Mission Statement

There are many ways of organizing family life. I know about these methods from the handful of parenting books I’ve read, the few parenting seminars I’ve attended, and the homes of organized friends I’ve visited.

As for me, my house is like an archaeological site for organization; everywhere you look are remnants of our past organizational attempts. I like to think of it as the Pompeii of Planning.

There’s the “Morning Routine” and “Evening Routine” checklists hanging in the girls’ bedroom, which no longer bear any resemblance to the reality of our mornings and evenings. (Our mornings sound a little something like this: “If I have to ask you one more time to get dressed, you’re going to school naked! Okay, everyone, to the bathroom!!”)

There’s the magnetic “Chore Chart” on the refrigerator. As of February 20, when I finally erased it from sheer embarrassment, the date written on this chart in dry-erase marker was December 24. It’s been months since I’ve remembered to give Fiona the allowance she’s supposed to receive for her weekly tasks, and I’m only fortunate that this allowance seems as unimportant to her as it is to me. As for household chores, it’s gotten to the point where I wait until things become totally unbearable, then I set the timer for 5 minutes and shout, “Okay, 5 minutes to pick up! Anything still on the floor gets donated!”

And then there are the various organizational computer programs and filing systems that Erick and I have abandoned, like the “His & Hers To-Do List” currently buried underneath my camera, DVDs of the first two seasons of “Downton Abbey,” and three passport applications. Also the “Family Goals” spreadsheet that we haven’t updated since Georgia was born — two years ago.

In other words, I’m too disorganized to maintain any organizational system. But there is ONE thing I wanted to try, suggested a couple of years ago by ultra-organized friends: drafting a mission statement.

As someone who worked five years in the nonprofit sector, mission statements don’t scare me as much as charts or lists. They’re usually brief, no longer than a couple sentences. It may be a stretch to consider a mission statement an organizational tool, but I do; mission statements serve as focal points for businesses, families, or individuals. Everything that organization, family, or person does refers back to the mission statement.

So last month I decided to draft a mission statement. I felt this was important because life comes flying at me so fast these days — there are so many tugs on my time — that it’s sometimes hard to remember who I am, what I’m supposed to be doing, and what I want to teach my kids.

Writing a mission statement proved to be more difficult than I’d expected, though. There’s a reason why the staff of every nonprofit spends hours agonizing over each word in their mission statement: trying to boil down your reason for existence to a couple of sentences ain’t easy.

Then, a matter of days after typing the preceding paragraphs, I had a epiphany while folding the girls’ laundry and listening to an episode of “This American Life.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the weekly NPR program “This American Life,” I strongly suggest familiarizing yourself with it here. The episode in question was titled, “Self-Improvement Kick” and aired on January 4, 2013. I was listening to it in late February because, owing to my aforementioned disorganization and lack of willpower, my “This American Life” listening follows the same pattern as my New Yorker reading: I’m usually months behind (Yet I have no problem checking Facebook multiple times a day. Go figure).

Act 1 of this episode was about Daryl Watson, a talented young New York City playwright who, in 2009, decided to quit his job, sell everything he owned, and walk across the country as “Peace Pilgrim,” trusting in God (and others) to provide for his physical needs.

Here’s Daryl, explaining why he did what he did: I wanted my mission statement. You know how every business has a mission statement? You know what I mean? That’s what I wanted. Like, you are Daryl Watson, you were born on this day, this is your purpose, this is how you’re going to do it.

That got my attention.

Daryl lasts three days as “Peace Pilgrim.” On a Maryland highway late one night, he sees a billboard that reads: “IT’S OKAY TO MAKE MISTAKES, AS LONG AS THEY’RE NEW ONES.”

Daryl realizes that he’s made a mistake, abandons his pilgrimage, and calls his mother (that’s when I started bawling). Here’s how Elna Baker, who narrates the segment, summarizes his epiphany: He’d been on this journey, most of it alone and suffering, and trying to figure out the meaning of life. He’d been obsessing over his dreams a year before that. And three days in the cold made him realize he was doing this to himself. He was making himself suffer. And he could stop. Which landed him in the same messy place so many of us are in, not having any answers. So we just ignore the questions and get on with our lives.

My own epiphany had to do with those last two sentences, which made sense to me and bugged me at the same time. It occurred to me that, perhaps, drafting a mission statement was an attempt to impose an artificial sense of organization, an abrupt “answer,” on a life that’s irredeemably messy and confusing. After all, most of us already live according to some broad mission statement, whether or not we’re aware of it, like: “Do no harm,” or “Love God and your neighbors,” or “Make lots of money,” or “Stay young and beautiful.” But just as most organizational systems end up under a desktop pile, it’s usually impossible to live out these missions consistently. (And people who do claim to have found All The Answers, to have a consistent mission, often aren’t much fun to be around: they tend to be narrow, judgmental, condescending, and sometimes dangerous).

The solution of “ignore the questions and get on with our lives” bothers me, though. It sounds an awful lot like becoming the Kevin Spacey-type character who buys a big house in the suburbs, barbeques on weekends, has two nice kids and an attractive wife, works a meaningless job, and buys new “toys” to try and fend off a sense of creeping panic.

I’d like to think that a better solution may be: ACCEPT the questions and get on with life. Accepting that life is messy, disorganized, full of unanswered questions, and impossible to box into a mission statement seems healthier than denial. Getting on with life is key, too; in my experience it’s the best way to find partial answers. I can make pilgrimages and meditate and draft mission statements all I want, but the little rays of light that illuminate my unanswered questions usually flicker while I’m folding laundry, washing dishes, or changing diapers.

Daryl Watson isn’t sure if the billboard he saw on his pilgrimage was real. But its message, “IT’S OKAY TO MAKE MISTAKES, AS LONG AS THEY’RE NEW ONES,” is a pretty good rule for life. So if I had to, here is the best mission statement I could draft — for myself, my family, even this blog:

OUR MISSION IS TO MAKE NEW MISTAKES EVERY DAY.

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.

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.

Little Girls

Today is International Women’s Day. This is not a day I’ve noted before, because until recently I didn’t think much about being a woman.

Growing up, in the time and place that I did, I had the strange “luxury” of feeling ambivalent about my female-ness. It was something that I took for granted; Hair: Brown, Race: Caucasian, Sex: F. I never disliked being a woman, but neither did I take any particular pride in it. I emerged from adolescence with some vaguely negative stereotypes about what it meant to be a woman: women were overly emotional, too sensitive, too talkative, bad drivers, and subject to the ultimate Sophie’s Choice of career vs. motherhood: no matter how you chose, your life was doomed to be less than satisfying. Back then, I would’ve been afraid to say I was proud to be a woman; such a statement might align me with the angry voices of second-wave feminism. Granted, those angry voices were necessary in order to get the culture’s attention, but anger doesn’t usually speak to me. I was brought up to be polite; I still don’t do angry very well.

It’s gradually dawned on me that I am a woman. Not only that: I am the mother of three little girls who will one day be women. As such, I am my daughters’ first example of what it is to be female.

That’s a charge I shouldn’t take lightly.

My role as a mother, I repeatedly tell my girls, is to help each one of them become “the best YOU that you can be.” How do I help my girls become their best selves, and instill pride that their SELF includes being a WOMAN?

I think pride in being a woman begins with recognizing that there’s something unique about womanhood. Men and boys are special, of course, but women are special because they’re not men — we bring something different to the table. My daughters, despite being raised in the relative cultural isolation of small-town Vermont — few chain stores, no billboards, no T.V., and the only magazine we get is The New Yorker — STILL gravitate towards fairies and princesses and ponies and pastels. They choose to dress and play differently than the boys we know. I can either fight this apparently inborn female-ness, or I can encourage them to find the strengths in who they already seem to know they are.

Those female stereotypes I grew up with, many of them are in some way true. But they also encompass some of the qualities I love best in my girls, qualities that I think make them uniquely female. In trying to get at what’s special about women, I’ll take each stereotype I grew up with and highlight its strengths:

–Women are too emotional: Emotion results from feeling things deeply. Being able to feel deeply is a gift; like any gift, it has a dark underbelly, but its bright side is an ability to be passionate about ideas, causes, people. Passion is what gets things done. If nobody was emotional, we’d end up with a world of economists, and TRUST ME, that would be tragic.

-Women are too sensitive: Like emotion, sensitivity can be problematic if overindulged, but it’s a necessary ingredient for successful relationships. Being sensitive may mean that you’re easily hurt, but it also makes you more aware of the feelings of others.

-Women are too talkative: Sorry, but as a writer I don’t have a problem with this. Aren’t words the essence of life? Isn’t the moral of the story of the Tower of Babel that, without the ability to communicate, our cities end in ruins?

–Women are bad drivers: I don’t really know where this one came from, but I DO know that when I’m a bad driver, it’s usually because there are three little people screaming at me from the backseat. Which gets at something that I think is a female strength: the ability to multitask. Just about every woman I know thinks nothing of talking on the phone while preparing dinner with one hand and bouncing a baby on her hip. Or writing her PhD dissertation with one side of her brain while simultaneously solving her best friend’s relationship troubles with the other side. So pardon us if we’re distracted! (In contrast, when my husband watches the girls, he’ll get dinner cooked…while the girls run around naked setting small fires in every corner).

-Work vs. motherhood: This is a whole can of worms, but the WONDERFUL thing about being a woman is that you GET a choice. You can become a MOTHER, for crying out loud! That’s an amazing thing that only women can do. But, thankfully, in this day and age, you can also choose a CAREER! The world needs women represented in all fields — and with fewer and fewer restrictions, you can do what you love. Nowadays, there are creative ways to cobble motherhood and career into something that works. But it’s NOT easy: it’ll never be easy to be a mother, it’ll never be easy to carve out a career, it’ll NEVER be easy to balance both. But women do it, and have done it forever — since back when “career” meant “keeping a farm running.” And that’s why the toughest people I know are all women.

Those are a few strengths that I’d claim for women. But what makes me PROUDEST about being a woman is the company in which it puts me. Powerful women have surrounded me my entire life, it’s just taken me a while to notice. There are the women in my own family. There are the six years’ worth of students I taught at two girls’ schools (two of them recently re-introduced herself to me here; they’re students at Middlebury — talk about feeling old!). There’s the Pakistani woman I tutored for six years in Manhattan, who’s currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree. And there are my friends across the world: women who have amazing careers, women who are mamas, women who have careers and are mamas, single women, partnered women. Women who stay in hard marriages; women who leave impossible marriages. Women who show up with a meal at the perfect time (because it’s always the perfect time!). Women who create things of beauty. Women who tell the truths you need to hear. Women who raise the children — and not just their own. Women who care for the sick and comfort the grieving and fight for justice.

These women are beautiful. They make the world more beautiful. They keep life going. I’m so grateful that my own little girls can grow into women, surrounded by women like these. As my oldest daughter said the other day, “Every girl’s a princess, even if she doesn’t live in a castle.” Amen, and Happy International Women’s Day!

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.”

Driving in Snow

In my latest “Faith in Vermont” column for the Addison Independent, I discuss six rules for living — and for driving in snow. Because life is a lot like driving in snow…and driving in snow is a lot like life. Click here to read the full article.

How I Met Your Mother (Bonus Valentine’s Day Post!)

A NOTE FROM FAITH:

Okay, folks, something new today: for the first time ever, we have a guest blogger! Let me introduce my husband, Erick: development economist, lone male among 5 women in our house, and most recently the first place Asian finisher in the Southern Vermont Primitive Biathlon (read: the ONLY Asian finisher…). Today being Valentine’s Day, Erick announced that in lieu of flowers he had written me a blog post. (His exact words, I believe, were, “The demand curve for long-stemmed roses on Valentine’s Day is very inelastic.” I have no idea what that means; life with an economist).

Anyway, Erick steers clear of the econ-speak here. He’s been thinking a lot about love lately, which will make a nice change of pace on this blog. (I have NOT been thinking much about love lately; I’ve mostly been thinking about sleep). Here he is! Enjoy, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

A recent attempt at a date night. (Photo taken by our babysitter).

Part I: How I Met Your Mother…

When I think of Valentine’s Day, I think first of all, “Phew! I remembered!” This is followed by some thoughts about love. I remember the opening scene of the film Love Actually, where couples run into each others’ arms; love is the first date, the honeymoon period, it’s wonderful bliss. Of course, love doesn’t stay this way forever. But since it’s Valentine’s Day, let’s linger a bit on the bliss.

I first met Faith at a small dive restaurant. She was waitressing, and I usually came in near closing time. She would serve me and then sit behind the counter and read. The first time I saw her, I thought to myself, Wow, she’s pretty AND she reads books. Hey, I read books too. Well, sometimes, more like book reviews- in inflight magazines. I wonder if we have a connection?

Thus, my first words to Faith were, “So, what are you reading?”

And from that moment, I was filled with the tingling nervousness of attraction. From the over-analysis of brief encounters (She smiled at me when she gave me the check! That must mean something.), to longer conversations, and finally to the big question of any initial relationship:

“I was wondering, uh, well, if you’d like to join me, at a baseball game, I mean, if you don’t already have plans, because if you don’t, it would be great if you could come, but I totally understand if you can’t make it?”

The first date became several dates, and long phone conversations, and intense longing desire set in. And of course, the earnest compatibility checks:

“Wow, she likes to eat. I like eating. We’ll be perfect together!”

“She loves the Indigo Girls. I just heard one of their songs on the radio. We’re a match!”

“She runs. I know how to run. We could run together. Forever! And then eat! And then listen to the Indigo Girls…. “

Love was easy. Anything Faith did was magical. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world just to be near her. We got married (as you probably figured out). And the honeymoon period kept going – for quite a while. Of course, these intense feelings tempered as time went by.

And then we had kids.

Part II: …And Why I’m Still In Love With Her.

“ …researchers tracked 1761 people who got married and stayed married over 15 years. The findings were clear: newlyweds enjoy a big happiness boost that lasts, on average, for just two years. Then the special joy wears off and they are back where they started….[T]he good news…is that if couples get past that two-year slump and hang on – they may well recover the excitement of the honeymoon period 18 to 20 years later, when children are gone.”

–New York Times, “New Love: A Short Shelf Life” Dec 1, 2012

As the New York Times article cited above points out, wedded bliss doesn’t last forever. Our own lives became really busy: graduate school, careers, more graduate school, church involvement, and of course, kids. Three kids. If I spent all my time thinking about how amazing Faith is, I would neglect everything else: my research, my teaching, my friends and family, my kids, and personal hygiene. And the Times mentions another reason for the limited shelf-life of wedded bliss: the charming term, “hedonic adaptation.”

What is this hedonic adaptation that stands between me and bliss? In short, scientists say we are hard-wired to take positive experiences for granted. I was elated when Faith agreed to marry me, and I’m still really happy. But I wouldn’t describe each day as euphoric. The same can be said for all positive experiences: new job, new clothes, new anything; eventually the excitement fades.

So, does this mean I’ll never “fall in love” again with Faith? Well, marriage scientists have a simple solution to the problem of hedonic adaption: Novelty. Doing new and exciting things with your spouse – new restaurants, skiing, dancing — can reignite passionate feelings. The key is to share new experiences.

I see two big problems with this approach. First, with three kids (and a fourth coming), it’s really hard to do novel and surprising things with your spouse. For example:

ME: Surprise, dear! I booked us a weekend in New York. We can visit a few museums, see a play….

FAITH: Uh, what about the kids?

ME: You think they’ll be okay for a few days? They could watch Dora. How about we put a few pounds of mac & cheese in the timed kitty feeder?

Hence the Times’s qualification that Faith and I have to wait 18 to 20 years before we recapture our honeymoon period — that’s longer than the average prison sentence!

The second problem? If reigniting passion for one’s spouse involves a continual series of novelties, where does it end? There’s constant pressure to find a new novelty. It might begin with, “Let’s try out that new Italian-Japanese fusion place,” and end with “Let’s try skydiving…in the winter… nude.”

I think sharing new experiences is great. But I think it misses the point. I believe what renews our feelings for each other is another type of love. A difficult love. The love you give when you don’t feel like it.

I call this type of love “costly love,” because it takes effort. When I first met Faith, it was easy to love her. But 10 years into marriage, love takes more effort. Work responsibilities get in the way; sometimes the time I spend with Faith is time I worry should be spent on research.

But it’s costly love that’s necessary to sustain our marriage. It has different forms: taking the kids for a few hours so that Faith can have some quiet time, preparing a meal, tidying the house. Planning date nights is costly love; it’s not easy – or cheap – finding a babysitter for three kids. For me, the most costly act of love is sitting down after a long day and listening to how Faith’s day went. I’m not a great listener, but this is how I show Faith I love her.

And I’ve learned that costly love – loving someone even when you don’t feel totally into it – mysteriously reignites wedded bliss. When I make the effort to spend time with Faith instead of working, I recapture those magical love feelings that I experienced when we first met. These moments are brief, but they are much more valuable now.

Costly love forces me to stop what I’m doing and realize what’s really important: Faith. I put down my work and think of her. Simply thinking about Faith, realizing how lucky I am to be with her, and making the effort to share life together (date nights, late evening conversations, primitive biathlon, nude winter skydiving) reignites the passion that I experienced in our first years. And being on the receiving end of costly love is amazing – Faith certainly has loved me even when I wasn’t particularly “lovable.”

For the record, I still have a LOT of work to do on this whole costly love thing; I’m very self-absorbed and too often get lost in my work. Which reminds me, I better call the florist; those roses aren’t going to be cheap.