happens to be appearing during one of our family’s bleakest health weeks: three days ago, Fiona, Campbell, and Erick were attacked in the middle of the night by a nasty stomach bug that’s been sweeping through our community. After the first 24 hours, I blithely assumed that Georgia and I had some sort of super-resistance, that we’d escaped with stomachs intact. Not so; yesterday, it got me. So we’re limping along over here, and as soon as I finish typing this intro I’m letting the girls watch their fifth episode of “Dinosaur Train” and going straight back to bed. Looking forward to putting this week behind us. Hope you stay healthy and enjoy what follows!]

Despite how calm and self-assured I may appear in my writing (Right?!? Don’t I?!?), in reality I am neither laid-back nor confident. I worry about many things. Like everyone, I’m a work in progress; I’m working on my worry, as I have been for my entire life. My excuse for retaining just a little bit of worry is that I am married to an exceptionally laid-back man, so somebody has to take care of the worrying in this house. I see it as adding a necessary dose of neuroticism to life, for the sake of our children; it’s boring to grow up too well-adjusted. (Right?!? Isn’t it?!?)

One of the things I sometimes worry about is my health. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about this too much, because in general I’m very healthy. But the second a symptom appears, my mind immediately fixates on the worst-case scenario; I’ve been at death’s door many times because of a simple tension headache.

Here’s where it gets tricky for me: most people, convinced they’re at death’s door, would be knocking on the doctor’s door. They’d be phoning the on-call nurse in the middle of the night, insisting on more tests, tracking down specialists for second opinions.

Not me. Because, although I may worry about my health, I’m more worried about annoying my doctor. My worst nightmare is that I’ll visit the doctor to check out a symptom, and all the tests will come back negative, leading the doctor to conclude: She’s a neurotic hypochondriac. I’m convinced that every doctor’s office has special “Freak-Out Case” stickers that they place on the files of all patients who annoy them with baseless symptoms; when a “Freak-Out Case” patient calls to report a symptom, the on-call nurse rolls her eyes, while the other nurses in the staff room try to contain their laughter. (Doctor friends, now’s your chance to tell me if this is actually true….)

I want to avoid a “Freak-Out Case” sticker on my medical file. So I delay calling the doctor, debate endlessly whether I should call the doctor, try to diagnose myself online (I know, I know!), and end up even more convinced that I have days to live. But at least when I die, the doctor won’t hate me.

I guess you’d call me a “blocked hypochondriac.” If you could personify my inner life, it would probably look an awful lot like Woody Allen.

One of the BEST things about pregnancy is that it gives you license to be a little bit of a Freak-Out Case; after all, you’re responsible for another life growing inside you. I don’t worry (as much) about appearing neurotic and self-absorbed if I call the doctor when I’m pregnant; it’s not about ME, it’s about the BABY. And since Fiona’s dramatic birth placed me forever in the “high-risk” pregnancy category, I think I deserve a few extra-credit worry points.

And believe me, I need those worry points. If you’ve thought, “Gee, by the fourth pregnancy I bet it’s REALLY EASY. After all, you’ve done it three times before. You probably don’t worry at all!” think again, my friend.

An unfair and counter-intuitive fact about pregnancy — at least MY pregnancies — is that it doesn’t get easier the more times you do it. In my experience, pregnancy gets a little more difficult each time: more aches, more pains, more nausea. Whether this is because I have more children and less time to rest, or because I’m older with each pregnancy and my body’s more worn out, I’m not sure. On the whole, I don’t have very difficult pregnancies, but it’s certainly not something that gets easier with practice.

Which brings us to the worry. Oddly, my most worry-free pregnancy was probably my first; back then, I was blissfully ignorant. I didn’t know how many things could go wrong. Then I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which is possibly the most terrifying book ever written. My edition has a whole chapter titled, “When There’s A Problem.” (I’ve advised first-time mothers to avoid this book. Is it really helpful to fill your head with all the worst-case scenarios? In the unlikely event that I ever write a pregnancy handbook, this will be the full text: “You’re probably going to be okay. Women have done this for centuries without the benefit of modern medicine or What to Expect. Eat healthily, rest when you can, see your doctor, and guilt your spouse into doing as much as possible.”)

Unfortunately, it’s not just pregnancy literature that’s filled my head with worst-case scenarios; it’s also life. I’ve lived five years in between my first pregnancy and my fourth. During that time, a LOT of friends have gotten pregnant and had babies. The stories are mostly happy — but some aren’t. I’ve been a bystander to unimaginable tragedy and heartbreak.

By now the worry arsenal of my imagination is fully stocked with tales of what could possibly go wrong. Add to that the maddening fact that, while my pregnancies don’t get EASIER, they do get DIFFERENT. None of my four experiences have been identical; there’s always something new and surprising going on. “What’s that ache?!? I’ve never felt that before! Let me check What to Expect….”

The bottom line to all of this? Worrying about my health in general and pregnancy in particular has forced me to accept the difference between RESPONSIBILITY and CONTROL. For instance:

I am RESPONSIBLE for my pregnancy — I should take my prenatal vitamins, get rest and exercise, and lay off the Scotch for 9 months (boo!) — but I can’t CONTROL the outcome of my pregnancy.

I am RESPONSIBLE for my behavior — I should treat others kindly, try to manage my worry, and avoid harassing my doctors — but I can’t CONTROL how others see me.

All of which is outstanding preparation for parenting. Because I’m RESPONSIBLE for my children — I should feed them, clothe them, teach them appropriate manners, and keep them out of the street — but I will never, ever be able to CONTROL my children.

I hate having to accept this, but it’s the truth.

First World Parenting Problems

What is it about our kids’ activities that brings out the worst in parents, that sends us straight to the guilt pit?

That’s the subject of my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for the Addison Independent. Click here to read.

The Awful Truth

Something’s been bothering me lately. Looking back over the past month’s posts on this blog, here’s what I see: an essay about how I stay sane because all my children still nap; a Valentine’s day guest post in which my husband reveals his secret for recapturing married bliss; and a smattering of more spiritual, serious, almost advice-y pieces.

It all comes across as a little too good to be true.

Someone reading this blog over the past month might get the impression that I Have It All Together. That I Have It All Figured Out. That I sit here in my perfect little life in Vermont, enjoying my perfect marriage, dispensing advice while my perfect children nap.

This bothers me, because of course it’s NOT true. It bothers me because, once we get other people believing that we have it all together, 1) we damage our relationships with those people (Who’s going to be honest about the muck in their own lives with someone who’s perfect? Too embarrassing.), and 2) we run the risk of believing our own hype. I’ve lived long enough to know that once WE — by which I mean the average person — start believing that we have it all together, that we’re pretty dang okay, then we’re in BIIIIIG trouble. Life has a way of keeping us in check, keeping our egos in balance, smacking us down to size just when we think we’re at the top of our game.

And it bothers me because it’s completely NOT the point of this blog. Inasmuch as this blog has a point, it’s that somewhere around December 2011, I decided that I was bored with posting happy pictures about superficial events in our family’s life. So I slowly started experimenting with what would happen if I told the truth, if I wrote honestly about what I was thinking and feeling and experiencing at any given moment.

Therefore, in an effort to avoid coming across as Together and thus risking the wrath of the universe, I’m going to lay out some total honesty right now.

1. My Marriage is NOT Perfect. I deeply love and respect Erick, and I’m thankful every day that he’s my partner in this crazy life. We get along pretty well. But we’re real people with real, annoying quirks. As Erick was working on his Valentine’s Day blog post, he talked through some of his ideas with me. One night, he pulled out this line: “One of the biggest ways I show you ‘costly love’ is by listening to you at the end of the day.”

I almost fell off the couch laughing. Because, at that point, I had just spent at least 20 minutes listening to Erick talk about HIS day. He’d been home for three hours; had he asked once about my day? No, he had not.

Erick hit it out of the park this Valentine’s Day, which is usually a pretty minor holiday in our household. In addition to the blog post, he came home with flowers and candy, and surprised me by getting a sitter and taking me out to a nice dinner. All of which, he said, was “to build up credit for the next time I screw up your birthday.”

I’m hardly at my most romantic these days, either. I’m six months pregnant, and I feel about twelve months pregnant. I’m trying to get through this pregnancy without buying any maternity clothes (I gave away all my old ones back in California, because, remember, we were done having children?), which means that I cycle through the same four outfits each week. So, when Erick gets home, he finds a massive wife in the same old yoga pants and oversized sweater, who’s been chasing after three kids and a puppy all day long, and who’s prepared a meal based on the simplest thing that the kids might actually (maybe, just possibly) eat — which means crockpot, mac & cheese, or nachos.

It may be a comedy, but trust me, it ain’t a romantic one.

2. My Kids Are NOT Perfect. My kids are normal, average kids, which means that they’re people-in-training. I’m not going to list all of their individual issues — that’s just not fair to them — but let me assure you that they’re a long way from being presentable to polite society, let alone perfect. About every fourth day, I’m flooded with love and awe and gratitude over these remarkable little creatures who’ve graced our lives. On the days in between, I mostly feel like jabbing an ice pick into my temple.

They squabble with each other all day long. The oldest two want meals made to order, and Georgia demands whatever she sees anybody else having — which sometimes means she wants four meals at once. They aren’t always nice to their friends. They often have to be asked ten times to do something. And, while they really are pretty good nappers, bedtime feels like psychological torture: an hour-long party of screams and thumps, punctuated by at least three call-backs per night. Also, these days, they want to listen to the Annie soundtrack around the clock.

3. I Am NOT Perfect. Want to know what I said to Erick this month? I said, “How many kids do I have to have before people stop asking me to do things?!?” How’s that for kindness and love and repentance and all the other nice things that I write about and try SO HARD to live out?

What I said was awful, with its implication that I really don’t care about others — that my motivation for having kids, in fact, is mostly to put a buffer between myself and the needs of the world — and it’s not even accurate. In many ways, my life now is simpler than it’s ever been: I’m not working outside the home, life in Vermont is slower and less stressful than anywhere else we’ve lived, and people aren’t really asking me to do much at all right now. (Even if they were, we live in a small town, so there are fewer people to do the asking).

What that comment really reveals is my own guilt. People aren’t asking me to do too much; I’m asking too much of myself, and then falling short. I do believe in living out love and kindness, but sometimes I get my motivations and self-expectations all mixed up. I start comparing myself to others, or I start feeling overwhelmed by the needs all around me, and I wonder why I don’t deliver as many meals to the ill or infirm as other people, why I accomplish so much less than mothers who work two jobs, why I don’t feel able to reciprocate the countless acts of kindness that others lavish on our family.

I am selfish, and lazy, and it’s hardest for me to love well the people who are closest to me — the people in my very family.

Remember how Erick surprised me with a babysitter and a dinner out on Valentine’s Day this year? Want to know my reaction when he came home from work and announced that we were going to a nice restaurant in 45 minutes? I thought: You mean I don’t get to have a relaxed pizza dinner with the girls, take a shower, and eat popcorn on the couch in my pajamas? I have to make myself presentable, when the only clean clothes I have are the yoga pants I’m wearing? I have to make this disastrous house and these messy kids presentable for a sitter?

So, no, I Do Not Have It All Together. I am imperfect, a poor source to be dispensing any sort of advice. But in the course of a life spent dealing with my own imperfections and the imperfections of those around me, I have learned a couple things.

I’ve learned that when someone close to me — husband, child, family member, friend — asks me to do something reasonable that gives me a chance to show love, I should always say “Yes,” no matter how I really feel. So I try to always say “Yes” to a husband who wants to take me out, to a daughter who asks to be excused from nap to read together, to a friend who needs me to take her children. When I say “Yes” against my feelings, the feelings will eventually follow.

And I’ve learned that the only way to avoid guilt over my own imperfections and anger over the imperfections of others is to embrace grace. Grace — a word overused so that its meaning gets lost — means “unmerited favor.” I am a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad friend, a bad daughter, and most days I don’t deserve the love of those close to me. But they — husband, children, friends, family — somehow love me anyway. And when they don’t love me perfectly, the way I want — because they, too, are imperfect — that’s when I need to remember that I believe in a God who has the grace thing perfectly covered.

And that’s my Awful Truth.

When It’s Not Fair

This past autumn was rough.

It began promisingly enough: my two oldest daughters started preschool, giving me three glorious days a week with only the baby; I was cranking away on my writing and had just landed a bi-weekly column in our local paper; and we’d decided to get a dog.

Click here to continue reading over at “On the Willows.”

The Secret to My Sanity

Snowed in today, with all three rugrats and a kicking tummy tenant. It’s actually been delightful, despite my worst fears: I find that much of parenting can be delightful if I don’t worry about the house being torn apart. And, thankfully, it’s nap time now….

I write this without judgement; by now I certainly know that all children are different, all parents are different, and God help us if we think we alone have it figured out. But here goes: sometimes, as I’m talking with other moms, they’ll reveal that their child doesn’t nap, hasn’t napped since infancy, or has never napped. Whenever I hear this, I’m filled with a mixture of awe and concern — not for the child, but for the MOTHER.

I don’t know what I’d do without nap time.

The title of this piece is highly subjective, I know; anybody can call themselves sane and believe it, even if they’ve just heard the voices in their head telling them it’s true. I do (occasionally) scream at my children, weep during episodes of “This American Life,” and forget to pay preschool tuition. But still, I think I qualify as relatively sane. With three nonstop children, a fourth child halfway incubated, a puppy who tracks in everything from outside, and a husband who comes home every night saying things like, “I’ve just spent all day staring at this regression,” how do I manage to hold things together? Answer: all my kids still take naps.

Any discussion of sleep training can be polarizing, so I’m not going to get too detailed here. Again: all kids are different, all parents are different, and my own philosophy runs towards “whatever gets you through the night.” I will say that our first child was — and remains — by far our most difficult sleeper. Whether that’s because we didn’t know what we were doing, or because that’s just who she is, I’ll never know. I remember pushing Fiona in her stroller, screaming (SHE was screaming; I was just screaming on the inside), through the Berkeley Hills when she was three months old, and thinking “This child is NEVER going to nap.”

But she did. It took effort, but by the time Campbell and Georgia came along — both of whom are more natural sleepers than Fiona ever was — I had my compass firmly pointed towards NAP. “Okay, baby,” I would tell them, “now is when you nap.” And they did.

I guard those naps fiercely. I know some families feel that younger siblings get cheated on naps because they’re always running around to their older sibling’s activities. That’s not how I roll. It was clear once we went from one child to two that coordinated naps would be even more essential to my sanity. So, if I can avoid it, I don’t schedule playdates or activities during nap times. (It may help that our children are so young; there still aren’t many afternoon activities happening in our lives).

WHY is nap time essential? Well, at this point, nap time and bed time are the two guaranteed moments in each day when I’m not with any of my children. Wait a minute, you may say, you’re telling us that the key to sanity is getting rid of your kids? YES. Yes, I am. I know that the rest children get during naps is beneficial to their overall health and development, blah blah blah — but for me nap time is a selfish thing. I love my kids, I’m thrilled to be a mama; but the thing that feeds me, the thing that energizes me, the thing that enables me to function better as a mama, is the daily quiet time when all children are behind closed doors.

How do I spend my two hours of child-less time? Here’s what I DON’T do: I don’t nap. “Nap when the baby’s napping,” they say when you have your first child. To which I reply: Are you KIDDING?!?! This is MY time, my only chance to breathe during the day. I want to use it, savor it, roll around in it, make the most of every minute! The only time I’ll nap at nap time is during the first trimester of a new pregnancy, or if I’m sick. Otherwise, I use nap time to DO things. During the first months of Fiona’s life, “doing things” included re-watching all 95 episodes of Sex and the City on my computer. (I filed that under the “mental health” category). Later, when I started working again, naps went toward my 20-hour work week. Now that I have more children, a larger house, and a fully employed husband, I spend naps cleaning, prepping dinner, paying bills — and writing. And no matter what I’m doing, I usually drink a cup of coffee to gas up for the afternoon ahead.

I already feel nostalgic for nap time. We’re on the threshold of some big changes around here, and the day is fast approaching when I won’t be able to depend on naps. Fiona no longer sleeps during naps. Because her preschool still has afternoon nap time, I enforce a “quiet rest time” on the days when she’s home. By “enforce,” I mean that I shut her in the guest room with a bin full of library books, my iPod (which I’ve filled with wholesome, educational games, like choosing outfits for Tinkerbell), and the dog. When she starts kindergarten next year (full-day, five days a week) I’m certain that she’ll no longer be napping. Campbell begins kindergarten the following year, so her napping days are similarly limited.

I’m filled with terror at the thought of weekends — not to mention entire summers — when I’ll have one, two, three, and then FOUR children who are awake all day. I can only hope that the benefits of full-day school and increased independence balance out the loss of naps. In the meantime, here’s the best advice I have for new mothers: NAP TIME. Do it — not for your kids, but for yourself.