To Be, or not to be…happy

Here we go again. Did you see the piece in New York Magazine? The one about how parenthood makes people less happy?

Here are a some real gems:

“…all parents spend more time today with their children than they did in 1975, including mothers, in spite of the great rush of women into the American workforce. Today’s married mothers also have less leisure time (5.4 fewer hours per week); 71 percent say they crave more time for themselves (as do 57 percent of married fathers). Yet 85 percent of all parents still—still!—think they don’t spend enough time with their children.”

“(Children are) a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to s***.”

“And couples probably pay the dearest price of all. Healthy relationships definitely make people happier. But children adversely affect relationships. As Thomas Bradbury, a father of two and professor of psychology at UCLA, likes to say: ‘Being in a good relationship is a risk factor for becoming a parent.’

Studies and articles like this always irritate me. How do you measure “happy,” anyway? “Happy” is a mood. “Happy” depends on the day of the week, the hour, sometimes the minute. It depends on whether you’re fighting with your sister, or coming off a fun day at the beach. Reducing the lifelong experience of parenthood to this tiny sliver is worse than ridiculous.

Plus, these sorts of stories are based on people’s perceptions, which are then turned into reality. This is another thing I hate about political “news.” During an election cycle, we don’t hear facts about issues or stances; that would be too complicated, too prone to bias. No, we hear the results of polls, because obviously what people THINK is the truth actually IS the truth. (Puh-leeze.)

So I was somewhat mollified to see that (buried halfway down the article), they shared this:

“Seven years ago, the sociologists Kei Nomaguchi and Melissa A. Milkie did a study in which they followed couples for five to seven years, some of whom had children and some of whom did not. And what they found was that, yes, those couples who became parents did more housework and felt less in control and quarreled more (actually, only the women thought they quarreled more, but anyway). On the other hand, the married women were less depressed after they’d had kids than their childless peers. And perhaps this is because the study sought to understand not just the moment-to-moment moods of its participants, but more existential matters, like how connected they felt, and how motivated, and how much despair they were in (as opposed to how much stress they were under): Do you not feel like eating? Do you feel like you can’t shake the blues? Do you feel lonely? Like you can’t get going? Parents, who live in a clamorous, perpetual-forward-motion machine almost all of the time, seemed to have different answers than their childless cohorts.

Somewhat, because you still have to draw the obvious conclusion for yourself: that fleeting “happiness” is not the whole story. Parenthood is stressful, for sure, and sometimes it seems like the rewards are ephemeral. But if you can step back and look at the big picture, it makes all the difference. Sure, this morning as I type I have a 16-month-old whining and whimpering, trying to sit on my lap and take over the keyboard.  And a 5-year-old sulking because I told him he couldn’t wear his Superman pajamas all day (he’s been wearing them for 76 hours already). Is that annoying? Uh, yes. Do I like stubbing my toe on chairs and stools, tripping over stainless bowls while I’m trying to cook? Not in the slightest. In fact, I throw temper tantrums about it all the time.

But in twenty-five years, when my kids are grown, I’m not going to be stuck on this day’s annoyances–this day’s, or any day’s, for that matter. I’m going to be thinking how rich my life is because of them.

This is why I get so irritated when the girl at Kidz Court looks at my chaotic family of three little ones and says, “You’re crazy.” When did we lose the ability to think and plan long term? When did the passing pleasure of the moment become the only standard by which we judge life?

“I think this boils down to a philosophical question, rather than a psychological one,” says (Tom) Gilovich (of Cornell U). “Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?”

Most importantly, I have a choice in how we choose to approach the individual moments. With or without children, there will always be irritations in life, but there will also be moments of heart-stopping beauty and incredible grace. And often, they are the same moments. The baby who’s trying to type my blog post in Baby-de-gook is also holding his hands up and padding toward me with a grin that makes my insides go gooey. The kid sulking about Superman jammies is also taking time outs to giggle at being tickled. In these moments that swing so wildly, I get to choose which part defines my mood.

I won’t always choose well. But I will always have the choice.

Published in: on July 29, 2010 at 8:12 am  Comments (3)  
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An Interview with Kimberly Hahn

This spring, I had the opportunity to interview Kimberly Hahn for an article in the Couple to Couple League’s Family Foundations magazine. Catholic audiences need no introduction to Mrs. Hahn and her husband. But for those who aren’t familiar with their work, Scott and Kimberly Hahn were a Protestant minister’s family who converted to Catholicism via a long and sometimes painful process of rediscovering Scripture. Dr. Hahn unwraps Catholic faith and teachings in the light of Scripture, and Mrs. Hahn focuses on issues relating to family and parenthood.

The day we talked, I got to pick her brain on the subject of overparenting, and the way that the choice not to use contraception affects our outlook on parenting. Although we were talking Catholicism, I think her reflections will resonate with Protestant and Catholic alike.

KB: Is there something about the choice not to contracept that causes a shift in the way couples choose to parent?

KH: I do think it makes a big difference. Just looking up a couple of articles on the one-child policy in China brought it into focus. In China they’re talking about the “little emperor syndrome.” Since this is the only child they’re going to have, parents focus all their time and attention on that child. You have two parents and four grandparents catering to one child. Six adults, all trying to figure out how they will help that ONE child afford a house. Now they’re referring to these little boys as the Brat Pack, because instead of learning the normal things that a child needs to learn, they’re being catered to.

Sometimes in the States you’ll hear people having only one or two children talk about “premium” children. They’ll use negative images about larger families, like “we’re not having a litter of kids, or a crop of kids, were having premium children.” To NFP parents, they are priceless children. They’re a gift from God, so we have a responsibility to raise them well, but not to have them be the focus of our lives.

The secular view is: I only want to have one or two children because I can then give them everything. My husband overheard this couple on a plane, with a six-month old baby. Scott got into conversation with them. He said, “Is this your first child?”

“This is our only child,” the husband said. “We’re gonna give her everything.”

And my husband said, “Except siblings.” The secular world thinks of the THINGS, the room to themselves, the toys…but they’re very lonely children. Some of them don’t have very many cousins, aunts and uncles, so the family structure that would help them be well-rounded Christian people isn’t there. There are those who substitute things, and they think they’re doing what’s best for their kids.

KB: Does the fact that we practice surrendering to God’s will and trusting in God’s timing predispose us to resist the urge to overparent?

KH: As Christians, the center of our lives needs to be Christ. Do we need to be responsible for their safety? Sure, but ultimately I’m not the one in control—God is. And our perspective on contraception is that God is the one in control. And we’re acknowledging that.

For example, germs. If you have one or two children, you can go out of your way to protect them…but they may grow up to be sickly adults because they weren’t exposed when they were young. When you have lots of kids, you can’t do that, but they may be healthier later.

It’s important to be responsible for their care, but God is asking us to be faithful in parenting. One of the challenges every parent faces, whether Christian or not, is different shading between our children and ourselves. We can feel that their success is our success and their failure is our shame. I think the Catholic perspective on parenting is more balanced. Yes, we have an influence on their success or failure, but if we begin to equate their success or failure with ours, then were not putting the correct emphasis on God.

Does that mean I can’t reinforce my child’s obedience? Of course I can–but I can only do so much. Beyond that, I have to trust in God. God is going to teach them and challenge them through other people, not just me. I think of those parents who map out what Ivy League school their kids are going to attend based on what preschool they send them to. They’re confusing their identity.

I think that a Catholic view on parenting is much more balanced. Of course, we all bring our own weaknesses and strengths to parenthood. One of the differences between the Catholic view of family and the secular world is the marriage relationship. The primary relationship is our marriage; and from that, our children are our next priority. It’s very important that we care for children and serve them in the ways that we need to, but we can’t make them the center of our life, because that’s where God needs to be. And ultimately if we put the priorities in order, we’re serving them better.

KB: Does the Church offer us any guidance? What about Scripture, saints, etc.?

KH: In I Corinthians 8:1, Paul says that knowledge puffs up; love builds up.
The Church teaches us that responsible parenting is being open to life. The world will pit having children vs. being responsible. So many of these beautiful Church and papal writings don’t pit one versus the other. I don’t know any parent who would say they DON’T want to do the best thing for their kids. If that’s our primary motivation, then we need to trust the wisdom of the Church that what is best for our children includes our openness to life.

There’s a psychiatrist up in Canada who treats kids with lots of dark thoughts. There’s the sense in these kids that it was a good thing they were conceived when they were, because otherwise they might not be here at all.
If we will yield to the Lord and the Church, we will discover how good it is for our children to have other children. I think of older couples who say they wish they had had more children, but now it’s too late. The time to be open is when it’s possible.

My mom had her last baby when I was sixteen, and she said it this way: “I know I will be an older parent when he’s young. But you are all so close, I know you will all care for him.”

KB: As you might imagine, considering my interest, we also talked about Down syndrome. Its pretty common, though of course not universal, that once you have a child with Down’s, you’re done—as if parents throw their hands up in defense against the fear of being overwhelmed by more children, because that one child requires so much more to accomplish the basic necessities of life. Mrs. Hahn took a different approach. She told me about a friend of hers, who has a child with Down’s. That friend responded by saying, “It makes me want to have more children. I know I’m probably going not to outlive my child, and this way his siblings can care for him.”

I know that conventional wisdom would react badly to that—as if the only value for a younger sibling of a child with special needs is as eventual caretaker, a person in service to a more fragile older sibling, a la My Sisters Keeper. But I think that misses a couple of important points.

First, this perspective only exists in combination with a deep love of and openness to life. And secondly, this is what family is about: taking care of each other. I don’t see anything wrong with parents who take into account the lifelong welfare of all family members while they’re making decisions about family planning.

Mrs. Hahn goes on to say,

KH: That’s part of the irony of the Gospel being lived out in normal life: it may sound more logical to stop everything and focus all the resources on one. But I can think of a family where the next child challenges and encourages the older sibling with developmental growth.

Parenthood gives us a chance to really trust the Lord: whether we’re able to conceive, whether we’re able to bring them to term, whether there are disabilities to deal with…we’re really not in control.

On the other hand, we do know a lot of parents feel the impulse to overprotect. It is responsible to pause and consider: Is there something good and holy in that impulse?

When we try to live the Church’s teaching we can sometimes fall into the trap of Catholic guilt and think we have to offer everything up, that we can’t ever say, “This is too hard!” Sometimes its really overwhelming, and we have to find the friends who will encourage us and pray for us.

Note to CCL members: look for more with Kimberly Hahn in the September/October issue of Family Foundations.

Published in: on July 28, 2010 at 5:36 am  Comments (1)  
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Nationalized Health Care, Down Syndrome, and Abortion

I’m going to go out on a limb today and say something that a good portion of my readership probably won’t like. Namely: I support Obama’s health care plan.

You might remember that last year a group of us put together a bill to mandate coverage of “habilitative” services for children with special needs. This extremely frustrating process has shifted me from a default status of “big government=bad” to support of national health care.

Consider this:

  • A child who has a stroke on the birthing table will receive whatever therapies s/he needs throughout his/her life. But a child who has a stroke in utero, even a day or two before labor begins, will be denied the same coverage.
  • Likewise, if Alex (Heaven forbid) suffered a fall and received brain damage that made it necessary for him to receive ongoing physical, occupational, or speech therapy, he’d get it. But Julianna, who already faces an uphill battle for learning anything (aside from being cute, which she gets naturally :) ), gets denied based on her diagnosis of Down’s.

As long as we were covered by First Steps, we got what we needed. It is a great program. But it only goes to age 3—and Julianna didn’t even walk until 2 ½. For 2 ½ years, we threw all our effort behind the basic gross motor skills, with OT and speech taking second place. This is the natural order of learning. But by the time she walked, we had less than six months to focus on speech therapy. Six months, when it took 2 ½ years to teach her to walk.

At 3 ½, she receives one hour a week of one-on-one speech therapy from the public schools. And although her comprehension is within twelve months of normal, she’s not even as far along as Nicholas (16 mo.) in speech production. She doesn’t know how to control her muscles. She can’t even babble the back of the mouth sounds (k, g, etc.) The only solution is speech therapy, and a lot of it. Can the school give her more? Probably. We’re certainly going to ask, come fall. But through insurance, we’re just plain old out of luck, because she has a pre-existing condition—namely, Down syndrome.

And we have good insurance. Insurance that served us well, as long as we had somebody else providing therapy.

This is the inequity—dare I say, the discrimination—that the Children’s Therapy Act seeks to address. But even knowing that grassroots-level legislation takes years to get passed, the complete and total lack of responsiveness from the political leadership was disheartening, to say the least. For weeks on end, we deluged the speaker’s office with calls to assign the bill to committee. We called senators, trying to get someone to listen to us. No response.

I contacted a former state senator, hoping for advice on who might be open to listening to us. Instead, I heard how insurance is not supposed to cover ongoing needs; insurance is supposed to be for short-term, emergency care, and we should not be putting mandates on private companies. I wanted to strangle him. Political philosophy is all well and good, but not when it holds us hostage. Because folks, there is not another good option.

A health insurance company can negotiate a rate with providers. A family can’t. It’s not because the therapists are unwilling; it’s just not allowed. That means that where an insurance company pays a fraction of the fee, families pay the whole freaking thing. Every time.

We know of people who have sold their homes to pay for therapy. People who have turned down good jobs, preferring to stay in low-paying ones, because Medicare does cover therapies. People who have gone into debt to meet their child’s needs.

How is this just?

This is why I put my support behind federal health care. Because as of 2014, it requires that insurers provide coverage equally across the board, regardless of “pre-existing condition.”

Now, I know the arguments. High taxes, socialized medicine, general governmental incompetence. I get it. I do. I’ve heard from people who lived in Canada and loathed the system, saying it was absolutely useless. But I’ve also heard from people who lived in Canada and said it was fabulous. Likewise for people in Europe, who come here and are appalled by our for-profit health care system. No system is perfect; somebody’s always going to be upset. But I truly, honestly believe that most of the backlash against “Obamacare” is about political power and fear of change.

What about abortion? Well, here’s the thing. Abortion, horrific and loathsome as it is, is not going to be legislated away. Not now, anyway. We as pro-life Christians would be far better employed changing hearts and minds than banging on a door that simply cannot be broken down right now. Through Theology of the Body, through natural family planning, through support of unwed mothers, we can change the world. Because where hearts and minds are, laws will follow.

One final thought. Parents given a diagnosis of Down syndrome during pregnancy are presented with a world where their child will be discriminated against every day. If parents can’t even trust their health insurance to help them get needed care for their child, how can we be surprised by a 90% abortion rate?

Published in: on July 27, 2010 at 7:15 am  Comments (9)  
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Good Deals, Great Deals

There are some things I will never understand.

Oprah’s magazine, for instance. This month, it’s called “THE BIG DEAL ISSUE!” And the cover brags, “Everything Oprah’s wearing is under $100!”

Now, I don’t know about you, but just because an item of clothing costs less than $100 does not put it in my definition of a great deal. For instance: $44 earrings.  $95 bracelet. $55 watch. (Do you notice what I haven’t gotten to yet? Uh—CLOTHES?) The entire ensemble adds up to $570. And I don’t even think it’s remotely pretty. Fess up, ladies. Does anyone spend this kind of money on casual clothes? I think not! What universe is this magazine crew living in, anyway?

(Or am I the odd woman out here? Pray tell!)

Every month, O magazine makes me crazy with its pages and pages of “things we love,” not one of which is priced in a range that makes it even remotely interesting to me, even if I liked them, which I almost never do.

And yet, every month in this magazine, there is something wonderful. Usually it’s an essay. This month it’s Martha Beck. Her article is called “The Joy Dividend,” and in it, she talks about a philosophy for spending money. The centerpiece of her strategy is a box that looks like this:

 Martha Beck money chart

Fairly self-explanatory. She says you spend good money on things you both need and LOVE (“LOVE” being far more than mere “love”), pinch pennies on things you have to have but don’t love, and then splurge on category 3 with whatever’s left, and skip the impulse buys that load your life with junk you don’t even really care for.

It’s not a perfect system, mind you. The missing link in this system is giving. She addresses retirement and savings, but not charity. I suppose you could argue that charitable giving falls into the “need” category, but I don’t know anybody who would put that in category 1 (be honest—you do it because you’re supposed to, because it’s the right thing to do, but don’t you spend that money a hundred times in your head?), and as for category 2, charity is certainly not something you should be pinching pennies on.

But aside from that, I adore this philosophy—enough to write a blog post on someone else’s idea. :) . How liberating is it to realize how much of what we spend money on falls into category 4?

Published in: on July 19, 2010 at 5:24 am  Comments (9)  
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7 Quick Takes, vol. 89

1. I’ve been having one of those weeks again. One of those weeks where I found myself out of balance, focused myopically on writing, unable to sleep at night for being wound up about it, and spending far too little time being wife and mom. Any time this happens to me, it calls into question the whole vocation, makes me doubt whether I’m really supposed to be writing, or whether I need to stop trying to live in both worlds.

2. And then, out of nowhere, a week like this. A royalty check, payment for an article, completion of a really good query class, two queries and a personal essay sent out into the great beyond, a not-quite-rejection from a literary agent, and to top it off, forward motion on my new flute collection with GIA. Talk about a celestial message that the struggle for balance is worthwhile! If every week was this good on the writing front, I’d be making a living at it. Then again, I probably would never sleep.

3. Okay, enough about writing. I’m curious, folks—who out there still has movie rental stores nearby? Because all of ours closed. All but the one locally-owned one that has no parking b/c it’s downtown. Anyway, being movie lovers with three small children (which means that we hardly ever get to the theater), we have been driven to something we always thought we’d never do. We joined Netflix.

4. We always thought Netflix would be one of those things that we never deemed worthwhile—like cable TV. We keep basic cable—the kind of cable that they don’t even advertise because their standard package is “family cable.” But after we gave up TV for Lent for a couple of years, and saw our life shift for the better, we called the cable company and said, “Hey, whatever happened to that basic package? You know, the $15 one?” Yes, we miss out on a lot. But the more TV you have, the more you feel compelled to watch, and TV is really not a very good use of time. And it shields the kids from a lot of commercialism, too.

5. I always looked at Netflix that way. I mean, how many movies do you need to watch in a month? If you’re going to be socked with a monthly fee, you feel compelled to watch a bunch. But I have to say, I’m sold on it. We’ve more than used our money’s worth this first month, finally getting to watch the last season of Alias (we watched them all on videos, borrowed from friends, but never got to the last one…life intervened) and playing 1940s Superman videos for Alex on the computer.

6. Julianna’s summer school ended yesterday, so now summer begins in earnest. No more cute schoolbus moments till fall, and then Alex will be going to school, too. Six weeks. Wow! They say in parenthood, the days drag and the years fly. I think that about sums it up.

7. I have a babysitter this morning, so I get to go out to the nature area and sit this morning. I definitely need to find some stillness. And then, I will come home and work on adding 4000 words to my novel. Sounds like a good day. Let’s get on with it! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Published in: on July 16, 2010 at 5:29 am  Comments (7)  
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7 Quick Takes, vol. 88

Takes 1-3: Wardrobe Malfunctions

1. On Wednesday morning, we actually got going in plenty of time to get Julianna to her language preschool. Until Alex discovered he was missing a shoe. Not his shoes. A shoe. We turned the house upside down, but we could not find that shoe. Knowing that my two non-verbal children could easily have hidden it (like the cornstarch and the icing from my cake class), I gritted my teeth and attempted not to shout at him as he got his hated yellow Crocs on and went out to the van. We now had eight minutes to make a fifteen minute drive. And in the van, Alex discovered…his shoe.

?????????????????????

2. We got Julianna to school and I rushed her inside. As I patted her bottom to get her moving into the classroom, I noticed a cute little butt crack showing. Uh oh, I thought, her diaper’s slipped. And so I reached down to pull it (and her skort) up. And discovered…you guessed it. No diaper. She was wearing her cute polka dotted skirt, and no diaper. Can we all say, What the….?

3. Then Wednesday night I went shopping for a new swimsuit, my old one being stretched out from nursing the last two children. More proof, as if I needed it, that clothing designers definitely do not make clothes with me in mind! When it was all over I came home with a size 14 top and a size 10 skirt, and Christian nearly choked when I told him it cost $47…and that regular price was $75!

Takes 4-7: The Virtue of a Virus (or: an illustration of our status as total techno lllllooosers!)

4. Last week, our computer freaked out and we had to send it to the omputer wizards, who took about twelve viruses off of it and loaded new malware onto it.  We brought it home expecting good things, but didn’t really notice a difference in processing/interface speed.  Then last night, up popped the message again, in the middle of nothing at all–as in, I wasn’t even working at the time; I came over to the computer to find the message: “Cannot open file (gibberish).exe. File is infected.”

5. Christian set the software to work. It found 7 more infected files, which for some reason the computer seemed reluctant to delete. Once he finally got rid of them, he realized why: We no longer had internet access. (Sigh.)

6. Two hours and a long call to Century Tel later, Christian got the internet up and running again. And in the process, he and the customer service guy had a discussion about whichlights were and were not lit on our DSL box, and why the shortcut to connect to the web wasn’t working. The guy said, “What do you mean? This is DSL. You don’t need to dial up.”

The long an the short of it? After THREE YEARS of paying for DSL service, we finally have it! Our jaws hit the floor when we started surfing the web, and saw the difference in speed.

7. The moral of the story? Sometimes a virus is a VERY GOOD THING. The pathetic part of the story? That we’ve lived here three years with what amounts to dialup on steroids, and we LIKED IT because it was so much faster than what we had before!!!!

Published in: on July 9, 2010 at 5:04 am  Comments (7)  
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Unwrapping the Internet

Our computer is sick.

Yesterday afternoon, quite suddenly, it began popping up sites labeled “adults” and “viagra.” (Among other words I won’t use here.) And refusing to let us run Symantec. Or Word. Or anything else, for that matter.

There’s nothing like having a tool wrenched from you to make you appreciate a gift you take for granted. Thus, today, I unwrap the gift of the internet (remotely) (with a 1-hour time limit) (at the library). And if I am in absentia this week…well, you’ll know why.

Published in: on July 6, 2010 at 8:50 am  Comments (3)  

The “R” Word: why it matters

When our family first stepped on the shores of Holland, we used to roll our eyes when people fussed about language. You don’t say “Down syndrome child,” you say “a child with Down syndrome.” You don’t say “disabled,” you say “differently abled.” It was a lot of PC crap, we thought. Except for this one word. The “R” word. A word that was part of our daily language, an expression of contempt for normal, everyday things that got on our nerves.

Come on, you know you’ve said it, too. That’s retarded.

That expression was stripped from our vocabulary almost instantaneously, because all of a sudden a horrendously ugly word had personal meaning for a child we loved more than life.

But for a lot of people we know, without that connection, that phrase is still very much a part of their vocabulary. I’m here to say: Stop using it. It matters.

Here’s why it matters.

In the dictionary, “retarded” means “slowed.” But when you use the expression That’s so retarded, it doesn’t mean “slow.” It means stupid, incompetent. It means You are an inconvenience to me. It means you are an object of my contempt, beneath me, and undeserving of being treated with respect.

In the past few weeks I’ve seen it used twice on Facebook. One person used it to describe a hotel clerk that gave her poor customer service. Another used it to describe a sociopolitical situation he didn’t like. In neither situation did it have any connection with something slowed or delayed. It was an expression of dismissal and contempt.

And here’s the problem, folks. Even though you aren’t using the word “retarded” as a derogatory title for a person who is developmentally delayed, somewhere deep in your psyche, the original target of the word is still there. You still know about mental and physical retardation. At a visceral level, you still connect this word with deformity, with “other”-ness—that is why the expression that’s retarded holds such power of contempt.

Now, don’t fuss at me for assuming that I know what you’re thinking. I know this to be true, because I’ve been there.

And when that word is consistently used as an expression of contempt, it belittles the whole spectrum of meanings—the ones you overtly intended as well as the ones connected with it at a subconscious level. That is why using “the R-word” wounds. That is why it matters. Please, excise this from your vocabulary. There are enough walls between “Them” and “Us” as it is.

Published in: on July 5, 2010 at 6:10 am  Comments (11)  
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All Because of a Tire

Originally uploaded by James Marvin Phelps (mandj98)

 

And sometimes, things just don’t go the way they’re supposed to.

We were headed north out of Southern Illinois on Tuesday, trekking the two-lane road to avoid major backups on I-57, which was under construction. Both of the little ones, who had been super crabby all morning, conked out almost instantly, and Christian and I looked at each other and said, “Let’s put some miles behind us before lunch.”

Five miles later, the van went, “Ding!”

Christian looked down and said, “Low tire pressure? Oh, no!”

We pulled off at a gas station to air up the tire, but one look told us that it was pointless. Pancake flat. Air hissing loudly enough to be heard over the passing traffic.

And so I unloaded the kids and took them in the convenience store, keeping them cool and subdued with Rolos and chocolate milk and Peter and the Wolf, while Christian pulled the donut from under the cab and changed the tire.

It was the best of small-town America when at least four people stopped to ask if they could help, and the convenience store clerk called her grandfather to bring us some rope to tie the tire on the roof, then gave us directions to the tire store.

And that tire store…whew, that waiting room was a blog post all its own. There was the older woman who sat telling me every story in her repertoire about Down syndrome and scolding Christian for the way he picked Nicholas up. In the half hour that we were there, she kept Alex chatting almost nonstop.

There was the humongous guy with the stub end of a cigar (unlit) glued to his lips. There were Alex and Julianna stretched out tummy to tummy underneath the row of shiny wheel rims strung along the counter. There was the four-way revolving discussion of what route we should take to get us home the fastest, considering the construction. There was the front page of the “local” section of the Southern Illinoisan, whose top story was NOT the capture of the bank robbers, but the car accident suffered by a local family. And then there was the guy in bib overalls (unbuttoned on the sides) who came in with a Mapquest printout and drawled, “Can you tell me how to find Southern Illinois Podiatry?”

By the time all was said and done, we pulled in to Pizza Hut at 1:25p.m., only to find that the buffet had just closed. But when the waitress heard our sob story she said, “Oh, I’ll tell them to make one more pizza for it!”

We were feeling pretty blessed, but all the same, by the time insufficient naps and the hours of boredom and the third dirty diaper in four hours had all taken their toll, the veneer of “Oh, what a great blog entry this will make!” had pretty well worn thin.

And then…(stay tuned tomorrow for a Motherhood Moment!)

Published in: on June 23, 2010 at 4:28 am  Comments (2)  
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Depth of Field

Motherhood Moments

Sometimes we don’t even pay attention.

We spend so much effort looking for beauty in the classic sense that we filter out the budding beauty in the background.

And sometimes we focus so much on what’s waiting down the road that we miss the beauty right beside us.

Right now people see Julianna. She’s cute. She’s innocent. And she’s cuddly (when she wants to be). But ten or twenty years from now, will they still see her? When she’s no longer shielded by the innocence and cuteness of early childhood, will they focus on her?

Or will their vision of her blur, their eyes slide past her? Or worse—will they see her, but not her intrinsic beauty? Will they react with bigotry and cruelty?

Last night, ABC broadcast a show called “What Would You Do?” One of the scenarios was the treatment of a grocery store bagger with Down syndrome.

An actor was paid to be horrible to this young man, also an actor, just to see if people would stand up to him.

A few did, with results that made us laugh and cheer (you can find the video here, but you’ll have to look for “grocery clerk abuse”). But most didn’t. And among those who did, almost every one had some other reason to feel passionate about the treatment of those with disabilities. One had a sister with DS. Another was a special ed teacher.

It was kind of a shot in the gut to me, because it was like looking in a time-warped mirror. Three and a half years ago, before Julianna, I probably wouldn’t have chosen confrontation, either. The issue just didn’t touch me in a deep place.

These days, that’s no longer the case for me. But I am painfully aware that it is the case for many, perhaps most, of you.

This, then, is my Motherhood Moment today: a plea to each of you who read this: let your “depth of field” include everyone you meet. Be ready when, someday, you come across the occasion of cruelty and bigotry to anyone, but especially to people like my child. When you’re picking your battles, choose this one, in whatever small way you can. Don’t slide your eyes past, and “mind your own business” in convicted discomfort. Speak up for God’s children.

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Published in: on May 20, 2010 at 7:03 am  Comments (9)  
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