Try Dyed For Mother's Day

It began with a Mother's Day card. 

My seven year old son had created a booklet at school.  Each page had a fill in the blank.  My mom likes to...My mom doesn't like to...with the answers having been supplied by each individual first grader.  The impressions a child has of their parents is often widely at odds with reality or at least the impression I'm trying to give in this world. 

For instance, according to John, my favorite food is crabs.  This despite the fact that I obsess over chocolate and diet coke daily and haven't eaten any side walkers in about a year.  My only explantion was a conversation I had two weeks ago with my two oldest daughters about how much fun it was to make gumbo growing up. They were recalling their last trip to the beach where they caught a mess of blue crabs and did the same with my folks. 

Apparently my favorite vacation spot is Texas but the place I loathe is Pennsylvania.*  Again, I could piece together the reasoning of my son; he knows I love to visit my family and the beach on the gulf coast.  He also knows family lore. Years back before he was even born, we had a bad experience once in Amish country at one of those theme hotels designed to be fun for kids, a hotel composed entirely of train cars.   We tried to be good sports but the place was so dusty and our bed so awful, my husband made an emergency trip to Walmart to purchase new sheets and comforters so we could sleep. He stayed up all night in the recliner watching March madness and we didn't stay the second of the mandatory two night reservation. To this date, while we know there are plenty of fun things to do in our neighboring state, we remain gun shy about an overnight stay; with the money quote being, "This would be pretty if it weren't Pennsylvania."  The Hotel which shall not be named, still evokes shivers at the memory and a case of the imaginary itchies. 

But the page that drew the most response was this:  My mom's hair color is.....What is this, a commercial for L'Oreal?  My son had written grey.   He wrote grey.  My hair is black.  Well alright, it's black with grey highlights and an skunk stripe in the front.  I looked in the mirror.  The standard pony tail masked how grey I'd become, bundling all the brown and black.The skunk stripe had encroached out of it's acceptable territory and I now had a large swath that his seven year old eyes had spotted correctly.  I couldn't be grey.  The little bit of vanity left in this mother of ten body railed against the idea of having my son think I had grey hair.  Off to the hairdresser I went.

I have discovered the limits of my vanity.  Two hours.  It takes three hours to get one's hair colored. After 120 minutes, I was done and tired of reading magazines that told me how to lose weight, budget, organize, think like a man, raise perfect sons, grill, improve my insurance I.Q. and where to eat in Bangladesh.  I'd said a rosary.  I'd written a list of things to do for the next week. I'd fretted about not being home and wondered if they'd started dinner.  I'd wished I'd gone shopping for sneakers instead or gone for a walk.  I'd considered getting into an email fight with the editor of a travel magazine for a snide comments about Houston not having much beyond steak until recently.  Clearly they didn't know Houston worth a darn.  Then  I realized, she'd missed out on some good mexican tamales and good seafood and fantsized briefly about Pappadeaux's soft shell crabs.. then I thought oh well, more for me.  Whoa! Maybe my son knew more about me than I'd thought.  

Finally sprung from the beautician's chair, I drove home and showed off my newly not grey hair.  He didn't really notice.  I looked at my mother's day car again.  The page after the hair said, "My eyes are....green," only they're not. 

Next week, I'm going to the eye doctor. My oldest son told me to get contacts if I need correction, so maybe when I go to the visit, I'll fix it so the other son's observations are more accurate. 

*I like Pennsylvania.  We've taken trips and have friends in Pennsylvania. I'm just never going to a theme hotel that has a mandatory two night stay again unless the family needs new bedding and even then, I think I'll just buy the sheets and skip the possible nightmare vacation spot.

Are You Happy?

"Are you happy?" was the catch title on the magazine.  I didn't pick it up but the question lingered.

I thought it an odd question, one which theoretically requires only a "Yes." or a "No." and yet it begs with either answer, "Why?" 

At two in the morning, the answer woke me up from sleep and came spinning out of my brain.   Was I happy?  Yes. 

Why?

It wasn't because my life was easy.  That week we'd dealt with a broken dryer, throw up from two children, one really awful grade, the bills, collecting of paperwork for taxes and an unwanted three extra pounds.  Top that with college looming for the oldest, the youngest being only two months old and a three year old that kept having set backs on pottying and certainly by the world's standards, I should be miserable if not insane to boot.  

Yes I should be prematurely gray and worn thin. Ten children lead to exponential messes if even half drop their shoes, coats and backpacks at the door when they explode out of the car.  Ten beds to make or at least check, thirty three meals in a day and sixty-five items of clothing plus possible sheets and towels loom every evening by the washing machine.  There is always a list.  This week two need hair cuts, we need to get an oil change, three dressers should be threaded for clothes out of season or that don't fit and I have to schedule four dental appointments, order a birthday present, get track shoes and we have music lessons on Tuesday.

With pasta, hot dogs and waffles as regulars on the weekly menu, vacations that are mostly camping or to see family and a 12 passenger van that often is filled with stuffed animals, stickers and coats that have been orphaned, it seems I should at the very least feel discontent and dissatisfied. Like a modern day Rapunzel trapped in a tower of old french fries, diapers and broken crayons, (all of my own making), waiting to make a mark on the world in some way other than mothering, I should be screaming "Calgon Take me away." But the inescapable fact of the stillness of 2:32 a.m. as I listened to the faint sound of my son's radio, my two year old singing in his sleep and the gentle sigh of milky contentment from the baby, was.... I am happy.

Even with three year old sneakers and maternity jeans because the others don't fit quite yet, it didn't matter and I couldn't stop the happiness.   It was pouring out like an endless bubbling fountain and yet I felt full; the fullness of my happiness echoed my youngest daughter's happiness at being full. 

Back to the question. Why?

Because the world does not quite get happiness. 

It can't because happiness is not of this world.  Happiness is not the absence of work or total ease of life.  (Celebrities would be example 1 of how having all your appetites sated and all your worldly needs addressed in abundance and being even surrounded by success and beauty have nothing to do with actual happiness). Happiness is and was and will always be a state of grace, brought on by having meaningful things to do, people to love and a relationship with the Divine that acknolwedges that all of this, good, bad, messy and ugly, difficult and seemingly impossible is practice.  We are testing how much we will love in this life; how close we dare skate to God in our fallen state.

With a beloved husband and ten alarmingly interesting people to serve and nurture thorugh this life, my life could only be understood as lavishily happy, shamelessly joyful, luxiouriously luminously laborious but peaceful.   Was I happy?  Yes. Yes.  A thousand times yes times a thousand more yes.

3:07 a.m.   Now.  If the question had been, "Are you rested?"  Different story.

The Maid of La Muncha

Whenever I feel life is just too easy, I buy a magazine.

Yesterday, in a visible sign of my need to make work for myself, I bought one of those "organization" rags.

The helpful pages tell how "you too can live in a house with other people and have a debris free existence." It looked so touchable and neat, I wanted this quieter life and felt I could have it if only I knuckled down and disciplined myself...so, I became a Knight Errant...

To Clean...the impossible Clean...
to Sort all the socks with their mates...
to fold...till the pile is nothing...
to sweep all the cobwebs away...

this is my Dream...to order this home...no matter how hopeless...

I tried the first method --Donate, Discard, Keep. It sounded promising.

Armed with a trash bag and a laundry bin, I went to the first room, resolute in my determination to sort everything in my two sons' room into one of three piles. After five minutes, it became apparent that I would need a forth pile for the clothing that belonged in another person's room, and a fifth pile for clothing that was out of season and a sixth pile for the things that my helpful toddlers kept bringing to me.

The magazine never said anything about toddlers undoing the work as you go, wearing the donations on their heads, reclaiming things from the trash, dumping the keep and jumping into it like leaves.

I felt I was playing Go fish with my kids who kept sorting back through the discard pile to find matches. Not one to give up easy, I put on the television to distract my "helpers" and started in on the 1/3 policy in the living room.

Now I get tunnel vision when I write, read, draw, watch TV or work. The world shuts away for me and I don't notice what should be obvious. I forget this is not what happens to everyone.

Helpers need snacks and thus the immediate urge to eat ten minutes after breakfast will superceed the desire to be entertained. So while Don Quixote was busy doing other things, like sorting laundry, Sancho and Dulcinea had to help themselves, which they did. Cereal and Hershey's syrup seemed like a good combo. Chocolate flavored Cherrios...they make a lovely mosaic on the floor. They even stick.

So we stopped in the living room and headed for the kitchen to address the newest distraction. That took wiping, sweeping, moping and no small amount of prayer. Then I had to clean up the artists. Bath time and new clothes, meaning more laundry. I wiped down the bathroom while they splashed and felt vaguely virtous for getting one room done while still providing appropriate loving care for my children. A mometary moment of victory for the Knight Errant.

But there remained the upstairs project I had half started. I admit, I was tired and the clock indicated it was near noon. Lunch time, the kitchen would be undone.

There was only one thing to do. Running up the stairs with my two helpers in tow, we bagged up everything we had already sorted, put everything else back into laundry baskets and called it a day. We went to celebrate at McDonalds.

And the magazine?

I put it in the recycling.

Front Cover Me Girl

Stuck at the dentist, I began looking at the headlines of multiple magazines at the same time. Thousands upon thousands of us purchase them month after month and year after year and it is quite possible that the magazines in question stopped writing actual copy back in 1980 and are just continually recycling past pieces with bright new shiny titles. Each magazine obsessed over fashion, trouble with men and how to eat excessive amounts of fattening food without gaining weight. They also revealed that we the readers were obsessing over these same things even if we didn’t know it yet.

According to these respected publications, today’s woman is supposed to be polished, organized, Zen like in her understanding of the earth, superb at balancing business and family life, fashionable, slim, thrifty, not to mention a gourmet chef that ensures everyone in the family gets plenty of sunshine, exercise and anti-oxidants. She is on the go but not stressed out, organized but not rigid, impeccably dressed but not vain, and self indulgent but in a good narcissistic sort of healthy way.

The pharmaceutical ads interspersed with these articles offered guarantees that we could experience nirvana even if our current reality failed to meet magazine expectations and that we should contact our doctor if we felt the slightest hint of a spiritual, physical or emotional malaise, real or imagined.

Apparently I am suffering from a dearth of desire for external medication. I’m sure there’s a pill for that too though.

Having thumbed through a few of these sagacious tomes, I have a slight quibble about the front covers. These covers always have one of two things on them, skinny women in elegant skimpy clothing, or gorgeous food. The skinny women obviously have never been allowed to view let alone eat the food shown on the fabulous covers. Perhaps once they hit the fossilized age of 20, they become the cooks for the magazine and are allowed to consume life sustaining amounts of processed carbohydrates and protein, not to mention sugar.

The food is always either meat or dessert. The meats portrayed are almost always steaks so perfect you want to go back down the aisles at the grocery store, find the identical selection of meat, spices and herbs and take it home to cook. Around November, Turkey shows up and maybe ham. You never see London broil on a front cover or chicken thighs.

When it is dessert, it is usually piled high and chocolate, or has that tri-color catch-your-eye-type-presentation because the chef used a few ripe raspberries and some fresh mint at the end to dress it up. No matter how few easy steps the cover screams it takes to make this simple no fuss always loved dessert, the actual process remains more complicated. It will however look just like the cover when you are done, just as surely as you look like the model on the other magazine’s cover if you buy the same dress.

Lastly, there is a question of which magazines offer Truth.

These reading tomes want our loyalty in the same way political parties, religious denominations and spouses do. They want a commitment, a subscription even, and possibly proselytizing by giving out subscriptions as gifts.

Do I want to seem Cosmopolitan, like the girls from Sex in the City, or like a cultured French woman and read Elle? Do I get my advice from Rosie, Martha or Oprah? Am I Today’s Woman, or a Working Woman or Working Mother? Am I confident of my SELF or in need of Shape? What am I missing out if I choose one over another? Am I turning a blind eye to the wisdom on female financial planning and weight loss in a week if I pick Redbook over Southern Living? Will I fail as a mother if I chose Child over Parents magazine?

As the hour ticked by and I waited for kids check ups to be over, I found myself pining for just one out of date issue of Grit or National Geographic. Digging through the piles, I finally found one. The cover was “Chocolate and why we love it.”

I am ashamed to admit, I took that one home.