Abundance

There is no better recommendation for voluntary simplicity than the great Christmas schlep. Somehow this year I was able to name and know this, and therefore hold back my humbug even as I moved things in and out, up and down in this little house for days on end.

Adding to the schlep of gifts in and packaging out, ornaments up and storage boxes down, tree in and furniture to other rooms was the fact that we’d been on auto-pilot since before Thanksgiving and there was a pile-up of detritus in every wrong place: bedroom toys littering the living room; library books hiding among Small’s own books; my shoes in the four corners of everywhere; blizzards of paper. Great stacks of laundry spilled forth from the second floor closets, needing to be washed in the basement, folded on the first floor and put away throughout the house.

I would have said—and I would have been backed up on this, at least by members of my family who find my aversion to capitalism distinctly odd—that we live a simple life. Not an off-the-grid life by any means, but a life which is not defined by earning and owning. I heard a lot of pissing and moaning this holiday season of the variety of how can we have a meaningful Christmas and not spend a lot? And, won’t I disappoint my children if I don’t buy them all the crap their friends are getting? Sweetie and I covered the “meaning” part of Christmas several years ago when my humbug was really bringing her down.

I am—I suppose, now and forever, for better or worse—the Director of Physical Reality of the Interior for our family. Which is to say: the lawn could turn black and die overnight and I would blithely walk past it without noticing, but I am responsible for tracking every item that passes our threshold. Every ATM receipt; every toy beloved one moment and abandoned the next; every piece of clothing to be washed and dried in accordance with label; every ornamental chicken displayed proudly on our porch that gets dusted and washed and dried and replaced on a freshly wiped shelf twice a year whether it needs it or not.

The weight of the physical reality of Christmas dragged me down, which made Sweetie sad because she wanted to love Christmas with me, to enjoy ourselves and find meaning and fun. So we brainstormed the things we loved about the season—not carrying countless boxes of fragile ornaments up and down the basement stairs and painstakingly unwrapping and hanging them, perhaps, but drinking festive beverages and listening to the Peanuts Christmas soundtrack. Not the obligatory hunk of dead flesh we have to serve the collected masses on New Year’s Day, but a date for dim sum at the best Chinese restaurant in the Valley.

And so we created a road-map for the six weeks from Thanksgiving to New Year’s marked with the highlights of our season. While I’m still the able bodied schlepper, I am largely released from the ornament adventure and its piles of newspaper and tangled hanging wires and empty boxes. Instead, I get to stop by to admire my family’s progress between batches of salted caramel popcorn, taking a turn around the room to the piano stylings of Vince Guaraldi.

***

But as small and restrained as our Christmas—and our life, by extension—is, I am still struck by its abundance. For us the season of un-Christmassing lives on: the extra dining table never got dismantled, and now it doesn’t make sense to put it away with Chinese New Year around the corner. The Christmas tree got tossed just last week to make the deadline of the neighbor’s bonfire, and the boxes of ornaments still stall in the corner.

But abundance doesn’t strike me only in the volume of physical reality, although I ought to write myself a cheer for this time of year: “Schlep, schlep, schlep, schlep, fight, fight, fight!” I also see that no matter how carefully we winnow Small’s gift list and guide the relatives towards the essentials there are always more toys than can capture her attention, more games than we have time to play. Items set aside on Christmas day have yet to be rediscovered; I will find craft kits unopened and gifts untouched as I prepare for next Christmas, just as I did this year.

Even our Christmas dinner had a “loaves and fishes” quality to it: the modest menu we had planned continued to feed us for three days. On the holiday itself we did not even make the entrée or dessert: instead we spent the afternoon assembling the Vietnamese summer rolls that were to be our appetizer and lolling around sated after eating an enormous platter full of them.

***

I would do well to remember that we have much more than we need. And that our simplicity is to a great extent voluntary even if it does not always feel that way. Half empty I see the deck stacked against us: two women of working class origins, not a professional degree or trust fund among us. Half full I see that we have ordered our life in accordance with our values and that money—even when we long for more of it—never makes our top priorities.

Mind Body Mama: Each Night, Holy Night

I’ve been thinking of how I could sign off to all of you before this holiday weekend. I considered cracking wise on BirthPie by making note of the great miracle of a 30” snowfall that extended her eight nights of Hannukah another two. And how I hope it doesn’t take her family all twelve days of Christmas to fly to Billings, Montana. I could tell you how fast the years have spun by since I first rocked infant Small at the back of the Great Hall of Our House of Worship at the Christmas Eve service, to this year when she read the Linus verses from the Book of Luke in a loud, clear voice:

And there were in the same country
shepherds abiding in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them;
and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them,
Fear not: for, behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day
in the city of David
a Saviour,
which is Christ the Lord.

The angel said
this shall be a sign unto you;

Ye shall find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes,
lying in a manger.

And suddenly
there was with the angel
a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God,
and saying,
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace,
goodwill to all people.

I could tell you about the gratuitous, over-the-top Christmas music-and-light show our neighbors put on and how, when I whispered to Sweetie “They’re crazy!” Small hissed at me, “They’re not crazy, they’re AWESOME! They know what Christmas means to kids.” And I thought about telling you my birth story again, about how this baby Small came to us in an ice storm and brought me face to face with miracle and wonder.

But finally I decided I could not do better than these words of Sophia Lyons Fahs that I have come to consider the Unitarian Christmas liturgy:

For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
Born of the seed of man and woman.
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wisemen see a star to show
Where to find the babe that
Will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night,
Fathers and mothers-
Sitting beside their children's cribs
Feel glory n the sight of a new life beginning
They ask, "Where and how will
This new life end?
Or, will it ever end?"
Each night a child is born is a holy night-
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping.

To every mother’s child: good night, holy night.

mind body mama: My Storybook Life

Earlier this week one of my favorite clients cancelled the third session in a row. When I called to see if I needed to stage an intervention she said, “I’m sorry—those last two were unavoidable conflicts. But the first time, I was just feeling overwhelmed. When I hung up the phone from cancelling I just lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling for twenty minutes.”

There are times when I might have thought, “Wow, do I need to make a mental health referral here?” But this week I just thought, “Damn, why didn’t I do that?”

Because I’m fairly sure I crammed thirty seven extra errands into that found hour before I screeched up to my next session. The to-do list just keeps getting longer, and it’s not just the Christmas machine. In fact, our organization, restraint and foresight on the Christmas front seem to have bitten us in the butts. We only have a few things left to do for the holidays, which is why it’s seemed reasonable to say “yes” to untold other things. Somehow I ended up at the School of Love Monday as well as a record three times on Tuesday, and then we rescheduled a meeting for Wednesday night that got bumped by the funeral a few weeks ago. There were flu shots in there, and a session at the radio station recording some of my blog posts, and a spate of emails with the afterschool enrichment program to see if we can get Small enriched even though she’s above grade level.

It’s been the kind of week where, when I call BirthPie to see if she can watch Small for an unexpected hour she says, “Sure, but only if I can do it at your place because Frisbee’s working the overnight and has to sleep all day.”

So I say, “I gave the last extra key to the AM babysitter, I’ll have to hit the hardware store to get you one.”

And she says, “While you’re there, could you get a few extra copies of my house key for my cat sitters?”

It’s a turning of the screw kind of week: every errand leads to another; nothing is ever actually finished. I shed belongings like skin cells: my lunchbox is at the college gym, my sunglasses are accidentally left in my glove box, I can’t find a clean sports bra. I wake up in the middle of the night hoping that it is morning so I can get back to the races, my to-do list scrolling through my brain like movie credits. But it’s only two am so I pass the time making a mental inventory of my January invoices until I fall asleep again.

But it is almost over. Christmas Eve, when I will wrangle the seventh graders into an assertive and cordial team of ushers and Small will read a portion of the nativity story to the congregation, is almost here. (Note to self: must purchase 40 AA batteries for the electric votives, per order of the War Ship.) In just a few hours our Christmas week will be upon us and we are hell-bent on doing a whole lot of nothing but eating, sleeping and enjoying one another for nine long days.

***

In case you haven’t got a visual yet for why I really, really need a vacation, here’s how my workout went yesterday:

It went great, thanks for asking. I had time to work out because I had another cancellation (different favorite client) and I had the foresight not to cancel the AM babysitter. So after a surprisingly good night’s sleep and two cups of coffee I found myself tearing it up on my favorite elliptical machine. I was having so much fun sweating to Dead Prez that I cut it very close to my next appointment.

Which is why when I discovered that I didn’t have a towel with me—after I’d already gotten naked in the locker room, natch—I didn’t have enough time to get dressed and run back to the gym to borrow one.

I resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to dry off with the workout clothes I’d just taken off. Eeww! Is right. And double eeww to the fact that workout clothes are now made to be moisture wicking instead of moisture absorbing so rubbing my dirty clothes on my clean body wasn’t even going to make me much dryer.

I showered very quickly. Maybe I thought a brief shower would make me less wet?

I was drying my face with a random clean sock I found at the bottom of my gym bag when I accidentally caught my earring and pulled it out of my ear. I heard it bounce all over the tiled shower stall—the earring headed in one direction, the butterfly clasp in the other. Since I don’t wear my glasses in the shower I couldn’t see where anything went. So the next thing I knew I was naked, and wet—with no chance of getting dry—on my hands and knees, crawling around a public shower, looking for my favorite earring, and late for work.

If this does not make me the poster child for mamas who need a vacation I don’t care to know what I’d have to do to qualify.

***

The AM babysitter, name of Deborah, is an absolute treasure. I worried about inviting someone into the chaos of our lives and the detritus of our decrepit house, but it has been an unmitigated success. Deborah not only makes it possible for me to work two early mornings a week, she loves and knows my daughter. Which is what I most deeply wish for when I put my child into another’s care; that the caregiver will really see her: her quirks and foibles, her gifts and challenges.

I got Deborah a downtown gift card as a year-end thank you. “Small,” I said, “please write a message to Deborah on this card, but don’t make it a Christmas message. Deborah doesn’t celebrate Christmas.” I was thinking along the lines of “Happy Holidays” or “I love you” or “Thank you for playing alien fighters with me.”

When I opened the card to tuck in one of Small’s school pictures I saw the message she wrote:

“Be ready for anything.”

In all fairness, this is the message I should have given Deborah when I hired her.

***

At dinner last night Small wanted to role-play being a lawyer. We’d been talking about how lawyers fight for people’s rights.

“What’s something that you believe in?” I asked Small.

Small drew up her most solemn and imperious self. “I think that gayness—I mean, being gay, like you guys—is OK.”

Sweetie and I looked at each other. We rarely use the words “gay” and “lesbian” around here because there’s no need to draw that strong a line between our family and other families. There are lots of different kinds of families. If it’s necessary of a conversation I might say, “There are boy-boy people and girl-girl people but most people are boy-girl people,” and Small will fail to even look up from what she’s reading to acknowledge my description of the world as she already knows it.

“Um…ok.” I stammered. “But where did you learn that word 'gayness'?”

“Akbar and Jeff’s Guide to Life.” Small grinned delightedly.

I am really not as terrible a parent as it seems, I swear.

***

After dinner we googled Life is Hell and found out it had been reissued as Life is Swell in 2007.

Small said, “Life is Swell is even funnier than Life is Hell. Because in that comic, life is definitely not swell.”

I caught her up in my arms. “Small,” I said with the deepest parental admiration, “that is called 'irony' and you have never said anything that made me more proud.”

“You’ve said that before,” came her muffled voice from my stifling hug.

“Yeah, but I mean it,” I declared. “I’m even more proud than when you said you were a feminist.”

***

When I tucked Small in last night she said sleepily, “Do you know what a bad comparison is? It’s when you say something like, ‘It was as loud as a loud noise.’”

“What’s a good comparison?” I asked.

She pondered. “‘It was as loud as a wolf’s howl’,” she said. “You have to use something that’s a loud thing. The other one is just too obvious.”

“You’re getting to be quite a good little writer,” I observed.

“You too,” she said, snuggling down. “Have you heard the saying, ‘it’s in the blood’? It’s like that. The writing.”

There it is: my storybook ending.

mind body mama: Half Wit Hump Day

There is nothing especially daring about this post. But we had a snow day in this corner of the world and after a day of shovelling and walking out in the slush and madcap Christmas crafting--half at BirthPie's house--I am a tired writer. Much more tired, in fact, than if I had gone to work today. Go figure.

This is the writing that came to me today. So to honor my half drunk commitment to daily blogging this week I offer you: a math quiz. I promise I'll get back to riskier business for Thursday and Friday.

(For those of you new to the scene, BirthPie is my best mama-friend. She lives around the corner with her two daughters and Dr. Frisbee, her sweet husband. This is our life.)

Word Problems with BirthPie

1. Dr. Frisbee invites 20 people to his birthday party. I pick up 3 girls at school. If BirthPie is feeling the effects of nitrous oxide 2 hours after her oral surgery, how many cups of flour go in the pie filling?

2. If I babysit BirthPie’s two children 4.6 hours in one month and she babysits Small 6.4 hours in the same month whose turn is it to make the other a casserole?

3. If the phone rings before 8 am, what is the probability that it is BirthPie?

4. Sleet is falling at a rate of 2 inches per hour with a weight of 5 lbs. per cubic inch. BirthPie’s cross-country flight is delayed bringing her family’s total travel time to 68 person-hours. How long will it take me to shovel her driveway?

5. Let X represent the difference in age between BirthPie’s big girl and Small. Let Y represent the difference in age between BirthPie’s big girl and Mighty Meg’s big girl. How many boxes of hand-me-downs are on my porch?

EXTRA CREDIT: I am teaching Self Defense for Pregnant and Parenting Teens at The School of Love until 2:15. The little girls’ karate class starts at 4:15. The big girls’ class starts at 5:15. BirthPie has 1 big girl and 1 little girl. Small is a little girl. School is dismissed at 3:10.

a. Who should pick Small up at school?

b. How many car seats will fit in my station wagon?

c. How many times will I visit The School of Love today?

d. How many girls will I bring to karate class and what size will they be?

e. What kind of tag will the girls play during the teachers’ meeting?

mind body mama: Out of Control

Right on schedule, I pulled out the Holiday Control Notebook—that bible of all things winter holiday related for my family—last night. The Halloween candy is almost gone so it’s time to get a move on with our Thanksgiving, Hannukah (a very fancy way of saying “latke-eating”), Christmas and New Year’s Plans.

I found this signed affidavit (lightly redacted) on the first page of the binder:

[Insert embarrassing pet name for Lynne Marie here] was right. Wrapping is better before Christmas eve. – especially with something good on TV or DVD and SNACKS.

Signed,

[Insert embarrassing pet name for Sweetiebabyhoneylicious here]

P.S. When I go shopping, I will bring cold hard cash. No credit or debit, dammit.

Control This

Get Tape!!!

What could it mean?

Mind Body Mama: Is that a poem in your pocket?

It’s one of those days. One of those days when everything makes me crabby or bone weary, a day to eat chocolate chips straight out of the package and spend the afternoon kvetching with BirthPie about things that trouble us which will never be solved while our children run themselves into hysterical melt downs in the backyard. A day to fantasize about drinking a pint of Farmer Brown at the People’s Pint because I don’t actually have a chance in hell of getting to the People’s Pint today or any day soon. It is the kind of day on which everything I write is dark and sniping and bordering on self-loathing, or as Spec-K gently chides, a little lacking in metta.

It’s the kind of day when the you shut up box on my desk gets a lot of use. The you shut up box is there to remind me to disregard what the cognitive behaviorists call wrong thoughts. Fifteen years ago I would never have bought the argument that one can school one’s mind to turn away from compelling negative messages. I don’t know what yours sound like, but mine run along the lines of: “I suck,” and “I’m a terrible writer/trainer/mother/human being,” and “What makes me think I can ever [fill in ambitious life goal here]?”

Back then if I had encountered the notion of wrong thoughts I would have used the concept itself to fuel the assault. As in, “I must really suck, only a sucky person would have such a wrong thought about how they suck.”

As they say, I’ve come a long way, baby. These days when the wrong thoughts rise up singing, I gently nudge them towards the you shut up box. On days like today, when they’re in really fine voice, I sigh gently and give myself the night off from anything more challenging than watching television.

So I’m abandoning a number of really terrific column ideas for another day, a day of greater patience and compassion and introspection, and instead bringing you a few links that lift me up when I’m heading for the slough of despond.

When I was suffering from burnout last fall Birth Pie came over to stage a remarkable intervention. She deftly lifted a heavy burden of domestic and professional responsibilities from my shoulders, then quizzed me on things I could do each day in the realm of self care. When I suggested “read a poem,” she raised one eyebrow quizzically but dutifully wrote it on the list.

A really good blogger would have told you all that today was Poem in Your Pocket Day early enough that you could have gotten in on the festivities (you shut up!), but I’m telling you now.

Here are some excerpts of poems I first encountered on the NPR program Writer’s Almanac, a terrific source of daily poetry. Click on the titles to link to the poems in their entireties:

Bike Ride with Older Boys
By Laura Kasischke

…My afternoons
were made of time and vinyl.My mother worked,
but I had a bike. They wanted

to go for a ride. Just me and them. I said
okay fine, I'd
meet them at the Stop-n-Go
at four o'clock.
And then I didn't show….

This Shining Moment in the Now
by David Budbill

"when I am every day all day all body and no mind, when I amphysically, wholly and completely, in this world with the birds,the deer, the sky, the wind, the trees... "

Another place I visit regularly for poetry is The Poetry Foundation. I especially enjoy using their Poetry Tool to discover new poets and new works by familiar poets, and I subscribe to the Poem of the Day podcast.

Another source of daily poetry has been the blog 100dayspoems/. The creators describe it thus:

“The day before the inauguration we sent out a call to poets we admire to write poems that respond, however loosely, to the presidency, the nation, the government or the current political climate. More than one hundred American poets responded immediately. The first 100 poets were each assigned one of President Obama’s first hundred days in office, and each will write a poem reflecting on the state of the nation and the world on that day. A new poem is posted every day.”

If you missed it for the last 100 days, nothing in there says you can’t read them over the next 100 days. I haven’t read them all myself but the ones I have were exquisite.

An unintended theme of this post seems to be being behind the 8-ball in some respect. (You shut up!) In that vein, you missed your chance to enter Kate Hopper’s toddler haiku contest, but you can still read the entries on her blog, Mothers Who Write.

And as the great E.B. White said, “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.” Spec-K is both. Discovering her poetry blog is like finding a fabulous book on your bookshelf that you didn’t know was there.

I hope poetry soothes your soul when you’re having one of those days. Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day.

Mind Body Mama: The Three Rs, Revisited

Just last week I was walking Small down our quiet street to the 19th century brick school building when she said suddenly,

“Mama! Did you know there are actually four Rs?”

She paused infinitesimally before announcing them proudly: “Reduce, reuse, recycle and REJECT. Reject products that have too much packaging or things that you don’t need.”

Smiling, I replied with my mama mantra: “Where do you get this stuff?”

“Reading!” she trilled. Conspiratorially she added, “Ranger Rick.”

Back in the day there were only three Rs: reading, ‘riting, ’rithmatic. And although the idea of an education-themed pneumatic predicated upon misspelling seems fundamentally wrong to this English major, I was OK with these Rs. Those were glory days when I thought reading was a wonderful thing, a practice that brought me great joy, my way of connecting with the world beyond my own experience.

I never imagined what it would be like to have a child who loved to read as much as I do, but if I had contemplated that future I would have been delighted at the thought. Long, rainy afternoons lounging on opposite ends of the sofa, our feet entwined, each entranced with our own novel. Dinner conversations about theme and language and gender dynamics and characterization. Piles of books on every nightstand and chair and table.

Never in a million years did I imagine I’d be doing all of this with my six year old.

The pitfalls of early reading are not new to me, but they are multiplying. Small’s Ranger Rick subscription was a gift from one of my clients, but her Family Fun subscription is something I thought we would share. Think again. Each issue vanishes before I can get my hands on it, only to reappear as weird, random demands or commentary:

“Mama! My leprechaun catcher won’t stand up!” Investigation leads to a St. Patrick’s Day craft project that features half of my recycling bin.

“I like that story about little Suzie who can’t poop.” I trace this to a children’s laxative ad, and initiate a discussion comparing and contrasting advertising copy with editorial material.

“Mama! There are two things that I need. Actually I only need one of them. They are very easy and I need one of them to happen.” Preliminary reading of the article in question suggests that Small either needs to dig a big hole in our backyard or…dig a bigger hole in our backyard. Something about this is supposed to be fun. I think the magazine is grasping for low-cost entertainment options for families in the down economy: “Kids! Stop asking your parents to buy you stuff and go dig a hole in the backyard.”

In truth, Ranger Rick is but one source of Small’s rabid environmentalism. Her little school has decided to Go Green! for the final quarter, and Family Fun just sent us the Earth Day issue. (Hence the suggestion to dig in the dirt? I’m not sure; I haven’t been allowed to read the whole article yet.) Environmental protection is in the air out here in our crunchy little corner of the country and it’s not a great surprise that she’s sucking it all in.

I just don’t love all the ways it’s coming back out.

On the morning in question, Small looked up at me sternly and offered this example of the newly-defined fourth R:

“Mama! You shouldn’t use paper towels. They’re bad for the planet.”

Thus was introduced the fifth R: remonstrate. Or, in alternate usage: reprimand.

It was useless to point out that I don’t actually use paper towels, I use rags. Maybe Small thinks it’s normal to have scuzzy little squares of old towels and tee-shirts drying in the kitchen and in every bathroom, but it’s not that normal. Most people use paper towels. We use rags. (I’ll say more about my ongoing struggle with linens in another post. Let’s just say I have some issues.) For now it’s enough to say that we do not use paper towels except for exceptionally gross things, like draining bacon or cleaning up cat vomit. And we stand by this usage.

And we do not wish to defend it to a six year old.

While I’m on the subject I’ll also point out that we use cloth napkins. And cloth handkerchiefs. And we wash out plastic zip lock bags. And I spent two years washing cloth diapers and hanging them out on the clothesline. And I don’t drive on Mondays. (On that subject, did she not notice that we were walking to school?) We are meatless two or more days per week. We belong to a CSA and a food coop. We have a compost bucket for goodness sake—a smelly compost bucket that she vociferously complains about having to take out.

Not that I have a chip on my shoulder about any of this. Or that I think that there’s not more that I could be doing to reduce my carbon footprint because there is, there certainly is. It’s just that I’m less than charmed at living with a miniature representative of the Green Police.

Small’s environmental audit of my lifestyle did not stop with the paper towels. This weekend I travelled with my family to explore the city of Providence, R.I. (Birth Pie taught me long ago that travelling with one’s family is rarely the same as being on vacation.) We stopped into Whole Foods one morning to pick up a relatively cheap, reasonably wholesome breakfast. As I contemplated the coffee selection I felt stormy displeasure arising to my right. I looked down to see Small contemplating one of the carafes with a look of deep concern and profound moral disappointment.

“What is it, Small?” I asked.

Small was too stricken with despair and judgment to speak. I followed her eyes to a label that read, “Rainforest Blend.”

I am very proud to report that I did not roll my eyes—no, not even a little bit. I may have let out the teensiest sigh, a tiny exhalation not even equivalent to the breeze caused by a happy butterfly in the rainforest fluttering past the fair-trade coffee plants grown by fairly remunerated farmers.

“Are you worried that this coffee is bad for the rainforest?” I asked with exaggerated patience.

“Yes. You can’t drink that coffee,” Small determined.

This was the point at which I became a living advertisement for fair-trade, organic coffee. I explained about the farmers, and the forest, and the labeling, and the fact that this was why we came to Whole Foods to buy coffee anyway (thinking, but not saying, “Damnit!”) Because there was (free!) crappy, chemically-treated, deforestation-causing, worker-exploiting coffee back at the hotel without any rainforest labels. Small walked right past that coffee without comment, and yet here I was in the middle of Whole Foods delivering an extemporaneous infomercial on behalf of their coffee buying policies. All the while pretending not to notice the other customers keeping a wide berth around the crazy coffee lady and her weird little kid.

“OK, Mama.” My personal envoy from the Environmental Enforcement Agency was convinced. She issued a new policy decree.

“You have to get the rainforest coffee. You have to get that kind.”

I lost my patience. “I don’t want the rainforest coffee. I want the decaf. It’s ALL rainforest coffee here! Where is your other mother?”

Apparently, I’m not the only one living this way. Some Facebook friends report being double teamed by their twins Wednesday morning: the girl child remonstrated (reprimanded?) one mama for cleaning up spilled milk with a forbidden paper towel, while the boy child turned off the bathroom light during his other mama’s shower.

I told Small how her friends celebrated Earth Day.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

“Not a very good way to celebrate,” she giggled. But after a moment’s reflection she said seriously,

“But it is good for the planet.”

Happy Earth Day.

Mind Body Mama: Launching the War Ship

Last Friday I hosted my Gratitude and Abundance coffee klatch. Karen and I got together just before the party to discuss a homily she’s writing. When Birth Pie arrived it was clear we had been discussing church business.

“What is this committee you two are on?” asked Birth Pie suspiciously.

“It’s the Worship Committee” Karen told her.

“What do you do?”

“Well, it used to be called the Religious Services Committee, but that seemed too non-profity and administrative, so we changed the name,” my honey-haired Buddhist friend earnestly explained. “We are responsible for creating the experience of worship.”

“Oh, ‘worship’!” exclaimed Birth Pie. (Her father is a UCC minister, after all.) “I thought you said ‘War Ship.’”

Considering the gruesome torture aspects of the Easter myth perhaps War Ship isn’t too far off. And sometimes I do think our progressive, intellectual faith could benefit from a little more military discipline and a little less kumbaya. I feel certain the pot lucks at West Point are better organized than ours.

Our family’s Easter tradition is to host Dusty and Hyacinth for a mid-day egg hunt and festive repast. As it is also our tradition to attend Easter Sunday worship, the morning is fairly full. Recent Easters have been enhanced by Small projectile-vomiting and Sweetiebabyhoneylicious being confined to bed by her Rheumatoid Arthritis. So I had high hopes this year when it looked like no one would be ill or incapacitated.

The three of us bounded out of bed at 6am in full-on attack mode. Our mission, and we were going to accept it: to prepare a complete Easter brunch and beat the downstairs of the house into some semblance of clean in time to get Small to choir practice by 9:15 am.

I took on the roles of Commander, Chef and Cheerleader. “We’re going to cook! We’re going to clean! Let’s go Team Easter!”

“What’s the name of the other team?” asked Small, eyeing her Spider magazine longingly.

“There is no other team!” I intoned in the voice of authority.

A bleary-eyed Sweetiebabyhoneylicious settled herself in front of the computer.

“She’s not on Team Easter,” noted Small. “She’s on Team Facebook.”

Somehow we pulled it together. We made hash. We made sticky buns. We made Bloody Marys, and I didn’t even drink any. We tidied, we decorated, we washed dishes, we ate breakfast. And then suddenly it was fifteen-minutes-to-go time and we were all still dirty and in our pajamas.

Which is how we ended up in the bathroom enjoying one another’s company through our morning ablutions.

Having Small join me for my bathroom rituals is not my favorite thing. The previous morning she had this to say about my makeup routine:

“What is that stuff? It’s smeary.”

I told her it was to cover the circles under my eyes.

“It makes it less purple under your eyes,” she agreed. “Not a lot less purple, but a little less purple.”

Despite the 40 degree weather and horrifically cold wind, I was determined to wear a spring dress to church. Unfortunately that necessitated shaving my legs in the company of my family. As I pushed the shower curtain aside to lather up my right leg, Small lost all focus on oral hygiene.

“What are you doing?”

Sweetiebabyhoneylicious attempted to maintain protocol: “Don’t worry about what Mama’s doing, worry about what you’re doing.”

A dismal thought occurred to me. It is entirely possible that I have not shaved my legs in over six years. Time gets away from you when you have a small child.

“Mama’s shaving her legs” explained Sweetiebabyhoneylicious, trying to get back to the task at hand.

“What is shaving?” asked Small.

“Removing the hair on her legs.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Good question,” said Sweetiebabyhoneylicious, waving the neglected toothbrush.

“Fashion,” said Mama with grim determination.

With seven minutes to go the whole family stumbled out of the bathroom and into the master bedroom. Small has taken lessons from the cat to employ when we’re running late. Like the VISA card, she’s every where I want to be. She weaves in front of me as I walk. She intuits telepathically where I’m about to head next and gets there first. With brilliant athletic instincts she’s able to step into my path wherever I turn.

As closely guarded as any WNBA champion, I dug in the bottom of the closet for the pantyhose collection last accessed in 2001. With her breath hot upon me I tunneled through the laundry to locate clean panties. As I charged for the mirror like Lisa Leslie, my three-foot nemesis drew the foul. When she made her move I straight-armed her back across the room.

“You pushed me!” came the indignant cry.

My denial was shameless, if undermined by giggles. “No I didn’t. Pushing is rude. Mamas don’t push their kids.”

“You’ve pushed me before!” Small countered, although she was already falling into my laughter. “You’ve even pushed me today!”

The ref, aka Sweetiebabyhoneylicious, broke up the scuffle. Sweaters, earrings and mary janes were found. Dress coats were donned and dress up purses were filled. We fell into the car with time to spare. War Ship indeed.