National Catholic Register Today

Find secret ways to say "I love you" to those who would roll their eyes if you said it aloud.

You Can't Not

If there's one thing I've learned over the course of two decades plus of parenting, is even though you long ago discarded the child monitor, you never turned it off.   If a child cries "Mom" in the middle of the night, you're up, you're out the door and searching for the kid in question faster than Superman.   It's part of the Mom DNA that gets encoded when you first see that "+" sign on the test, and only gets stronger as the child gets older.

What I've learned is it doesn't matter how old they get, they want the attention.  They want the bedtime story long after they know how to read.  They want to be phoned, to be sent valentine cards and care packages, hugs and their favorite dinner when they're home.  They want to be tucked in, to have the lights turned off for them, feet rubbed, and one on one time.  They want lunch out and an extra t-shirt, folded socks and hot cocoa with whipped cream.   They want infinitely, but what they most want, is time, presence from you.

The internet is full of pieces about what I'd write my 20 year younger self, and what I'd write is this and hope those who haven't yet run through all the years of their children's childhood (and that would include myself), would take it to heart.  Climb the steps. Read the story. Write the card.  Make the call.  These are not to-dos.  They are the flesh and bone to the words "I love you."  It doesn't look like much when it's happening and I know, you're tired. You've given.  You've done it during the day.  But those last few moments, before bedtime?  They're the ones remembered.  They reveal whether it's duty, or love.   Because they're done when there isn't much left, when you have other things you'd rather do, and the choice between you is them or you.   Love is based on sacrifice.  Sacrifice is service, done with a full heart, done even when it costs, especially when it costs.

So even if the phone call takes an hour and your schedule didn't have that time, you take the call.
The purpose of the schedule is to get things done.  The purpose of parenting, is to love.  The modern world constantly talks about balance, "me time" and all of that, but love is the opposite of "equalness."  Love always wants to give more, to do more, to pour out everything.  Love's never about equality, it's about wanting to lavish the other with more.   You use the last stamp and crank out a letter.  You climb the steps and read the one more story.  You nag about taking a shower, you brush their hair and make them change out of shorts when it's too cold and put on shoes even when it's hot.   You can't not. So I'd tell the younger me, and all the younger ones out there and all those not so young, the answer is always "You can't not."

What it Means

Can you play with me?

It was a bad time. It was dinner. Dinner was late. Dinner I knew was going to be unpopular.  Dinner I was forcing through despite multiple telegraphed messages that this meal would be poorly attended and have much commentary. I thought the fuss was unreasonable, but apparently tater tots are not a substitute for french fries, just as surely as Cauliflower is not acceptable as bleached broccoli.  I said no and rather sharply.  Her eyes got big.  Then I realized what I'd done and said yes. 

For the next ten minutes, I wound up being a camel that walked on all fours and got tied up outside the bathroom so I wouldn't be stolen or go somewhere.  No one was upset that the meal was delayed, even the ones that liked it. However she did have the camel pick up shoes and toys and lunch bags as I journeyed across the living room desert with a caravan of children desiring their time on their mother's back.  The hitching post at the loo was apparently requirement of the game, as mother dromedaries are apt to wander off but it did mean they got their hands washed before we ate.

Literally and figuratively, motherhood is opting to be a bactrian beast of burden tied up outside of the bathroom.  There is no glamor and your back needs to be strong.  

I opted to nix bath times for the younger set as we were still running behind schedule.  Thinking I'd just found 25 minutes, the next requests came flying in to take it back. 

Can you read to me tonight? My son has scrambled to find his chapter book.

Believe me, the first thought in my head was ugh. No. Boo. Go to bed.  But I can't do it. I can't bring myself to say no to the big puppy eyes begging, when I know, soon, those same eyes will barely tolerate my presence.

Reading to one cascades into reading to several. It is inevitable.  So "That's Not My Puppy, Snoozers, Lilly's Big Day and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" chapter one run their course before I can finally bid them good night and farewell and sleep tight.  

Running through the day, I can see where the missteps were, where I could have done something to lift this one or hugged that one rather than make suggestions on how to cope with something, but for the moment, the story aloud saves everything.  It is something I hope they take with them when they leave this house, that they remember being read to, being introduced to wonderful worlds and more wonderful words.   That and I've filed away in my head, next time the question comes, "Will you play with me?" the answer needs to be an immediate enthusiastic and unequivocal yes, I thought you'd never ask. Dinner, and everything else, can wait. 

Make Sure You Make Time for Me

It's the motto of every woman's magazine article that ever was.  It's the demand of every commercial that stumps for yogurt, birth control, a gym or a cup of coffee.  "Me." "Time for me." "Me time." as if all those other minutes are selfless and as such, this little oasis must be carved out of the world to ensure sanity.  As always, the world has it backwards.  These little emotional get aways are in addition to the theoretical mandatory 55 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes reading, and 8 hours of sleep that we're all supposed to get every day. Weren't those me moments too?  How much is the daily recommended amount of time we're supposed to spend on others? It isn't that people don't need sometimes the silence of isolation to think or to rejuvenate or to organize, but who loses during that "me time?"  Whoever the you is, in your life.   What does me time really mean? 

"Go away because I'm sick of serving you?" "Get out of here because I don't want to give the emotional investment you need right now?"  We're not supposed to seek "Me time." We're supposed to serve summa --all.  We're supposed to wash the feet. We're supposed to pour out our lives like blood and water, to empty everything, to surrender everything.  And no matter how often we might have done it, or how easy we might think it is, sometimes it's not just hard; it's excrutiating.

A life of love is a life of sacrifice and it isn't just little things like coffee breaks and uninterrupted writing and reading of good books or watching a favorite television show, it is 1000 sublimations in a day, getting up before we want to, foregoing a shower, fixing food for others, unloading the dishwasher and reloading, making the bed forgotten, turning off the lights and emptying the trash including the apple core and hidden pudding cup and 10 foils from chocolate kisses.  It is not going out in the evening because a child needs to talk, it is not talking when a child needs to talk.  It is reading one more bed time story and holding a baby that only wants to be held for hours and hours and hours. 

It is running the errand to Target and to Walmart and then to Michael's on Sunday night (to allow for a project that got forgotten) to be finished.  It is reading with the same enthusiasm for the 1 billionth time, Green Eggs and Ham and Harry Potter and those deadly summary of the plot line by line Disney books that you bought back when you could get suckered into those 1 cent book clubs.   Dreams of degrees and being world famous don't die overnight. There isn't a moment when we say, "Die dream..Die!"  because it isn't a death, it isn't an abandonment, it is a surrender of the self.  Surrendering of the self is a perpetual struggle.  Telling yourself "This will have to wait." because they won't doesn't mean it doesn't sting, doesn't mean it doesn't tempt, doesn't mean it doesn't remind one's self that this is a sacrifice, this is a gift.  Further, the battle has to be won again and again and again because the ego doesn't like taking no for an answer.  

Surrender of what one wants begins with marriage, with falling in love.  That surrender continues and it extends and grows as a marriage grows, and as a family begins.  The radical sublimation of the woman's body to another is a mirror of what the soul, all souls, are supposed to orient themselves towards becoming.  Every cell in a woman's body goes into overdrive trying to protect and feed and nourish the baby, even allowing for the depleting of calcium from one's teeth to make sure the new bones grow.  Nothing is withheld even if the mind and heart of the mother is not yet fully on board. 

Then we see that little face and wonder how we could ever love so much, how we could bear not looking at him or her, how we could bear not holding them, how our hearts could bear so much love and not burst for joy.  Time stops for a moment, when the heart and mind finally catch up to the body that has just delivered everything that it had.   The rest of life is learning to reorient all three towards that perpetual complete surrender and the battles of appetites and prior selfish habits to reassert themselves.  It is ugly, halting, clumsy and fierce.  Even when we think we've reached a moment, we haven't.  We've just come to a momentary plateau.  More surrender is in the works.  There is always more to give, always more to surrender, always less we could demand for ourselves.  Absent love, it would all be drudgery and frustration.  Love changes everything. Love makes even the most meaningless of tasks --like laundry and dishes and diapers, meaningful, because it makes those acts gifts of time, of attention, of sublimation of self.

This isn't to say that a life so ordered won't be filled with feasts or epic moments of sheer awesomeness, only that we aren't called to make our lives such that they read like an Epic or a Resume of the beautiful, successful and accomplished.   We're called to live for others, to be successful at creating beauty, to accomplish the beatitudes today and every day, and that if fully embraced, leaves no "me time," only time for others, and a cup brim filled of memories of the daily labors of love.

Small Success Thursday

Welcome back to another week of celebrating small successes! 

First, I found a beautiful piece I'd like to share.  100 Ways to Serve Others

It's old but it is timeless. 

It's so easy to buy into the nonsense that what we do on a daily basis isn't that important, isn't that meaningful; but we have to remember: 

When we feed our children, we have fed the hungry.
When we dress them, we have clothed the naked.
When we address their fights and hurts and slights, we are peace makers.

So we are living out some component of the beattitudes by merely doing what is required with great love.

This week I:

1) Worked on Helen.  (my four year long project of trying to write a book).
2)  Submitted a query to a magazine.
3) Gave a list of my favorite Catholic blogs to my pastor.
4) Cleaned out a closet and trimmed down the long branches of the birch tree in the front. 
5) Began reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader to two of my kids.
6) Turned 45!  Celebrated properly.
7) Celebrated the 4th with barbeque, fireworks and family. 

Now it's your turn!  Be sure and visit the blogs of all who participate, it's part of the fun!