HOME SCHOOLING IN THE CHIP AISLE.

We’re at the grocery store, and I know you from around town.  Maybe we have mutual friends but we’ve never hung-out together, me a gaggle-deep amidst my 4 kids, you alone with a yoga mat slung over your shoulder.  You look startled by us, almost like I’m doing something wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it.  I simultaneously disregard a child’s pleas to purchase Cheetos, while gently reminding another to ‘make room for the world around them,’ as an old woman squeezes past our budding shopping cart.  I examine the contents on a label of jelly, and still manage to talk to you.  I know it’s a lot, but you could have just pretended not to see us.  Instead you ask, “Whoa, is it a school holiday or something?” One eyebrow rises, as you survey my brood. “Right?!” I say, chuckling, as if no one has ever asked me that one before, “They are homeschooled,“ and then under my breath, “they NEVER leave.”  You laugh and acknowledge my response to be inclusive with your own judgment. Now we can talk. “Shopping with Mom is actually a highlight in our homeschooling. They get to talk to strangers and even practice their conversation skills with humans of different ages,” (even the ones that don’t know that public school is a relatively new institution in the scheme of things). One of my middles steps on the shopping cart, causing one side to teeter and slam back down as she jumps off, startled.  I put a hand on her shoulder and bring my gaze to hers, “I asked you to stay off the cart. Please don’t climb on there again.”  This time you inspect us with two raised eyebrows and awkwardly move past while saying, “Okay… well, see you guys around.” 

I push on towards the produce, and remember a time when I wanted approval for my perfectly behaved kids.  But they aren’t perfect.  And they aren’t the only ones having a learning experience at the store.  Each time I feel defeated by a less than perfect scenario with my kids, I have an opportunity to make choices.  It used to be that I would chastise them in the heat of my humiliation. Later I reprimanded and then apologized for getting upset or raising my voice. After a while, I was able to talk to them without referencing any spectator’s judgments. I confidently know now that I can use my words with them just like I ask them to use their words with the world around them; politely. I’m a living example of the people I hope they will be.  That doesn’t mean that I’m always doing it right. I just know how to embrace failure and make that part of the brilliant lesson (that we’re all having) at the grocery store. 

-Emily

WANT TO BE FRIENDS? Mothers discovering strength in numbers.

I leave the warmth of my bed at 5 am because there is someone I care about expecting me to. I wolf down a fried egg and complete the timely morning ritual of preparing coffee; I need the warmth from the cup in my hand as I brave another winter drive to the gym at five minutes after 6. My dear friend Charity will excuse my slight tardiness because she knows I’m good at other things.

Today she is already upstairs on the treadmill. Her long, blonde braid hangs down her back, swaying in rhythm with her steps. I make a quick wish that she is able to check out mentally for these few moments. I envision all of the remaining minutes left in the long day ahead of her; each action fulfilled in the company of her five, beautiful children. Through sheer endurance, she manages to homeschool, to nurture a supportive marriage, to expand her own mind as a student (who, I might add is pulling off straight A’s on her quest to becoming an LVN) and she does all of this and still finds things to laugh about with me on a Monday morning.

We wrap up our gym routine with 15 minutes of the worst racquetball anyone has ever played. We can barely connect two hits, but I’m sweating and in tears watching Charity ricochet a ball off the wall with the pent-up rage of motherhood, and then crumbling in retaliation as the ball shoots straight back into her lady bits.  We’re on hands and knees gasping for breath over the hilarity of it, that or we are just way fucking out of shape.

It wasn’t long ago that I couldn’t even imagine myself this way; spending the first part of a day away from the needs of my own little people, existing in an act purely for myself, and all in the blessed company of another woman. Early motherhood consumed many of the friendships I had as a younger me. The giving of oneself to children leaves a minuscule portion of time left to supplement any extra relationships. I had all but given up on the fact that there was a whole population of women just like me out there, somewhere, having babies and maneuvering what future friendships looked like.

Connecting with people while endeavoring to mother: breastfeeding, tending to crying babies, unsuccessfully sucking in an empty-womb-tire that now exudes over the top of my pants no matter what shirt I’m wearing…all this was foreign. And truth be told, making friends after motherhood was one of the hardest things I was yet to do.

My recollections of mommyhood with three tiny people are overwhelmingly magical moments mixed with spouts of intense loneliness. On normal days I existed tucked away with my brood, down a gnarly dirt road, doing my damned best to harvest my growing kids with a side of wild, but basically using the same techniques other parents did: potty training (that ultimately only trained me to lower my expectations;) the night-time routines that whitled me down to a hollow person who only read picture books, sang the same sought after songs, exhausted enough to fall asleep on myself while half standing beside a bunk bed; the adventures in nutritious eating that required every molecule of my creativity to be expended, and then every ounce of patience, as a meal made of complete amino acids was thrown to the ground on the whim of toddler refusal.

I often looked away from these moments of despair in search of someone who could witness the crazy amount of will I was expending in the act of not losing it; someone who wasn’t going to analyze what I could have done differently; someone who was there to validate the pure raw difficulty of being a caregiver; to just acknowledge that shit was rough but light was at the end of the tunnel… unfortunately, this person wasn’t going to drop out of the sky and find me. I had to brave the public world, a place that doesn’t welcome the regular outbursts of small children.

I wrangled my untamed babies into the car: 4 years, 3 years, and 5 months old, got them to a decent looking state, packed a sensational amount of necessities for a 20-minute ride, and headed into town with hope. Baby Gym was the destination; a warehouse filled with soft-cornered playthings, trampolines, balls, and moms with preschoolers. I saw four walls segregating me from normalcy. Pay $3 per kid and hang out with mothers who were once young women with friends, now morphed into messed up versions of themselves; no sleep, desperate to talk to someone, conversations funneled into the deliriums of child-talk.

There were clicks, and age gaps, and religious barriers and all manners of insecurities running the entire gamut of parenting, including but not limited to: co-sleeping, bottle-feeding, vaccinations, pacifiers, discipline methods… Our conversations consisted of how many times a baby barfs per hour, what kind of rash you think this is, how a baby’s daddy failed to man-up. I knew I fit the demographic. I knew I was supposed to fit in here. But I didn’t.

I had one hour in this one setting; 60 minutes out of a week of solitary mothering, to come to this place where little, loud, narcissistic people were actually welcome in public, to find a friend. There were many days that I drove back home, wiping silent tears from my cheeks, as Haven babbled loudly in the backseat alongside her brother and sister. I just couldn’t do this thing alone anymore.

The next week we tried again. I pulled into the parking lot beside another mother. We both read the sign stuck to the door from our cars. “Baby Gym, closed.” I remember glancing at her through the passenger window. Our eyes met, the same way you’d expect two strangers to fall in love at first sight. But what I saw in this woman’s eyes, mirrored there, was our shared desperation at this moment.

Someone suggested the park. I had know idea if that meant we were both going. I drove there resigned to wet slides and solitude with children (if there is a word for that, I’d love to know what it is). I got out of my car to see the woman from the gym doing the same. She unstrapped a baby from his car seat and my heart skipped to find a connection; we had babies that were similar in age. This could be a beginning, a talking point.

We walked the stretch of the bridge together toward the park. On one side we were strangers, meeting by chance, with a shared angst for parenting alone on a day to day basis. We traversed across each wide plank, slowly with the union of our stumbling kids, our shared struggles, our humilities turned to common ground. And on the other side, a new place opened up to me, a destination for both of us to be, together.

(You sally ass clown, you know who you are.) Courtney and I parted that day with the awkward request for exchanging numbers. I really didn’t know if she was in to me. We talked about snowboarding, and painting, and making things with our hands. We talked about the kids too, but I had almost forgotten what a conversation was like for two women existing as entities in a world of mothering. She reminded me.

This story has a happy ending, because good friends are few and far between, and Courtney and Charity are both dear to my heart still today. They have taught me that I am able to give and receive friendships with many women, on many levels. The public world is a scary place by yourself, with kids. It doesn’t make itself available to mothers with children, without ridicule. We need to pipe down and be nice in public, and it isn’t always possible.

Having a comrade in parenting opens up spaces that once felt prohibited. We free each other from that ostracized feeling, and normalize the joyful noises kids can make. We empower one another to be moms and women in life; to be mindful and mama. I couldn’t do it without you.

-Emily

"ARTIFICIAL FEARS"- GROWING UP WITH NEW TECHNOLOGIES.

“Echo.”

Olive peeks over the edge of the counter. She lifts her chin to direct her words at the black, round device plugged into the wall. A ring of blue lights responds to the voice of my five-year-old girl, communicating that the hockey puck-shaped appliance is listening.

“Tell me a joke.”

Our artificial-intelligence-tool hops into action, giving Olive what she asks for: a joke that she can’t possibly understand. But I see my little girl swell with a bit of pride; she rises onto her toes, grinning simply because her individual desire has been acknowledged. (I bet she wishes I had flashing blue lights to announce my undivided attention…).

Alexa goes by her other name, Echo, when someone like me wants to circumvent the idea that we have brought an invisible woman into our home with the only intent of telling her what to do. “Echo” makes her more of an AI, and less connected to a woman with an actual woman name. Before we were gifted Alexa for Christmas, I felt tormented each time my father in law criticized this woman voice.

“Alexa, stop.”

Once again, she had not delivered the correct results when he demanded them. He raised his voice a little higher to command more specifically and clearly. I felt myself shrink into the couch in his living room as he disapproved of her performance.

“Arrgh. Alexa! You’re worthless.”

“Sorry...I don’t know that one.”

But it didn’t take long for our family to integrate this voice-activated servent into our own lives. Echo or not, I found myself frustrated at ‘her’ when she repeatedly answered my request for Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” by playing the motion picture soundtrack rendition from Trolls.

“Echo! Gah! STOP.”

Olive’s pencil pauses atop her drawing. Her ice blue eyes find mine, searching me. Before I can justify my outburst, she has already taken whatever lesson I just bestowed upon her and gone back to her picture. Fuck.

Here is this little human. She will never know what life is like without Echo. An A.I. will live in all of her childhood memories. What layer of her growth would this bind to; writing her interpretation of the world? (Yes, this is the normal level of crazy that my mind functions at when it comes to my kids.)

Of course, the earth continues its journey around the sun. And each generation has parents consumed by some similar worry over a technological advancement that “in my day” was never a thing: guns, motorized vehicles, televisions,... Echo seems a smidge trifle in comparison. Nonetheless, it’s my job to thoroughly exhaust every evil that could contaminate my kids. This skepticism, to scrutinize what isn’t visible to the naked eye, runs deep.

I have vivid memories of my mom’s outlook on our Nintendo. On an early Monday morning,  my sister and I missed the school bus.  I stood there beside her, glancing back up the steep, winding trail that led us home. The alternative was to walk forward into the woods where I could go and live, and never face the wrath of my mom. We didn’t own a vehicle. School was too far away to trek it. We had just guaranteed ourselves a day off, to be interpreted by whatever mood my mom was in when we woke her up to tell her.

I crept softly into her dark room, blankets hung, blocking out the light of day. I crouched beside her bed and very soothingly whispered her name,

“Mama.” She responded with a grunt of acknowledgment. “We missed the bus…” A single beat of silence as my heart thumped in my throat.

“Okay.” She pulled the blankets up around her face and fell back into a slumber. We were scot-free! We poured ourselves seconds on cereal and happily hunkered down in front of the tiny TV to play Super Mario Bros. Sarah could never beat me. I still kick some serious ass at that game. But on that morning, which quickly bled into the afternoon, my mother slept on, and our cereal bowls accumulated, and shoes were strewn about with unused backpacks. We bickered slightly over whose turn it was to be Luigi, our voices rising, forgetting the precarious situation that had allowed us to play video games for the better part of this Monday.

Suddenly the french doors to my mother’s bedroom were thrown open. My sister and I both thought we’d die of heart attacks, clamoring for the solace of each other as if we’d never argued a day in our lives. My mother stood there; think Cruella Deville after she wrecks her car in the snow, only to resurface at full terrifying force in her hunt to slaughter dalmatian puppies. My mom tore into the living room, clawing at the air in front of her until she had located the gray console atop the tv.  She ripped it from its plugs, both controllers dangling, and without a word, she pivoted and stalked back into her bedroom. Light flooded abruptly into our two-story home as the blankets in her window were wrenched away; the sound of straining metal as the window was heaved open; our hearts freezing during the second of silence that came before a faint crashing of plastic tumbled down the mountain below.  

This outburst was premeditated. My mom had often complained of the time we wasted on “that thing”; time we could have spent playing outside, or, cleaning something. Miraculously, the following day after she had defenestrated our beloved video game, we found our mother’s demeanor changed. After some tampering and vigorous blowing, we were able to play our game once again. They just don’t make things like they used to.

Back in this present day: I am forever indebted to Echo for: correctly spelling things, for sharing just enough news with me, and for 9 times out of ten, playing the correct song as I wash dishes. I say “thank you” to this thing, this object, to which she cleverly responds “no worries”.  And when I lose my cool with her, Olive reminds me to be nice to Echo. Even Opa has found a calmer voice when it comes to faulting a device that depends on people asking good questions.

When the kids request that Echo play Parry Gripp for the umpteenth time at volume 10, and I find myself conditioned into singing along,   “It’s raining tacos....” I do momentarily consider my mother’s tactics. But so far, so good. And that’s pretty much my outlook now: we’ve come so far, and we have so far to go. Our advancements will continue to progress. I hope to continue embracing them as opportunities for good.

-Emily

"I DO" THE OFTEN UNMENTIONED BUSINESS OF MARRIAGE.

Twelve years ago, I agreed to engage in a very serious business with a tall, dark-haired, young man. He had the clean shaven face of a baby as he walked through the apartment door and held out a giant, pink donut box to me. His expression was slightly terrified, switching suddenly to confused, as he registered that my hands were covered in chalky white Ajax. I was kneeling beside him as he awkwardly struggled to reverse our positions. He asked me to rise; to stop scrubbing the yellowing corners of the linoleum in what had very recently become ‘our’ kitchen.  I quickly rinsed my hands and turned to receive his adamant offering. Quickly he went down onto one knee, and I gasped, first because the floor was still covered in wet Ajax, and then a second time, when I realized what was actually happening. I slowly lifted the cardboard lid and inside was a familiar crystal doorknob nestled atop a tiny blue pillow.

Photo courtesy of Sage Imagery

This was the way my grandfather had proposed to my grandmother (sans the Ajax and the donut box). He was too poor to get her an engagement ring, so he offered her a perfectly round, glass doorknob instead. The hardware attached looked like a giant gold ring. My grandma still boasts that she owns the world’s largest diamond.

The doorknob John presented to me that day, was taken from his bedroom closet door, in the old house where one week ago he rented a room. He and his roomates affectionately called their home “the Alamo” because of its Spanish/Mexican exterior. It sat nestled in a peach orchard, where the sweet smell of warm fruit on hot summer nights came wafting through open windows. Upstairs in his room, John had a giant black and white poster of Audrey Hepburn on one wall. A closet stashed with dirty laundry, old guitars and broken skateboards stood ajar on the opposite wall. I discovered the crystal doorknob sometime before we began dating. I couldn’t help but receive it as an omen. Later I would nonchalantly mention its significance to John, its presence existing beside us as we spent weekends happily marooned on his full size bed, a mattress and boxspring on the floor, watching movies on his tiny tv together, hands intertwined, sharing our histories and our bodies.

If I paint too flowery of a picture, I beg you to permit it. Our courtship was short lived, and so I stretch the memories of my youthful love with John to claim the foundational space it deserves.  I would cling to these recollections in the following months when the pleasure of our new love was quickly overtaken by the business of pregnancy and marriage. Wedding plans, morning sickness, doctor visits, and financial concerns loomed. I had to glorify each second of that summer to justify why the inconveniences and hardships ahead were worthy endeavors.

Pleasure and business had been mixed.

An article featuring advice from the Young Entrepreneur Council, has many wise warnings on this matter. This is priceless advice for anyone getting married: “It’s tough to manage a friendship when business will need to be a priority.” For me personally, becoming a mother, a homemaker and a wife would feel like being torn into three separate pieces. The sentimental reasons credited for our unity would be sucker punched right out of the marital ring. On Friday nights I sat alone with a breastfeeding baby, unable to sufficiently pump milk, unable to go out with our pals, unable to speak up about how unfair I thought it was that John was still entitled to this freedom. He was a our sole provider. He was accustomed to leaving us at home. And his youth was still this real attainable thing. He wasn’t the one with the mammary glands, or the body that had been flipped inside out during birth.

The YEC says “before going into business with a friend, make sure you are clear about expectations and roles. This can save a lot of misunderstandings.” But all we had were some whimsy wedding vows. No one had delegated responsibilities, or discussed how we would equally distribute the new demands of family life.

John was able to continue doing the job he was accustomed to. His work was evaluated by his employers. He got paid, a solid nod to the fact that he was daily completing things that were of worth.  I, on the other hand had labored to give birth, the most valuable thing on earth to me was the payoff. Now each day I struggled to rewrite motherhood for her. I spent hours sitting with my daughter at the breast. No one told me what I was accomplishing each day was valued. If anything I felt each day ended with failure. I was unable to do things I was accustomed to doing: the house was a mess, laundry divided and multiplied at magical propensities, I was too exhausted and hormonal to show my husband proper affection. And my employer? That was John. He came home and interpreted what my worth was, whether he was aware of it or not.

“Be cautious” says YEC, “know your relationship well and what it can withstand. Make sure you know how you can work together. It will probably help to have a clear decision-making process, whether one person has final say or there’s a team vote ...adapt as your company does.”

When John and I disagreed over things, housework mostly, or the distribution of free time, I was often in tears before I could even relate what I wanted to say. I didn’t trust that our relationship could hold all the heavy things I was feeling. John couldn’t empathize with me. He was easily irritated by my expectations. And often before anything was resolved, I would lose my temper, or John would go to bed mad. Sometimes we didn’t speak afterwards for multiple days.

I didn’t have an opportunity to do anything outside of my role as mother, with the exception of writing cruel sentiments about the angst of wives (hell hath no fury like a wife that has journaled for the past 12 years). On weekends, we hung out as a family, making the most of what the city offered in the form of parks, riverside picnics, and trails. I felt loved by this man that I was still getting to know. He made me laugh, and cry, hard. Our roles seemed so predestined, that I didn’t know I had permission to communicate what wasn’t working for me.

I think that through a lot of it, John assumed things were going well. I wanted a second baby. He had a steady job. Nothing calamitous had happened. I still felt deeply attracted to him, but also hurt that he would never understand how hard it was. He was the one coming home from “work”. He deserved to relax, or ignore us, or take off with friends. The things I did at home all day were possible because he supported us. And therefore they must all be blessings. But they weren’t.

YEC recommends that friends starting a business must be “able to navigate through tough times with honesty and come to an agreement at the end of the day that [both] can fully support”. And as I consume the better part of a day writing this article, the little people left to their devices, I know that this is the best advise of all. It took many years, as opposed to a single day, to know that my emotions and needs are valuable to this whole family. I only hesitate a little as I notify John that dinner time has approached, and I am nowhere near done writing. I’m still learning to own the words I want to say; “Can you please make dinner tonight?” But he hears me. His response is actually just that: “I get what you’re saying.” And twelve years later, the business of marriage with children is a mutual endeavor that John and I have both come to navigate with honesty.

The Alamo was left empty for many years after John moved out. The lack of upkeep made it unlivable. It was torn down several years ago. That old house had served its purpose, a haven for two young people learning about love. We were able to snap some pictures of it, and reminisce about the fundamental parts of our union, before it was gone. Old ways of thinking about marriage are slowly deteriorating too, and should be torn down. It takes time, to trust our instincts, and our partners, and build new homes for new ideas.

-Emily

THE HARDEST THING- Our Unique Struggles are Shared Triumphs.

What is the hardest thing that you have ever done? I once tried to answer this question. I think it’s obviously motherhood, but since that is never “done” it feels like a misnomer. There are plenty of hours left that will fluctuate between failure and triumph on this thing that feels like an endurance triathlon. My strength gives out, but I find a hand reaching down to pull me out of waist-deep mud: another competitor in the hardest-thing-you’ve-ever-done race, willing to share my struggle so that we can both make it through another hour.

I attest that this is the heart of all triumph; I am a badass, home-birthing mother of four: couldn’t have done it without my husband, his faith in me, his strength and love: my mother-in-law, supporting my living children so that I could focus on the ones I was pulling from the birth water: my sister, holding my hand as I laboured, representing our shared history, our shared future, validating my heart for all it knows and feels.

Maybe that is the hardest thing we'll ever do; allowing that hand to pull us out of the mud. Or taking command when we recognize there is a loss of offered hands and resorting to shouting from the mud, “Fuck! I’m stuck! I need somebody to pull me out!” How are we to know that anyone will offer a hand? It’s a moral struggle, that inability to thrive in a given situation and that hope that someone has got to give a damn.

Spirituality calls upon an almighty. We were never intended to make it alone. We can’t. We need a savior. If there is not a tangible hand to grasp onto amid the hardest thing you have ever done, you have forgotten god. Usually, a “He” has been there all along but you just had to trust that help would be provided if you went through this third party first. “He” is like a broker that can distribute the goods if you will invest in “Him”.

I think it’s okay to acknowledge this mode of thinking; this belief, and use it to your own advantage. Yes, we are not complete. We are not perfect or able to do it all alone. Here are other humans. Here, even, is a god that looks like a human, to wean you off the idea that you can do it alone. This is Jesus. He is a dude. But look how if you put your faith into fellow humans, you can do hard things! Call it a miracle if you want to, or an example that you can use to love your neighbor, and in doing so, love yourself.

I want to meet “god” or “spirituality” on a two-part exchange. I know the bible says it can’t be done, but maybe that’s open to interpretation. “God” is my neighbor, the one that I have to trust will pull me from my muck. I can no better trust without fear of rejection, that an invisible deity will save me, than a flesh and blood relatable human walking the same earth. I feel more compelled to ask this fallible human, with a face, and a reality that won’t be encrypted in forgotten customs and misinterpreted languages.

The hardest thing I have ever done in this respect is trusted that I can meet god in the eyes of people on this earth. I have lived through abandonment and struggled with self-doubt. I have walked in shoes that I didn’t feel I deserved to fill. I have made the mistake of believing that I was better than other people, lost in a facade where no one could understand my tiny, complicated world. But I experience freedom from all of that when I connect with another person. I trust that life is cruel and wonderful, that every unique person has a story unparalleled and that this life has prepared each of us to assist someone else who is struggling.

Perhaps the hardest thing, before we can cultivate trust in our fellow humans, is the hell of going inside; pulling up that hardship that you faced; using how the cruel world molded you to fit the missing piece of someone’s solace. This is a daily hell because all of us have experienced pain and sadness. I struggle still to offer my hardships as pieces to other’s triumphs. I reflect on a world where terrible things have marred our existence. We are only human, and it is reliable that we will fail to extend that hand, or fail to find the courage to grasp the hand that is extended.

I know that god is in each one of us. If I fail to acknowledge that; If I forget that I am worthy of meeting that god in other people, I will continue trying to do the hardest things on my own, and never succeed. Sharing the struggle is real. And sharing the triumph is the greatest thing I have ever done.

-Emily