A Giant in the Sky

“Maybe there is a big giant watching us,” he says as he pops the last of his cupcake into his mouth.

“You think so?” I say, pilling the dishes into the sink and wiping the counter in front of him with a damp rag.

“And he’s moving the wind and the clouds so that sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Maybe that’s God,” I say.

“What’s God?”

Since before Sam was born I’ve been prepared for discussions about why our family doesn’t have a daddy. I’ve made books explaining his conception and our story and what a gift he is. But I’ve never even mentioned God to him? God hasn’t ever come up when we snuggle at bedtime and talk about things we’re grateful for or the people we love? Nobody has ever mentioned God to him? How did this happen?

When my best friend was trying to figure out how to teach her young boys about God, whether to bring them to church, I admired the balance she struck between her beliefs and her husband’s beliefs, the way she wanted to educate her children about what others believed without forcing them to believe anything in particular.  A decade later when my sister grappled with the decision to send her son to a Lutheran pre-school, I understood her reluctance.  She and I had stood up during her children’s baptisms and vowed to raise her children in the Catholic church but at the time we both had our doubts and questions about religion and God.

Standing in the kitchen with a wet rag in my hand, all of my earlier pronouncements to my friends that “I want to teach my children about spirituality, not religion” come back to me.  How do I teach my child about God if I don’t know what I believe about God?

In Buddhist teachings there is a description of a huge net reaching in all directions called the Jeweled Net of Indra.  This net teaches about the interconnectedness of us all.  We are all part of something bigger than just ourselves, part of a whole that includes plants and animals and friends and neighbors, people across the world and people right next door.  What we do to the least of our brothers we do to ourselves.  I know I believe this, but how does my idea of God or a creator fit in with this?

I was raised in a Catholic home and from the distance of my adulthood I look back gratefully for the tradition and the community and the center the church gave our family.  My earliest and most pleasant childhood memory is of my head in my mother’s lap as she stroked the hair back behind my ears as the priest’s voice droned from the pulpit.  I look back and see how no matter what was going on in our lives, we made time for God on Sunday.  We got out of bed and got dressed and rode in the car together, whether it was raining or sleeting, whether we were healthy or sick, whether we were getting along or fighting.  Every week we traveled the short distance to St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, and we sat in the pews together.  My Sunday memories include silver dollar sized pancakes at The Village Inn, peeling apples for pie, and watching football in the family room.  Together.

I’m still forming my ideas about the spiritual traditions our family will follow, but when I think about what I want my children to know about God and religion and spirituality, THIS is what I KNOW I want them to learn:  that we are a family, the three of us as well as the greater human race.  That there is no “us” and “them.”  That each human being has as much value as the next.  That those who have a different skin color or speak a different language or form families with two moms or ride in a wheelchair or follow the teachings of Mohammed or believe that Christ was the son of God or don’t believe in God at all are all human beings.  I want them to learn that families can come from anywhere, that what we do and say can influence others and we don’t always see the effects we have on others, and we’re all in this together.

I stand in the kitchen and look at the frosting smeared into Sam’s hair and the blue sprinkles caked to the corners of his mouth, and I do not even know how to begun to talk to him about God, how to even put a human word to something I consider to be so grand and awesome that even the act of naming it diminishes the greatness of God.  But I know that it is time for our family to begin forming our spiritual traditions, our Sunday memories.  Better late than never.

“God is love,” I say.  “God is all of us.  Together.  Love.”It’s not perfect and it never will be.  And as my son grows he will develop his own ideas about God and religion and community and tradition and humanity and love.  So while it may not be perfect, it’s a start.  We are finally talking about God.

This story originally appeared here.

Something's Gotta Give

When I picked up the kids from daycare this afternoon, I saw that Jamie had brought out the exersaucer, the plastic activity center that supports a baby that can't walk yet.

"Does Eva go in that yet?" I asked.

"Yah, she loves it," Jamie said.

"That's so funny because she hates the one at home," I said. "She gets mad at me whenever I put her in it."

"She plays with all the little toys and she spins around," Jamie said as she showed me how it worked.

"She gets mad at me for just about everything I do at home unless I'm holding her," I said. "I think she just needs more time with me."

"So does Sammy."

"So does my boss," I sighed.

Something’s gotta give.

When you’re in survival mode, it’s okay to serve your 3-year-old just buttered noodles and a big glass of milk for dinner.

The Mess Walk

“We’re going to fix Kelly’s Daddy,” Sam said.

I was bundling him up in his blue jacket and red hat, and my friend Sarah was standing in our kitchen holding Eva. The day before the forecast had been for about 32 degrees with mixed precipitation-- the dreaded “wintry mix” – so we had agreed it would be best if I left Eva behind.

Earlier in the morning I had told Sam that we were going to have another special day, a special day with just Mommy and Sammy. But I had explained that this day was even more special than our usual special days because we’d be walking in the local MS Walk. I told him that we were going on a special walk to raise money to help find a cure for the disease that Kelly’s daddy has, that MS is the reason Kelly's daddy doesn’t walk.

“We’re walking in The Mess Walk to fix Kelly's Daddy's leg,” Sam told Sarah. “Just Sammy and Mommy.”

And so we did. The weather wasn't perfect and we never did find the other Sam's Squad team members who were walking in our area, but we rode on a glass elevator and turned in our donations and ate two donuts apiece and got our pictures taken and walked 3.1 miles and saw a rake in a tree and the flood waters of the Mississippi and the same patch of daffodils we saw when we walked in 2008. We got our orange t-shirts and talked with people as we walked and listened to people tell their stories on the microphone and called Kelly's Daddy to tell him we finished, and we had a very special day. Just Sammy and Mommy.

What Spring Looked Like...

...before winter returned.















See more photos of Sam's Special Day Hiking here.

See photos of a visit from Brooklynn and a great visit from Eva's soulmate on this page of March photos.

See more photos of outdoors spring activities with friends on this page of April photos.

Tumbling

Usually we are the second family to arrive. We walk in as a dad in sweats leaves his daughter alone waiting for class to start. We met them the first week, chatted as Sam removed his boots and I tucked Eva’s carseat in the corner. Sam’s first official extracurricular, potential-for-overscheduling experience. Tumbleweeds. This week we arrive to a room full of moms and dads and siblings pressed against the murals painted on the wall, digging cameras out of their bags and watching as children run around the room, jumping on the trampoline, sliding along the balance beam, zipping down the giant yellow slide or tackling each other martial arts style and yelling “hi-ya!” Graduation day. The day we finally get to see the deep dark secrets of toddler tumbling that we were not previously allowed to witness...

Eva has been left at home with a friend, and this morning is to be all about Sammy.  He stands close to my side, his hand clutching my pants leg, and I lead him to a spot on the wall where a rainbow grows out of the top of a giant castle.  Near big foam blocks stacked in front of the trampoline Sam takes off his boots and sits on the mat.  I encourage him to run and play with the other kids, but he is sizing up the crowd, looking at all the people.

They say the nut doesn’t fall too far from the tree, and as we stand there I realize that I am becoming my mother and Sam is becoming me.

“Nobody is watching you,” I say.  “Just Mommy.  Everyone else is just watching their own kids.”

I think back to how much I celebrated being able to finally see him do “gymnastics”, how excited I was, what a big and special day it was.  This is the moment I find myself NOW trying to back track and convince him that really it isn’t that big of a deal.

My sister and I had the same parents, and you’d think we would have essentially the same memories of our childhood.  But we don’t.   She remembers we had a dog.  I don’t.  She remembers me holding her down and spitting in her face and threatening to throw her beloved Bunny out the car window.  I remember her reading my notes from friends and borrowing my clothes and always being mad that I never wrote anything about her in my diary. 

Ten years ago she told me that she wished she’d have gotten more pressure and direction from our mother, that she never felt like she knew what was expected of her.  I could only sigh because I had always felt nothing but pressure.  Ann always hated that teachers compared her to me, told her that she should be more like her sister.  I always hated that no matter what I did academically, she was the one with the higher IQ, she was the one who won the UWGB summer camp kids golf tournament, she was the one who got on the basketball team and in the band and on the cross country team.  She was the one that did everything.  I was the one who did nothing.  After I didn’t make the cuts for 7^th grade basketball or 7^th grade volleyball, I never tried out for anything again, afraid of rejection, afraid of failure, afraid of disappointing my parents.  Extracurricular stuff was terrifying for me but for sister it was where my sister could escape comparisons to me.

“It will be fun, Sammy,” I say.  “Look.  There’s Nico.”

“I don’t want to.  I want to go home.  I don’t like tumbling,” he says.

I’ve read so much about what to do and what to say and how to handle your children in different situations.  I’ve learned something from almost every “expert” from almost every position on the spectrum.  I’ve listened to the Tiger Mom and Michelle Rhee talk about assuming our children are strong and expect strength from them.  I’ve read books and blogs telling me to get down to my child’s level and reiterate what they’re feeling and give them control.  I’ve read about building my child’s self-esteem and teaching boundaries and accountability and understanding omnipotence and interdependence.

Standing there next to my child, my back against the big grey castle with the rainbow leading up into the sky, I felt the same pressure I did when I tried out for 7^th grade basketball.  I felt like everyone in the room was watching, and I was so afraid of failing.  Of being the mom that everyone would say “Did you see what she did?  How she treated her son? How she failed her son?”  It was one of my most challenging moments as a parent, not because of anything my child did, but because I had to in that moment let go of my own feelings, admit my own fear of failure, and focus on Sammy.

I walked Sam to the corner of the room where the kids were doing mat exercises.  We watched as they stretched their hands towards the ceiling and then as they sat on the ground and stretched to make pizzas in between their legs.  I asked Sammy questions, tried to get him engaged.  “Can you do that?  Do you want to do that?”

He put his hands on the floor and did the donkey kick with the other kids but stayed outside the circle.  And then as the group lined up behind Carrie, Sam joined in and followed the line to the trampoline.  Eventually he even walked on the balance beam, his arms stretched wide as his little blue socks slid along the wood.

“I did it, Mommy,” he cried.  “I did the airplane move!” He beamed at me as he ran back to me after the class demonstration was over.  He kept his arms spread wide and I picked him up and hugged him as tightly as I could and I felt myself exhale.  “You sure did, Sammy.  You sure did.”

This story was originally published HERE.