What's Your Favorite?

I’ve been reading a book on getting old[1] and a chapter on how to be a fantastic grandparent inspired me to up my game in that category. The perfect opportunity presented itself this last week when Paul and I got to take care of each family of grandchildren in their own homes: Olin and Anders in Cupertino; Henry, Lizzie, and Ellie in Fairfield, CA; and then Sam and Eden here in Utah.

The authors suggest getting to know your grandchildren by asking them individually some questions. I wasn’t as thorough as they were, but I did ask every one of the children roughly the same question over the last week—“What is your favorite thing?” Or “What is your favorite thing to do?”

I asked 7-year-old Olin as he munched Lucky Charms before school. He didn’t even hesitate: “My Ipad!”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it teaches me things!”

Anders, 15-months-old, did not respond. But clearly his favorites are his mommy and his daddy—and going down the slide.

Sorry I don't have a better photo of good-looking Lizzie, Henry, and Ellie. 

Later, in Fairfield, I got to spend an afternoon with Lizzie (7) and Ellie (4) while their mom attended a planning meeting for church. Lizzie first said, “Playing the violin.” Later on, when I asked what makes her happiest, she cried out , “Going to Scandia! There is mini-golf and go-carts and arcades!”

Ellie said “Playing with Lizzie!”

I didn’t get to tend 11-year-old Henry, but I did sit next to him at his desk after dinner and asked my question. He responded immediately and matter-of-factly “My computer.” Then he toggled from the Minecraft game he was playing to a page filled with bewildering symbols, “Because of what I can do with it.” He showed me he was currently writing code to create his own Minecraft world. 

Back in Utah, Sam (13) and Eden (9) wanted a little clarification first, but also responded quickly. Sam likes playing games with his friends in the cul-de-sac: Zombie tag, refrigerator tag, nerf gun wars.  Eden said she couldn’t choose just one, but listed off a long list jumping on the trampoline, playing tag, singing, and roller skating.

The whole question thing was really a lot of fun and I learned from each individual response, learned to appreciate the individuality, the personhood, of each of my grandchildren. I was also struck by how immediately each child responded. Each one knew what was fun for them and had no doubt what it was.

In contrast, I asked a friend, a busy mom, recently what was her favoriteactivity. She said she couldn’t remember.  And didn’t know.

I remember having that same response as a young mom, and feeling a profound loss of identity as I admitted it. Favorites define our identity: favorite foods, favorite colors, favorite books and movies, favorite activities. Children know this and that is why one of their favorite get-to-know-you questions is “What’s your favorite color?”

What happens when we no longer know our own favorites? When our favorite foods become “Anything I didn’t cook” and our favorite activity is “Getting to sleep at night.”  When we spend an hour a day on Facebook[2] , but think we don’t have time for anything fun.

I wonder if we lose track of our very selves if we lose track of what we like. So, I’m going to try to reclaim my own favorites: the color turquoise, Café Rio salads, hot chocolate, root beer floats, reading next to a warm fire or out in the hammock (depending on the weather), learning things in a class, teaching, making music, writing, walking in nature, taking road trips, talking to my children, visiting with good friends.

And now I am going to go enjoy those things. I think I’ll start by playing the piano.

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[1] Life in Full: Maximize Your Longevity and Legacy, by Richard and Linda Eyre

[2] Did you know your phone tracks the time you spend in your aps? I checked mine the other day and was kind of appalled.

In Praise of Siblings

Today, the week after the wedding, I speak in praise of siblings.

I praise siblings who took a full week of vacation from their work to come celebrate their sister’s wedding.

Siblings who drove eleven hours each way across Nevada with three small children. Siblings who flew with an infant and small child. Siblings who left their homes and their responsibilities and activities and their work and spent the entire week with family, sleeping on inflatable beds and sharing one bathroom.

Siblings who planned and executed a family trip to Arches, figuring out driving and lodging and activities and meals, all without disagreement or friction.

Siblings who cared for each other’s babies and children, who tended babies in the early morning hours so parents could sleep, who took nieces and nephews to Nickel City and shared their tickets with them, who took all the children to Color Me Mine so they could make personalized wedding presents for the bride and groom.

Siblings who stayed up laughing and talking late into the night, sharing and loving each other. Siblings who drove across town early in the morning just so we could have breakfast with everyone.

Siblings who spent hours searching for the right bridesmaid dress, and then, when that wasn’t right, cheerfully wore the ones chosen by the bride, and who eventually came to love those dresses (or not, but wore them anyway.)

Siblings who found the right outfits for flower girls and ring bearers and then made last minute trips to Walmart or the mall to find the right accessories.

Siblings who shared a room with the bride the night before the wedding and giggled and talked into the night and early in the morning.

Siblings who ran to Walmart late, the night before the wedding, to make a special bag of treats as a surprise in the honeymoon hotel.

Siblings who spent hours setting up for the reception and more hours cleaning up.

Siblings who shared hosting duties throughout the reception, seeing that all the guests were welcomed and felt loved, seeing that everything went smoothly.

Siblings who love each other no matter what, even when things go wrong.

At one point on the wedding day, I had just introduced my sister to my husband’s nieces. (And I could write another whole essay in praise of my siblings, who also traveled and sacrificed to share this day.) They said, “Isn’t it nice that you can share this with your sister?”

Suddenly I felt so strongly the bond of sisterhood, of brotherhood. I sat down beside them, two sisters, and got serious. “There is no one like a sister. No one like a brother. Your parents will die and leave you part way through your lives. Your husbands come late into your life. But your siblings know you all your life and are with you throughout your journey. Cherish the relationship. Take the time to nurture those bonds.”

Today I praise siblings—my children who are siblings, my personal siblings, all siblings and the love and support they provide.

He that loveth his brother [and sister] abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. (1 John 2:10) 

But ye will teach them [your children, siblings] to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another. (The Book of Mormon, Mosiah 4:15) 

Wedding Crises and Magic

So other night we had the requisite wedding crisis which had to do with the color of bridesmaid dresses and involved sobs and despair. Thanks to the magic of Amazon (cheap dresses + 2-day shipping) and the flexibility and patience and love of all concerned,  all is well this morning, but the whole thing caused me to remember my own wedding crisis, over 40 years ago.

It was the night before our wedding when I looked in the mirror and realized why my eye had been bothering me all day. It was swollen and red; I had a sty—“a red, painful lump near the edge of your eyelid that may look like a boil or a pimple.” (Mayo Clinic). I dissolved into tears. Here I was on the eve of the day when I should look my most beautiful, and I had a huge red bump overwhelming my eye. I cried in despair.

My father looked in the door of my bedroom and said, “Doesn’t matter one bit. And if Paul thinks it does then you are better off without him.” (Dad had his doubts about my choice.)

I cried harder.

My mother sensibly suggested a warm washcloth to bring down the swelling.

I was still crying, with that washcloth over my eye, when my grandmother shuffled into the room. Grandma was 84 at that point, and her feet and joints caused her constant pain. She had insisted on coming to the wedding though.

Grandma had been widowed at the age of 23 and had raised her two daughters as a single mom when such a thing was hardly known of. She worked as a bookkeeper and made sure they always had a best dress and had piano lessons and went to college. She supported not only her daughters but her own widowed mother.

She came over to my bed and sat down. “Let me see your eye, dear.”

I showed her, sniffling.

“Well now. I know just what to do.” She was taking her wedding band off her finger, maneuvering it past the swollen knuckles. She had faithfully worn that band since she had been married 64 years before.

“For a sty, you just rub it with gold.” Grandma was a faithful Mormon, a modern woman before her time who worked ias a bookkeeper n a man’s world.

She was also pretty superstitious. When my sister, as a little girl, years before, had had warts, Grandma sent her to a friend who could charm them away. The woman told Kay that she must never tell what was done, or they would come back. So I have no idea what she did. But the warts went away.

So now she had a remedy for the sty. “Here, take my wedding ring, and just stroke it over the bump. It will be gone by morning.” She said gently in her cracked and tired voice.

I looked up out of my despair into Grandma’s kind eyes. She loved me. She was sad I was so unhappy. She wanted to help me. She believed this would help.

She held my face in her hands and gently stroked the cool metal across the inflamed lump.

I stopped crying.

Somehow I stopped worrying. I went to sleep. 

And in the morning, the sty was gone.

The Isolation of Young Moms

Not long ago I had lunch with some former students. Now in their thirties, they are busy moms—one has five children ages 13-2 and the other has three children aged three and under.  I asked, “How’s motherhood?”

Sarah, the one with three little ones, the one with a Stanford law degree, replied, “It is incredibly demanding: this one is crying, the other needs a bottle, and it’s all on you to help them. And, at the same time, it’s incredibly boring.”

Yes. That’s the way I remember it.

I remember one day when my oldest was just about 6 months old. While my husband taught at the University, I had spent the day tending to our daughter's needs, feeding and changing and comforting her. Whatever time wasn’t directly involved in her care was spent on the house and in the kitchen, alone. I remember standing at the sink, listening to her cry, and thinking, “For this I have a master’s degree?” I felt cheated that the very things I had worked so hard to learn were useless to me. I felt unprepared and alone.

This is the isolation of the modern stay-at-home mom. Her husband leaves for work and she is alone. The sweet and ceaseless demands of children can be overwhelming.

When one of my daughters was home with her first baby, she would put him in the stroller and walk the neighborhood, stopping at the homes of other moms and hoping to be invited in.

When I search “lonely stay at home mom,” I get 576,000 results in .57 seconds--most from blogs written by those same lonely moms.

Here are some examples:

“I was not prepared for this loneliness thing.  When I envisioned my life as a stay-at-home mom I saw myself carting the kids to and from playgroups and playdates, chatting it up on the park bench while the children slid down the slides.  There is some of that, but not nearly enough” (Alisha, at Stratejoy)

 “I know being a stay-at-home mom is . . . isolating and lonely, painfully lonely. I mean, you are never physically alone. You share every meal and every moment with your little munchkin. Every trip to the bathroom becomes a full-on family potty party, but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel alone.” (Kimberly Zapata)

 “There are over 5 million stay-at-home mothers in the U.S.and you probably couldn't find one who hasn't stood in the middle of a noisy, toy-strewn living room and wished for a few blessed hours of companionable adult conversation.” (My Daily Moment)

And that loneliness can have serious consequences. According to Metroparent, a Gallup analysis of 60,000 US women interviews shows that “28 percent of stay-at-home moms reported depression a lot of the day when asked how they were feeling the day before, but only 17 percent of employed moms did. Of the group, 26 percent of SAHMs said they experienced depression, vs. just 16 percent of working moms” (Brianna Valleskey, Metroparent.com 

Yeah. It’s hard. Really hard and really lonely. Never any doubt about that.

So what to do?

Most of those blogs I found in my search include things moms can do. Start play groups, shower every day, get out of the house, join a club.

We know that. But mainly I think it boils down to deciding we are not victims but heroes, as my smart daughter-in-law reminded me.

You are the hero who comforts the crying child, who bravely soldiers on with little sleep to remain cheerful, who drags herself back to the kitchen to load the dishwasher after putting the last child to bed, who faces another day of cleaning and feeding and washing because she sees the higher goal.

I remember when I was a young mom. My mother-in-law was visiting and we were sitting in the family room which was awash in the flotsam and jetsam of childhood: toys, shoes, clothes, paper, books. I said, “I know it’s a mess, but what can I do?” Lydia didn’t say a word. She just got down on her knees and started picking up.

So, if the house is a mess, you heroically start picking up.  If you need some alone time, you institute quiet time in your family—while the baby naps, all the other kids need to play by themselves quietly while mom gets to do what she wants. If baby won’t sleep at night, you research methods for helping her. If you miss being with friends, you start a playgroup where the moms talk while the kids play. My daughter calls this a “work meeting” with her mom colleagues.

You won’t be able to take away all the loneliness, but you will at least feel less like a victim.

But there is more that the rest of us can do. As a society and as families we need to cheer for these mom-heroes. Once when I taught a church class on motherhood, I had all the young moms in the room stand and the rest of us applauded them. We need to think of more ways to do this.

When we see a mom with little children in the grocery story, we can say “Thanks for raising the people who will be running the world in a few years. Thanks for teaching them to work hard and to love learning and to help others.” Or if it's too weird to say that out loud, at least we can think it.

When there is a new baby in the neighborhood, we can bring by a casserole for dinner and stay to hold the baby while the mom gets some rest.

We can do better at calling and texting moms we know and telling them they are doing great work.

We can all remember that, whether we work for pay elsewhere or not, the time spent caring for our homes and the people who live there is in many ways the most important work being done on the planet.

A few years ago I read a book that taught me that: Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life, by Margaret Kim Peterson. In this book, Peterson compares the ministry of the mother and homemaker to the ministry of  Christ:

 “So what really matters? Well, housework, among other things. It is not the only thing that matters, but it does matter. It matters that people have somewhere to come home to and that there be beds and meals and space and order available there. . . . As we thus obey and imitate Christ in caring for people . . ., we remember him and his ministry and presence among humans, and we anticipate the day when we will see him face to face.”

We are not only heroes as we care for home and children, we are sanctified. The work is lonely, but saints are often lonely. And, of course, we are not alone in this holy work. Our children have another parent who is by our side as we care for them. As we remember His presence, we will, perhaps, not feel quite so lonely.

 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

 Matthew 25:40

Photo Credit: Mark Hedengren. In the photo book, Three Mormon Towns, available at Amazon.com.