Photo by zenonline, via Flickr

She was young and pretty and sweet, and from the first day she stood up in front of my sixth grade class, I adored her.

I was at the height of my awkward stage, my self-esteem slipping on the shifting sands of hormones and changing social requirements. I didn’t fit in with my peers, whose movies of choice for sleepovers were Porky’s and Children of the Corn, who listed Duran Duran as their favorite band. I was a space adventure and Somewhere Over the Rainbow kind of girl, and even when no one was tittering behind their hands about it, I was painfully aware that I didn’t fit in. Mrs. L’s perfect acceptance soothed my spirit.

At lunch recess, while my classmates played “liberation” kickball, I attached to Mrs. L.  On gray, dreary winter days we stood with our hands in our pockets and talked. About what, I couldn’t say now; all I know is that when I was with her, I felt loved.

And then one afternoon, she met my eager approach with a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Kate,” she said, “I think you need to go play with your classmates.”

The shock went straight to my core in one horrible burst of shame. I was a smart girl. I instantly recognized everything she didn’t say. I was pestering my teacher at her much-needed break time. We were not friends, we were student and teacher, and I had stepped over the line. For one moment, I felt rejection, and then I recognized that she was right to banish me. By hanging out with her, I was solidifying division lines between myself and my peers, looking like a holier-than-thou teacher’s pet…which I already was; no need to make it worse.

For all the world I wouldn’t let her know how much it hurt. I skipped off, swallowing my tears, and I never again tried to chum with her. I only adored her at a distance. And although the next year of my life was perhaps the worst ever, by the time I graduated eighth grade, I had begun to connect with people my own age.

Everyone thinks they’re awkward in adolescence. I can already see it beginning in Alex, even in the first grade, and I wince. It hurts to see my children suffer; my instinct is to do everything in my power to fix it, to shield them and make sure they never feel shame or hurt or heartbreak.

But suffering is part of life, and a crucial one. Some of the most important lessons of my life were learned, not in joy, but in suffering; not in affirmation, but in shame. Pain is instructive. So I steel myself against the future, and even the present, and I try to temper my heart with my head, and remind myself that my role is not to protect my son from those tough lessons, but to stand by and love him unconditionally while he learns the lessons he needs to grow to strong manhood.

and continuing the practices of motherhood posts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

Click here for Part 2

There’s a Gospel passage in which Jesus says no man gives his child a snake when they ask for a fish. It’s built in to our love for our children, this desire to fulfill their needs…and their wants. Whatever they ask for–the newest toy or a special treat–we want to tell them yes.

But even God, to whom Jesus is comparing us, doesn’t give us everything we want–because what we want isn’t necessarily what we need.

Growing up, my sisters and I got told “no” a lot. We didn’t go out to eat, we almost never bought treats at the store. (Like Oreo’s. Oreo’s were a huge treat.) We were a farm family in the ’80s, and my parents had to be very frugal. They were also very busy–Dad almost always worked ten hour days, and during planting or harvest, it might be twelve or more. Mom had to be available to help move equipment, haul grain, or run to the dealership for a part. And she grew and preserved most of our vegetables. So the “no”‘s were unavoidable. We didn’t go to the pool very often, and when we did we very rarely bought snacks, and then only the cheapest ones–no candy bars. I can count our amusement park and baseball game trips on one hand. Vacations, for that reason, were a Very.Big.Deal.

It was a very different childhood from that of many of my classmates, whose parents took them to St. Louis to buy school clothes every August. I don’t ever remember shopping for school clothes. We just went downstairs and pulled out the next box from the storage room.

Frankly, I don’t think I got told “no” all that often, because I learned pretty quickly not to ask for a lot. I think at some instinctive level, I could sense how much it would hurt my parents to have to say no. (Although if my memory is skewed, I’m sure my mom will hop in and correct me. It’s wonderful, but sometimes dangerous, to write when you know your parents are reading. )

Like all childhood lessons that sting, this is one I have come to value greatly. Self-denial is not a sexy concept–our entire economy is based on self-gratification. But look what it’s led to: an epidemic of debt and obesity. Self-gratification is really dangerous. It’s not intrinsically bad, but it becomes bad at a very low level. And let’s face it: in adulthood, we often have to go without what we need, or think we need.

I want to teach my children the difference between needs and wants. But we don’t face the same necessities that my parents did, and it makes it harder to say no. Their deprivation hurts my heart; their pain hurts me. Yet I know they need to learn to handle not getting what they want. That is a lesson that takes a long time to learn—to handle the word “no” with grace.

So we try to practice moderation, stewardship, and frugality, because those three things all require “no.”

Moderation: food, toys, TV viewing–we try to keep reasonable limits on these things. We have made a rule that there will always be only one television in our house, in order to moderate the temptation.

Stewardship: We steward the environment by recycling, using cloth diapers, and not buying a lot. We practice financial stewardship by saving (and saving and saving) to make any major purchase–for instance, we’ve been saving for almost two years toward an SLR camera, because the darned hospital bills and repairs keep cutting into the project. We keep on a budget, and Alex knows very well that he must practice the piano, not just because he should, but because we’re paying good money for his lessons.

Frugality: When we buy, we do it right, but we don’t buy much. We bought a new TV when I was 8 months pregnant with Alex–a great monster with a picture tube–at the time it was still the best picture quality. That’s no longer the case, and it would be awesome to have an HD TV, but how can we justify the expense? Ours works fine.

I hope these lessons help my children learn that life is measured not by Stuff, but by the quality of their relationships, both with the people in their lives and with the world at large.

What do you do to help your kids learn the importance of “no”?

Click here for part 4

Image via Wikipedia

On days when crisp fall fades to a dusk that chills the toes, I always think of home. Because on days like this, my house smells like baking bread.

In the eighteen years that I lived at home, I don’t think my mother ever once bought a loaf of bread. It was one of those tasks, like laundry, that you just do yourself, no matter how tiresome. Perhaps the most familiar scene from my childhood is Mom, with the huge aluminum bowl on the table in the middle of that beat-up linoleum floor and horrible burnt-yellow wallpaper, making bread.

Ingredients:

5-lb. bag of white flour (more or less)
½ c. lard
2 T. salt
1/3 c. sugar
2 T. yeast dissolved in 5 ½ c. warm water (potato water if you have it)

Dump half the flour in a large pan. Measure in lard, salt & sugar. Cut in lard & stir. Add yeast water and stir, adding flour as it gets incorporated.

We’d prop our hands on brown-vinyl chair backs and the cabinet and swing back and forth, regaling her with stories. She never stopped folding dough onto itself, the table squeaking under the force of her arms, a sound you heard and recognized wherever you were in the house. I never understood how she did it. Even today my arms wear out long before the bread’s ready.

When dough is too stiff to stir, continue kneading with hands, at least fifteen minutes, till texture is smooth and satiny. “You can’t knead bread too much,” she says.

At last, she’d slap the dough on the table and dig floury fingers into the lard bucket, smearing it around the bowl to keep the dough from sticking. She’d put the big ball in, rub it around, flip it over, then cover the top to keep it moist for the next couple hours as the smell of yeast permeated the front rooms.

Let rise until doubled. Punch down, let rise again.

Sometimes she didn’t get started early enough in the day, and the smell was late blossoming, twining with roast beef and potatoes and apple pie. I was almost sorry on those days, because it was hard to pick out the smell.

Cut dough ball into quarters. Knead and shape each piece into loaves. Place into pans greased with lard and turn to coat the loaf. Let rise until doubled.

Those nights, we’d all go to bed and Mom would stay up, sitting at the table reading, waiting for the loaves to finish rising and then baking. I always felt sorry for her, but I wonder now if some part of her relished that quiet solitude.

Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes. Turn out onto cooling racks and smear with bacon grease to lock the moisture in.

Now, as then, warm homemade bread with butter and honey is my favorite of all indulgences. Brownies and ice cream are decadent, but fresh bread is soul food. It means home.

On nights when the incessant traffic noise mysteriously vanishes and the sound of a dog barking echoes outside my window, I miss my childhood. My heart reaches back toward sight of the full moon rising swollen and orange behind rows of corn and the smell of burning leaves at the end of the driveway, burrowing into cotton and denim and polyester, permeating thick hair for days.

I long for the feel of the concrete porch under my pink nightgown, the cats rubbing up against me as I filled three-ring binders with poems, stories, and the drama of a blissfully mundane life.

I ache for the heady freedom of sitting atop a ten-foot whitewashed fence at sunset, of lying back on a corrugated tin roof as it radiates the heat of the day into the cool night, watching the endless sky fade from sunset to first stars to bejeweled. I feel again the warmth and good smells and brightness upon opening the door afterward, the smell of bread promising love and security.

I miss games of badminton in the big yard that were about conversation, not sport. On a good night we had to move into the pool of greenish-white below the security light to keep going past dark.

I miss the simplicity of those days: mist rising from creeks to east and west, breezes through the treehouse, sunsets turning from sherbet to russet in the still surface of the pond, and the ghostly roar of the grain dryer running at night, waxing and waning with the vagaries of the night breezes. On what did I squander those precious hours? Now, everything is a responsibility, even hobbies.  And the kicking inside my pelvis reminds me that the responsibilities are only on the rise.

It’s hard to remember, on nights like this, with the windows open and the orchestra of crickets carrying me backward in time, that I wasn’t cognizant of what lay all around me.

(the silence, the space, the distant bellow of a cow and the ghostly sound of feeder lids tapping tin)

That most of the time I was so busy focusing on something else that I didn’t realize how deeply the impressions were engraving, shaping me,

(the uneven boards of a treehouse built of platforms, my own brain child, the day we were washing windows and I impulsively carried my ladder from the west side of the house to the tree at the corner of the driveway)

that in my life now there are moments of equal beauty that I overlook in the mad rush to accomplish other things,

(dark almond eyes in the orange of street light, the smile of a little girl who never fails to be delighted that Mommy responded to her midnight cries)

moments that skip right over my awareness and embed themselves within, shaping me, drawing me inexorably along the continuum from who I am today to the woman I will be a few years.

I miss childhood, but it’s a gift, moving on.

“Big Sister, Little Sister” came first. I rolled my eyes a bit at the sight of the tutu/princess dress-clad girls, but yanno. Okay. It’s a cute book. In its pages, the girls (perfectly coutured and exquisitely matched throughout) zip up in one coat, play violin, give each other a boost, and wear high heels together—basically the picture of What A Girl Is Supposed To Be: well-behaved, empathetic, supportive, nurturing. My kids adored it—so thoroughly that within a week it had the ripped, bent look of every other book in our library.

Then came “Big Brother, Little Brother”, which you know is going to be an animal of another kind altogether based upon this cover.

On the first page, they’re eating worms. (Right. Your boys do that every day, don’t they?) Then they stick fish in each other’s faces and try to kiss a tropical bird. There’s a token moment or two in which the boys comfort each other—and the two pages devoted to adoption choke me up. Even so, I look at these books and I wonder: whose boys, and whose girls, are these kids? Because they don’t look like any kid I know!

I grew up with three sisters, and let me tell you, we did not have the gorgeous Kodak moments portrayed in the “sisters” book. No, we had pinching, hitting, screaming catfights. All.The.Time. When we did play, it was outside, jumping off hay bales or climbing on trucks and tractors down in the third driveway. Our play houses were in dusty attics around the farm: the milk barn, the machine shop, the abandoned grain storage above the two-story cinderblock garage. With the wasps.

But mostly, we fought. Especially when we were the ages of these girls (2 up to about 8).

Fast forward to the present. I have two boys and a girl.

My boys:

My girl:

Okay, I know that wasn’t fair. How about this one?

She likes baby dolls, but she also likes trucks and trains and bicycles and wallowing in the mud at the edge of the creek. And my boys? So far, Nicholas is more a “boy’s boy” (except he sleeps with a baby doll). But at six, Alex is a well-balanced child who enjoys art even more than baseball, and on par with riding his bicycle. He’s brainy; he loves reading and writing, school and playing the piano.

I guess the thing that bothers me is the “never the two shall meet” way boys and girls are packaged inAmerica. Let me explain.

Have you ever tried shopping for boys’ clothes? Go to the children’s department and the girls’ clothes—most of them adorable, except for what I call “attitude” clothes (“Little Miss Perfect,” “I’m the queen,” etc.)—stretch out of sight. And hidden on about three racks are the boys clothes, in muted hunters’ colors. If you don’t want a sports or occasional hunting reference, you might as well not waste the gas to go to the store. Meanwhile, girls are presented with an array of spangles, colors, layers, butterflies and crowns, one top for one pair of pants, no mixing and matching here! And have you ever noticed that nobody makes short-sleeved shirts for girls? Only wrist-length or sleeveless. What message is that supposed to be sending? That girls don’t go outside in mid-temperature weather?

I’m not one of those people who denies the difference between genders. But I think it’s a little weird how advertising shoves boys into one box and girls into another, completely ignoring the reality that human beings are complex and beautifully messy in packaging. It’s like girls are supposed to be prissy, clean little angels who are only interested in dolls and princesses—but woe to anyone who suggests that these associations continue into adulthood! Is it just me, or is this a mixed message?

 –4 March 1996, revised May 12, 1999

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I really thought that November had at last settled in, and I was about to take off on novel writing. And then came this weekend. I will spare you the details. Suffice it to say, it involved a stomach virus and everyone in the family. And book signings. And NFP class. And let’s just say that not one word got written this weekend.

So today, I’m going to share a story I can’t believe I’ve never shared, because it’s canonical in my family’s household.

My mother was a city girl through & through, but she embraced her role as a farm wife.  When I was a kid, she raised chickens and sold the eggs. It was almost a daily occurrence that someone along the gravel road would come knocking on the door asking to buy a dozen or three. Feeding and watering chickens, chasing them inside at dusk, collecting eggs–we were never more clearly farm girls than when we were doing hen chores. (Except, perhaps, when we were playing on grain trucks and jumping off hay bales. But I digress.)

So, after a few years, Mom decided she’d get a rooster, and save the money she spent every spring on pullets for butchering. Well, it didn’t work. The rooster spent most of his time perched in the tree outside my parents’ window, crowing at progressively more annoying times. And by annoying, I don’t mean 5a.m. I mean 3 a.m., and 2a.m. Finally one night, my mom flipped out. She grabbed a broom, went outside and hurled it up into the tree. The rooster flew down squawking and took off running into the pitch blackness outside the security light. Mom chased him screaming until she couldn’t see where she was going.

We never saw the rooster again, but the next summer, Mom uncovered a pile of feathers down by a grain bin while she was mowing. And that’s when we started telling the story of how Mom scared the rooster to death.

It hangs in the the closet, tucked in the back with all the other clothes I don’t wear anymore, flowing concert black and high school prom red…

Like another of my blog friends, I, too, like to pull it out and put it on once in a while, as my mother did when we were little. And Alex, who after attending a wedding recently is newly intrigued by this weird grownup ritual of wearing impossible-to-keep-clean, really big dresses, insisted upon being photographer instead of one of the subjects.

So, for a few brief, glorious minutes, I got to be my bride-self again…the juxtaposition of who I once was with who I have become: flowing satin amid piles of laundry, and jammie-clad little ones on my lap.

And when it was done, we resumed our routine as if nothing had happened. Resumed the world of books, prayers, tucking in, and procrastinating by protesting that the radio is hissing, by screeching for water…

…to the ordinary tasks of cutting hair…hair that once was all black, but now begins to turn white at the temples.

Beadwork and tuxedos. That is where motherhood begins: in a union of two who become one, whose union becomes enfleshed again and again. Praise God.

***

(Note: yes, I am very proud of the fact that eleven years and three children later, I can still wear my wedding dress.)

It is the time of year when, up at the farm, the combine sits in front of the shop for its pre-marathon physical. The time when all the richness of nature hurls forth one final, all-consuming burst of energy in a blaze of fire. Verdant bean fields morph into a rainbow of red, orange and yellow. Sweet corn spends its last morsels of gold and slumps over in a gray-brown mess, its job complete. The whisper of leaves in the breeze turns to a crackle underfoot.

For a farmer, it is the fulfillment of the year’s work. “You have crowned the year with your goodness,” as Ps. 65 says. It is my favorite time of year, and full of the most vivid memories of life on the farm. I remember taking lunch and supper to the field. Lines of trucks waiting to dump at the grain elevator. The overwhelming roar of the grain dryer, and the ghostly roar of the combine crawling back and forth in the darkness, its lights little more than pinpricks, viewed from the house. The sweetish smell of corn chaff teasing the nose, covering everything in pink…the ear-splitting treble as the grain began to fill the auger.

Although I no longer live by the rhythms of the farm year, as I did when I was a child, the awareness of what lies outside the city is a constant part of my consciousness. At this time of the year, when the gaudy beach ball colors of summer give way to the mustard-yellow of school buses, I feel the richness of life more than at any other time. The promise of childhood and the bounty of summer culminate in the harvest.

And this is the time of year when I appreciate my dad the most.

The Work of His Hands
K. Basi

He tills the land, plants the seed
And he watches the green fields
Grow tall as the seasons pass over the land
And he works, and he prays
At the end of each day
That the Lord will bless the work of his hands. 

He is strong, he is proud
But he melts at the sound
Of his two-year-old grandbaby’s beautiful laugh
And he looks at his family
Now grown, and he asks
That the Lord will bless the work of his hands. 

From the dark of the womb
To the sweet golden rain
Of the final harvest,
He knows that the Lord
Is the force that moves his life.

When his work is complete
And he offers the Keeper
Of Heaven and Earth the best that he has,
May the fruit of his labor
Then lead the Creator
To bless this man for the work of his hands.

Dad and Julianna, at Nicholas's baptism 4/26/09

http://www.connectmidmissouri.com/news/video.aspx?id=330252

In fact, when we were children,  my sisters and I thought our dad was very crotchety. (Sorry, Dad.) But adult to adult, when you pin him down to find out just how bad the weather, the machinery problems, the overall health of the crop in any given year are hitting him, he steadfastly refuses to give you anything but a hopeful answer. It is only in adulthood that I have discovered that my dad, the farmer, is a closet optimist. And oh, how I love him for it.