The Twenty-First Letter: Running Intervals

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

I have always been hesitant to call myself a runner. For one thing, I really don’t like to run.

Like, seriously don’t like it.

I feel miserable when I’m doing it and at some point during that first mile, I always whisper to myself, “Why am I doing this?”

But, see, there’s this other element to it: I love having gone running.

In elementary school–and all the way through high school–I absolutely abhorred the dreaded run-the-mile phys ed class. It surprises nobody who knows me that I’ve never been an athlete, so apart from the weeks we did square dancing in the gymnasium and didn’t have to change into our gym uniform, I pretty much thought phys ed was a waste of my academically-directed time.

Despite looking like a basketball player with my 6’0” frame, I’m not an athlete.

But in college I started running. Sort of. I started realizing I needed to be exercising and so spent time running around the track. Huffing and puffing and hating it. Holding my side because it was incredibly painful. Every time.

I’ve run off and on over the last decade. I got used to running in high-heat Texas. I got used to running in the ridiculous hills of the Bluegrass. I got used to running with a single stroller.

I’ve never really gotten used to running with the double stroller. Combined, the two of you weigh seventy pounds now, girlfriends, so that is some serious weight. Just walking with the double stroller is a workout in our town.

Then, a few weeks ago, our neighbor asked me if I wanted to start a running program with her. She had a baby less than a year ago and was running intervals.

Here’s the thing: I look down on people who run intervals. When I first heard that some people ran intervals for big races, even half-marathons, I kind of felt like they were cheating a bit. They weren’t “really” running.

But I said yes.

And then I became an interval runner.

For real.

Remember how I said that at some point during that first mile of every run I questioned why the heck I was doing it? Not any more.

We have worked our way up to five miles already on our weekend runs, and all we do is run twice a week during the week. Sometimes both pushing double strollers, sometimes not.

Five miles, girls.

Your momma is a runner.

Today I ran four miles and had a better per-mile time than I’ve gotten in the two races I’ve run.

Here’s the thing with intervals: they let your body rest. When your body–your joints, your muscles, your lungs–get to rest, then you are able to run harder and better on the running leg of the interval without even trying to.

Today, I didn’t start to feel uncomfortable until nearly the three-mile mark.

A key part of interval training, so I’m told, is that you don’t wait until your body is tired to rest. You begin your intervals right way. Our intervals are that we run for 60 seconds and walk for 30 seconds. (We’ve got smart phone apps that buzz like the beginning of a round of boxing to start the run interval and then ding like the end of a round to start the walking leg.) Beginning our intervals right away means that after only one minute into our run–before we’re even feeling tired–we go ahead and stop and walk for thirty seconds.

Did you hear me? We stop and rest before we’re tired.

This is a metaphor, of course.

There are a lot of worthy causes in the world, girls. I’m raising you to care about people, to have compassion, to be peacemakers and lovers and creators. When your dad prays at dinner, he always prays that we are able to find ways to be part of the solution. That’s what you will be, I know it. Part of the solution.

Maybe you’ll be academics or legislators seeking to understand and enable change, activists or lawyers fighting to make changes possible, poets or preachers speaking change into the world. There is always more work to be done.

Will you be a teacher who sees your students’ needs beyond the classroom? A doctor in a clinic in a low-income neighborhood? An engineer planning bridges in Africa? A journalist who voices what we all need hear: “There is still more work to be done“?

But, daughters, hear this, too:

Even the hands and feet of Jesus in the world need to rest.

We all need to rest.

It is often easier not to.

When you are a compassionate person, it is easy to see only the pain of the world that needs fixing. When you love people, you want to help people, and there is no shortage of people to help. When you invite others into your world, it is easy for those people to become your world. When you love your church, you want to fix your church.

But you can’t fix every problem. You can’t soothe every pain. You can’t meet every need. You can’t invite everyone in. You can’t. I can’t. We can’t.

We need to rest.

We need to rest regularly, and we need to rest before we’re tired.

Sometimes that means saying “no” to good things. Sometimes that means going away. By yourself. To run. Or to read. Or to paint. Or to pray. Or to nap.

Seriously.

That’s what I was thinking today as I approached the four-mile mark, huffing and puffing and, yes, hurting quite a bit as I came up Clinton Avenue. That’s the steepest hill in the neighborhood, girls. One of the steepest hills in our town. But I heard that loud, clanging gong on my phone saying to pick up the pace at that moment, and you know what?

Because I’d been resting, I could.  And I did.

Love,

Your Momma

The Twentieth Letter: New Seasons

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

I love changing seasons.

I love the fall’s cool breezes and crunchy leaves. I’ll take sweatshirts and jeans over shorts and tank tops any day. I don’t like to sweat.

I also really love school supplies. I mean, seriously. Notebooks. Folders. Binders with tabbies. Post-It notes. Pens. Sharpie marker pens especially. Boxes of crayons before the wrappers are all peeled off.

When I think of back-to-school season, I picture those days of crunchy leaves and waiting for the bus. Brand-new decorations in classrooms–not stained, the edges not curling. Wondering which of your friends will be in what class. Seeing the book for the first time. Meeting new people. Figuring out when I could go to my locker.

I still periodically have that can’t-remember-the-locker-combination nightmare, and it’s been over a decade since I’ve opened a locker.

I love the juxtaposition of new school years–fresh starts, new beginnings–with the season of autumn–leaves turning colors, falling off trees, the earth going to sleep for winter.

Death and new life.

There’s probably a poem in that somewhere.

In Kentucky, there is no such juxtaposition and beauty of seasons. Ya’ll go to school in the middle of summer, girls. There’s no getting around it.

Thursday, August 6, was the Bean’s first day of preschool.

I’m told this is a big deal. And I feel like I should feel like this is a big deal. PRESCHOOL! FIRST DAY! WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE? MY BABY IS GOING TO SCHOOL!

Okay, granted, it’s only 2 mornings a week, and it’s a class for 3 year olds.

But I feel pretty much nothing but gratitude that you will be away from me in an organized learning environment.

One of my friends sent her son to kindergarten this week. (And this is the first year of full-day kindergarten for our district.) It’s a tough thing for her.

It’s a tough thing for most moms.

I have this hunch I’ll be the mom secretly rejoicing on the inside.

Or not so secretly.

Part of it is my overall love of new years and new beginnings.

Part of it is that I’m just not very sentimental about these baby and toddler years when you are home with me, chattering constantly, climbing up my legs when I’m standing in the kitchen, sitting on my lap while I am looking for peace and quiet in the bathroom, for goodness’ sake.

I’ve sung this song before. It will be no surprise to you, I’m sure.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve loved watching you learn and absorb information. As one of our best friends says, kids are sponges. I am astounded every day at your capacity to learn and question and figure things out. I’ve loved painting with you and reading to you and teaching you songs and building impressive towers out of blocks.

But.

My dad once told me when I was older–at least a teenager, maybe out of the house already, I can’t remember–that he loved every stage of our growing up, and he loved “this stage” the best. Whatever stage we were in, the whole time we were growing up, that’s the one that seemed the best. I’m pretty sure he likes being Grandpa best of all, of course. But his point was that he wasn’t sentimental about the stages that had passed. He didn’t long for us to be babies again. He didn’t long for us to be dependent creatures. He raised us to be thinkers and doers.

There is hope in this thing called parenting.

Hope.

I’m a nerd, but there is something so hopeful about the beginning of the school year. It’s a new season.

Maybe I get a little bit of that hope every time I open a new notebook, buy a new rainbow pack of Sharpies, a sleeve of Post-Its.

And maybe I get a little bit of that hope every time I look at you.

Love,

Your Momma

The Nineteenth Letter: Water Guns, Goliath, & Peacemaking

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

We’ve got friends who managed to call water guns “water squirters” for years in order to avoid using gun language at their home. We’ve got other friends who insist that if you ban gun toys, kids will manage to just “shoot” with other things–wooden sticks, bread sticks, you name it.

I didn’t really imagine having to deal with this issue any time soon, and mostly avoided weighing in on either side.

Despite having grown up using guns safely and being from a hunting family, my inclination these days is towards pacifism. We don’t own guns, but we do live in Kentucky. So they are everywhere.

We were out drawing with chalk on the deck a few weeks ago, and the Bean wanted me to draw a snow person. After I did, she began scribbling right on top of it. Since we try to discourage blatant vandalism of someone else’s artwork, I asked her if she was drawing clothes for the snow person. She said no.

She was drawing it a sword.

A sword.

Now, I’m not the kind of mom who typically jumps to gendered stereotypes, but the first thing that crossed my mind was, “What little boys have my daughters been playing with?”

We don’t have toys in our house that have swords. We don’t have really anything that is fighting related. I wouldn’t say that it’s intentional at this point, but if given the option between a sword-bearing knight or, say, a book, I’d choose the book, even an annoying one. (I might, however, pick a sword-carrying toy over a princess. Your dad really doesn’t like the princess industry, and you don’t yet know what they are. Of course, I’m sure as we enter the world of preschool next week, the gendered world will begin to make itself known to you.)

I wanted to know where you learned the word “sword,” so asked you. Your answer?

“From the Bible.”

True story.

Sigh.

I guess if I want to raise up little pacifists, we better stop reading you a nightly Bible story.

I’m confident that if guns had existed in Pharoah’s Egypt or Jesus’ Garden of Gethsemane, we’d have them in the Bible. Somewhere. Somehow. Guns into plowshares, maybe.

When I was pregnant the first time around, I frequently used the song of Zechariah, recorded in Luke 1, as a prayer. Something about the last few lines of that passage continually came back to me when I prayed over this first baby growing inside of me. We didn’t know if you were a boy or a girl, didn’t have a name picked out, hadn’t even seen you on the ultrasound monitor yet, but this is what I kept praying:

And you, child, will be called prophet of the most high, for you have come to prepare the pathway for the Lord by teaching the people salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.

Out of God’s deepest mercy, a dawn will come from on high, a light for those shadowed by death, a guide for our feet on the way to peace.

And then when I was pregnant the second time around with baby girl number two, it was a different passage of Scripture that guided my prayers–the beatitudes from Matthew. Again, I can’t really say why, but it was these two verses that rang true:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Until last week, when we were discussing the beatitudes in church, I hadn’t thought about the similarities between the passages that I prayed for both of you, with both of you, during those nine months in utero. Both passages are about peacemaking, aren’t they?

For me, it was simply that when I would pray for you, these were the verses that came to mind.

I prayed that you would be compassionate, that you would have courage, that you would love people, that you would be a light in a dark world. I prayed for you to be peacemakers.

Oh, and now Goliath is the Bean’s favorite Bible character.

I kid you not.

The absolute favorite.

Granted, it’s because your dad does such a great HAR HAR HAR laugh when he reads the voice of Goliath, because he encourages the impressively loud THUD THUD THUD of Goliath’s footsteps. It doesn’t seem to matter that Goliath dies at the end of the story. Doesn’t matter that little David with his five smooth stones is really the hero who gets the best lines: “It isn’t how strong you are or how many swords and spears you have that will save you–it is God who saves you! This is God’s battle. And God always wins his battles!” Doesn’t matter that the picture of Goliath makes him ridiculously unappealing, gaps in his teeth and all.

Goliath is your favorite. And Goliath has a sword.

Last weekend, arriving home from an out of town wedding, we found two small bags of goodies for you on our porch, dropped off by our neighbors. Each bag had a little bottle of bubbles and a bouncy ball that lights up. And each bag also had a water, ahem, gun in it.

They look like something out of the space age and bear very little resemblance to the pistols in holsters I’ve seen around town. But later, when we were filling them and squirting them and talking about them, it still felt really weird for me to use the word “gun” and talk about one of our toys. Guns? Really? My girls? Carrying around guns?

But yes.

You’ve got water guns.

And yes, Goliath is your favorite.

And yes, you will be peacemakers.

This doesn’t seem discordant to me.

In fact, I have a hunch that you will be teaching me what it means to be a peacemaker someday. What it means to be compassionate. What it means to be a child of God.

With a water gun in your holster.

Love,

Your Momma

 

The Eighteenth Letter: St. Francis Didn’t Have Toddlers

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

I recently heard an apocryphal story about St. Francis of Assisi:

One day, while working in his garden, Francis was approached by someone and asked what he would do if he found out that he would die before sunset. Francis replied, “I would finish hoeing my garden.”

I love this story.

I really do.

There’s beauty in understanding that the task at hand, however small or trivial, is what you are called to be doing in that moment.

There is beauty in attention to good work, complete work.

There is beauty in feeling the dirt under your fingernails, piling up a basket of peppers and tomatoes, seeing the freshly turned-over ground when you’ve pulled out a row of weeds, smelling the basil you’ve pinched off, the cilantro that’s gone to seed. This is God’s creation.

But let’s be real.

I would totally not finish hoeing my garden.

I would not clean a toilet, not wash dishes, not run the vacuum, not if I knew I were dying. I would not pick up toys or fold laundry. And I certainly wouldn’t go out and weed my garden.

I wouldn’t take time to cook food. And I probably wouldn’t exercise. Because then I would need to get a shower and that would be using up valuable time.

I wouldn’t sit around on my rear and watch TV either; don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I would be a lazy bum, but I wouldn’t do menial and mindless things.

It’s hard for me to see those day-to-day practical and necessary things of life as important enough to do if I knew my time was limited. Because right now, in this season, I have a hard time not seeing those things as ultimately life-sucking.

So, what would I do? Snuggle. Laugh. Take lots of pictures. Definitely order Thai food for dinner. Go outside and not put on sunscreen. Maybe eat cookie dough right out of the frig.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

What I’ve been thinking about recently is how to balance being a good steward of my time, that is, keeping the Most Important Things at the top of my priority list, with remaining attentive to the everyday, boring things I need to get done.

Because, to me at least, those aren’t the same things.

But I have this hunch, this sort of feeling deep in my chest, that there’s more connecting the Most Important Things to the Everyday Boring Things than I’m usually willing to recognize.

Because that’s what this story of Francis suggests, girls. That dirty, annoying, frustrating, or just plain old boring tasks can actually give our lives meaning. We can find God there. We can find purpose and vocation there.

I believe that. I do.

Or think I do.

But I’m not really in that place right now.

Love,

Your Momma

The Seventeenth Letter: My 33rd Birthday

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

Today is my 33rd birthday.

When I was pregnant the first time around, I attended a (very) brief set of classes for expectant moms at our local hospital. Of the three other young women in the class, all of them looked about twelve to me. They were probably more like 18 or so, but I was nearly 30. That’s a pretty big difference. I was the only attendee who came with questions about hospital protocol and expectations, and I’m guessing the only one with pretty strong feelings about her birth plan. I might have been the only one who was married.

At my next doctor’s appointment, I asked my OB if I was old to be having a baby. He said no—he had lots of patients much older than I was. But when I told him about how young the other women seemed in the hospital class, he qualified his earlier statement: “I guess you are relatively old to be having your first baby.”

My mom was in her late twenties when my brother was born; she’d just turned thirty a few months before I came along.

So this age feels about right to me, though I admit that it would have been easier to bounce back physically after your births if I’d been ten years younger. (After the first unmedicated labor and delivery, I felt like I’d run a marathon without any training.)

Yes, there are reasons for having babies young that I can only appreciate now, now that I’m not young. If I hadn’t lived a childless, adult, happily married life for 8 years before you were born, for example, I’d probably mourn that life of freedom a little less than I do.

But I wouldn’t change it if I could. I like my thirties. I like raising you in my thirties.

I’m more reflective and laid back as a parent than I would have been in my early twenties; young people fresh out of college have such fervent convictions and clarity. Granted, I still have conviction—and I probably voice that conviction more than the average person—but I’m gentler than I was ten years ago. And I hope more patient.

I hope.

I’m probably as stubborn as I ever was, and I still worry a lot, but I have a lot better grasp on the things that really matter.

And the things that don’t.

I’m still easily distracted and can’t multi-task, but I know that relationships with people are more important than finishing the book before my weekly reading group.

I’m better at appreciating beauty in normal, everyday life, but I’m still a far cry from thinking that motherhood cultivates grace. I don’t see grace here, and I’m fine with saying so. That’s probably something an older parent is better at, too. In my thirties, having lived my last decade in a different season, I’m comfortable with knowing that this season, like that earlier one, won’t last forever. It makes me grateful, but still exhausted.

I’ve enjoyed growing older and getting grayer alongside your dad, who continues to inspire me, and I will enjoy growing older with you. You’re transforming into little independent people already.

The summer I turned thirty, just after the Bean was born, I remember telling my mom that I couldn’t believe I was in my thirties now. She told me that she couldn’t believe her baby girl was 30 either! We laughed together at the time, but I realize more each day just how honest that feeling is.

That day—when my own baby is 30—will be here for me before I know it. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that at some point every day, every slow and boring and life-sucking day, I am paradoxically astounded just how quickly the overall time is soaring by.

I had no idea that watching children grow and learn and develop and change would be such a reminder of how much time is sifting through my fingers.

I’ve never felt angsty about aging—not about going gray, not about the freckles and age spots, not about the creases around my eyes.

But it still catches me by surprise when I glance in the mirror.

I am 33.

Young.

Not young.

Just right.

Love,

Your Momma

The Sixteenth Letter: Eleven Years In

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

Eleven years ago today, your dad and I got married in a tall stone church on State Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was a hot June weekend in the Susquehanna River valley, and the roads near the church were roped off for a race. I saw family members who’d gotten stuck in traffic sneaking in just before I walked down the aisle.

We said in our wedding vows that we would serve God together, side by side.

Side by side.

Side by side for eleven years. Towering over most other human beings.

Two states, three graduate degrees, two apartments, two houses, four cars, two daughters, in eleven years.

We’ve lost five grandparents and found four nephews and two nieces in eleven years.

We’ve sanded down hardwood floors, painted and mudded walls and more walls and more walls, built a deck, planted gardens, strapped IKEA boxes on top of the Outback, dealt with motion sick babies. Eleven years.

We’ve walked with friends through divorce and remarriage, infertility and miscarriage. We’ve watched all ten seasons of FRIENDS an embarrassing number of times. We’ve entered the world of smart phones. Eleven years.

We’ve been published and—more often than not—received rejection letters. We’ve applied for jobs and not gotten them. We’ve gotten liturgical, begun eating locally, and started buying fair trade chocolate. Eleven years.

We’ve read a lot of books, written a lot of poems, attended a lot of Over the Rhine concerts. We’ve stopped drinking any tea in the morning that isn’t PG Tips. We eat Thai food on Tuesdays. Eleven years.

We’ve gone to Italy and slept in an airport in Atlanta. We’ve roadtripped it to the Grand Canyon and rented cars in Seattle. We’ll always call Pennsylvania home, but have managed to plant deep roots wherever “here” is. Texas. Kentucky. Eleven years.

We’ve gotten a little preachy on our soapboxes, stronger in our convictions, and urgent in our causes. We also go to bed earlier. Eleven years.

We’ve started going gray. Taking a little longer to recover from hard work days. Wrinkling around the eyes when we smile. Eleven years.

I’ve asked your dad many times over the last eleven years—“Do you think everyone has as much fun as we do?”

Because we have a lot of fun.

Not that there haven’t been tears and frustrations and anger and tears. Lots of tears. Life is hard and marriage is harder. Those months and years after having babies? The hardest. At least for me.

And eleven years in? Still hard.

But still fun, too.

I can’t imagine being side by side with anyone else.

I don’t know what our marriage will look like to you, growing up in this house. You’ll see the tears sometimes, and you’re both already such sensitive and sweet girls. But you’ll also hear the laughter and joking, the singing and dancing. You’ll see the book reading, you’ll hear the soapboxes, you’ll eat the tofu. And you’ll probably tower over everyone, too.

Regardless, as your dad and I serve God together, side by side, I love knowing that we’ll have you toddling along behind.

Stay close.

Love,

Your Momma

The Fifteenth Letter: Less Is More & Being Sincere

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

There’s a shop I frequent in my little town, and there’s a really friendly woman who works in this shop. The first time I went in when she was working, she complimented my hair. Ironically, I was about to go get my hair cut, so I told her so and kind of laughed about it. She proceeded to tell me how lucky I was to have waves in my hair—was it natural? Yes, it was, always has been, trust me—because she used to be, or maybe still was, a hairstylist and she knew about these sorts of things things. It felt a little awkward to continue the conversation, so I mostly just shrugged it off since, well, I like my hair super short and I was getting it cut regardless of this woman’s opinion.

But, of course, it was nice to be told how rockin’ my hair was by a stranger.

Another time I went into the shop, the same woman was working and she asked me about the boots I was wearing. She said she’d been looking for a pair of boots and mine were really amazing boots—the exact thing she’d been looking for. Then we talked about them for quite a few minutes: what brand they were (Keen), where I bought them (Amazon), how comfortable they were (very), how last year’s styles are significantly cheaper.

And they are great boots. I’m a jeans-tucked-into-my-boots kind of gal. I will sing the praises of my boots to just about anyone who wants to hear it.

Still, call me cynical, but as the conversation went on, I couldn’t help but wonder about how over-the-top her interest in my boots was. I didn’t doubt that she liked the boots, but it seemed odd that she liked them That Much.

A few minutes later, a friend of mine came into the shop and I heard this same woman interact with her. I listened from across the room. This time it was how gorgeous my friend’s shirt was. She went on and on about it.

As I listened in, I began to question my own motives in complimenting other people. How often do I cross the line from complimenting, making conversation, and chitchatting into the territory of telling lies? And then I got philosophical about whether or not it matters.

Don’t get me wrong—this shop woman might have been telling the truth. Maybe she makes a conscious effort to find something beautiful in every person who comes into the shop—our hair, our clothing, our funky glasses. And then she voices her genuine appreciation in an attempt to boost our self-esteem, brighten a customer’s day, or, even more simply, to make conversation.

It does break the ice, after all, to tell someone how good she looks.

But what if it isn’t sincere? What if you tell someone she has amazing hair and she really doesn’t? Well, it probably is not a big deal and, what’s more, it will probably make her feel pretty great.

But no harm, no foul? I’m not sure.

Your dad does not tell the parents of a newborn that their child is cute if he doesn’t think the child is. I’m serious. He’ll say something kind—look at those eyes! So much hair! What tiny hands!—but it won’t be that the child is cute or beautiful if, quite honestly, he doesn’t think so.

Because he thinks honesty matters and there’s no reason to use a dishonest statement as the basis of a conversation. He’s still complimentary, he’s still making conversation, and he’s still being positive and encouraging to new parents.

But not all babies are cute.

I know that I like to compliment people. And I know that I’ve caught myself telling someone she looks good or that a shirt is beautiful when I don’t particularly think it’s true.

I don’t think it matters.

Or, I should say, I don’t think it matters to a degree.

But what if we get into the habit of telling these fibs? That’s where it gets fuzzy for me.

Well, for one thing, too many fibs, even positive ones—maybe especially positive ones—can make us seem insincere, whether we are or not.

Because that’s how I also felt in the shop that day—when I heard my friend being effusively complimented. I didn’t think, “Gosh, she does look pretty awesome today.” I thought, “I bet that woman didn’t even like these boots.”

I don’t want to overemphasize this example because, quite honestly, my feelings weren’t hurt. I don’t care if someone likes my boots. That’s trivial.

But it could matter in other instances.

And feelings could get hurt.

The point is that when I heard someone else going overboard with the compliments, it made me want to be more circumspect when offering my own praise.

It made me want to be more genuine.

It made me want to be sincere when I offer a compliment or an encouragement.

Because I want my words to matter.

And that’s what I guess I want to tell you today. Your words do matter.

Less is more. Be sincere.

Love,

Your Momma

The Fourteenth Letter: Privacy Fences

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

We hired a local company to put up a fence for us a few weeks ago.

We’d talked about it for awhile, mostly in terms of safety and keeping you hemmed in a bit, but we knew it would have to be a pretty long fence and we couldn’t decide how to partition off the yard.

Houses in our 1950s neighborhood are pretty close together–though not nearly as close as those of most of my suburbia friends. Still, on one side, we’ve got a double driveway separating us from our neighbors. Or “joining us intimately to our neighbors” is perhaps a better way to put it, given the impossibility of keeping our lives separate from theirs, even if we wanted to. So there’s no place for a fence on that side.

On the other side, well, we’ve got an extra lot. It’s all wonderful green grassy yard, except the part we’ve dug up to plant a garden and the old, precariously still-standing trees. On that extra lot is a decades-old swing set, the pine-tree-green painted metal kind I played on as a kid. Perhaps because it is such a retro swing set, or because that extra lot is also on the corner of our block, the neighbor kids like to swing on it.

We’ve welcomed and encouraged them to play in our yard for the five years we’ve lived in this house, but it’s really only been this summer that they’ve finally started doing so. It helped that it got so hot back on mother’s day weekend that we got out the impressive kiddie pool and acquired a sandbox. But even during the preceding weeks, that ancient swing set became the highlight of the neighborhood, it seemed.

The more the yard got used by you and by the neighbors, the more we really wanted a fence. A picket fence. Four feet tall. Spaces between each slat. It wasn’t to block everyone out, just to keep them safer.

So we had a local fencing company come and give us an estimate, and then finally, after many weeks of rain, they arrived to build the fence. We knew they would do it in two days–the first day, placing all the big brace posts, and the second day, putting up all the pickets. It would seem miraculous.

And it kind of was.

Except that the posts they sunk into the ground the first day were all eight-footers. Eight-foot posts, every few feet, all the way around the immense side yard. It looked like we were building a fortress.

The truth is, I kind of judge people who have privacy fences, at least the kind of privacy fences that are keeping their yards private from the road. Sure, I understand putting up a tall fence along property lines–that’s what we did along the back, given the plethora of sheds and outbuildings and a leaky swimming pool our neighbors to the rear have–but, well, privacy fences are just so unwelcoming.

Which I suppose is the point.

After that first day, with these enormous posts in our yard, I worried that people might be judging us. I wanted to shout at every car that drove by: “Wait until tomorrow! It’s not a privacy fence! I promise! It will be pretty! Don’t judge us!”

And that is ridiculous, I realize. Nobody cares what kind of fence you put in your yard. At least, most people don’t. I tried to reassure myself.

But then a friend of mine came to visit that afternoon, and one of the first things she said, when I pointed out that the posts would be cut down to four feet tall, once the pickets were up, was “I was going to say, you sure don’t seem like privacy fence kind of people.”

Then we invited neighbors over for an impromptu dinner out in the yard, and one of them said, looking at the eight-foot posts, “I didn’t think you seemed like privacy fence people.”

So apparently I’m not the only one who has a category of “privacy fence people” in their minds.

The good news: We don’t seem like those kind of people.

The bad news: Our posts made us look like those kind of people.

It didn’t matter in the long run, of course. Within two days, we had the fence built and trimmed down to size. But it did get me thinking about what “kind of people” we are and how we present ourselves to our neighborhood.

We’re community folks. We’re hospitality folks. We’re it’s-okay-to-invite-friends-in-for-dinner folks. But do our neighbors know that?

I can say that I want our yard to be a welcoming place for the neighbor kids, but I don’t know the names of our older neighbors directly across the street from us. It’s awkward, five years in, but we’ve remained in that wave-from-a-distance kind of relationship. Trying to remedy this, I did walk their little dog back over to their house the other day when she showed up in our yard, and as a result I learned the dog’s name is Daisy. The dog’s name.

It’s a start, I guess.

I’m glad that people who know us know that we aren’t privacy fence people.

But what kind of people are we? Well, I suppose that’s always a good question to ask yourself.

Love,

Your Momma

 

 

The Thirteenth Letter: Kiddie Pools & Mother’s Day

/ Elizabeth

phonto-2Dear Daughters,

Last Sunday was mother’s day. At about 11 o’clock in the morning, instead of being at church, I was lounging in the backyard with my swimsuit on, a sun visor on my head, and my feet in your kiddie pool.

It was hot.

I felt a little bit Kentucky.

I felt a little bit heathen.

But ya’ll were sick again and had been for a few days. Fevers. Congestion. Some unfortunate bodily fluids. It wasn’t pretty. (Just ask your grandparents who’d come in to visit for the weekend, especially to see you and celebrate birthdays. They actually got up at 3 o’clock that morning and had driven back to Pennsylvania.)

Because of the fevers, we couldn’t put you in the church nursery, and so we hit the “pool” instead. The kiddie pool with the blow-up slide and the sprinkler giraffe head. Yes.

My mom’s birthday is May 12, so it always falls on or around mother’s day. After my parents’ divorce, mother’s day weekend was always a special little vacation my brother and I spent with my mom. I say “always,” but it might have only been two or three times. That’s how memories work.

One year we took the camper and drove to Williamsburg, Virginia. Isn’t that amazing? My recently divorced single momma driving a camper to Virginia to spend the weekend with her kiddos? I am so impressed with her, perhaps more so every year that I myself am a mom.

I think the Williamsburg trip was the year Mom turned 40, and Stephen and I managed to hide a bunch of ugly you’re-turning-40 decorations in the camper and surprised her. There was even a little troll, i believe, with gray hair wearing a T-shirt that said “Forty Isn’t Old If You’re a Tree.”

These are the random things I remember from my childhood. Regardless, my mom is pretty amazing.

So is yours. Let me go take a picture of that sun visor.

Last week, when I brought home the mother’s day and birthday cards I planned to give my mom this year–she’s the grandma that was in town for the weekend–your dad leaned in and whispered to me, “I wasn’t planning anything special for mother’s day, just so you know.”

I knew he was serious, and I had already assumed we wouldn’t make the day particularly special. That’s how we are. That’s what I prefer.

Given that I am such a spokesperson for the liturgical calendar, i suppose it’s surprising I am such a non-Hallmark-traditionalist when it comes to celebrating holidays. And by non-traditionalist, I mean minimalist. Or if-at-all-ist. For most Hallmark holidays, that is. Most of the time. Even birthdays. Even my own.

Part of it is this: If you love and appreciate someone–be it your momma, your friend, your daughter–you really should be telling her all the year long.

We all know this.

And yet the sappiest sap appears at holidays like mother’s day, as if we’re surprised an entire year has gone by since the last time we expressed our undying appreciation to our mothers and somehow we managed not to say it in the meantime.

Add that to the insensitivity a lot of us have regarding the folks all around us who carry baggage and pain and sadness related to motherhood–broken homes, infertility and miscarriage, recent deaths of loved ones–well, it kind of irks me. And don’t even get me started on the way we in the church seem to do the worst job of being sensitive in these matters. Sigh.

And so there was the kiddie pool. And the sun visor.

I want you to know that I love you. Every day, my sweet girls. I love you every day. Every day I want you to know.

And I want you to know that mother’s day is not a big deal to me.

I’m sure you’ll make all kinds of mother’s day crafts and handprint cards and dried-macaroni-projects over the years, and that’s sweet. I’ll discreetly put them in your memory boxes for you to have someday.

It’s not that I don’t care, but what I care about more are the snuggles that wipe snot on my pants, and the kisses with the baby tongue hanging out, and the I-love-you-toos.

Sure, I’ll keep buying my own momma and the other mommas in my life Mother’s Day cards. That’s just what you do, and I’m okay with it.

But I will also keep telling them I love them.

And telling you I love you.

And offering you these letters. They’ll last longer than the blow-up kiddie pool.

Love,

Your Momma

The Twelfth Letter: Disposable Things & What Is Normal

/ Elizabeth

photo-11

Dear Daughters,

We use cloth napkins at our house.

Not fancy ones, but cloth napkins none the less. Some of them are actually cheap IKEA dish towels. We’ve probably got thirty or so, having acquired them in sets of two, four, or six at a time over many Christmases.

We use these cloth napkins when we have people over for potlucks and I know things will get messy; we use them when it’s just the three of us over a lunch of leftover pimento cheese and slices of mandarin orange, and oatmeal for the baby. We use these napkins to wipe off your sticky fingers or your face, to wipe up drips of yogurt from the floor. It’s easy to toss them into the perpetually half-full laundry basket that lives beside the washing machine. These napkins are stained with spaghetti sauce and yellow mustard, and one is fraying from a hole eaten away by Clorox bleach.

A few weekends ago, your dad and I went out of town and one of your sets of grandparents came to stay for a few nights. Because I didn’t want them to have to worry about doing laundry while they were here—and we normally do a lot of laundry—I got out the paper napkins. Normal, regular napkins seen in dining rooms all across America.

As I set the table for dinner the first evening, placing the napkins on the table, the toddler looked at me and said, “What’s that, Mommy?”

“What’s what, Bean?”

“That.” You pointed to the napkins. The paper napkins.

And then I had to convince you that this little flimsy piece of tough tissue was the same thing as the heavy duty cotton that usually camps out on the table.

I must admit that I felt little bit proud of the fact that my almost-three-year-old child didn’t recognize a paper napkin as being a napkin.

I like that, for you, the default napkin is a cloth one. It’s normal. It’s ordinary. It isn’t anything special.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I want “normal” to be for you, what your default will be. I don’t want, for example, having people over for dinner to be an exceptional thing. I want it to be normal, maybe even expected.

I want it to be normal that we sit at the dinner table all together to eat dinner most nights, normal that we sometimes have people stay with us, guests in the guest room for the weekend, or a friend in transition for a few months.

I want it to be normal that some things go in the recycling bin, that Bible stories are part of the bedtime routine, that drawing and coloring and painting and playing with PlayDoh are just as entertaining as kid-friendly TV, that being outside on the swingset is the most fun of all.

I want it to be normal that we say I love you and give hugs and kisses, pray together out loud before meals and over booboos, and even sing the Doxology; normal that your dad and I talk about our days, tease and laugh and sing and dance, that we read so much, and listen to the radio in the car, instead of annoying children’s music to keep you assuaged.

I want it to be normal that if you disobey, you get in trouble. I want it to be normal that after you apologize, we make amends.

But you know what? All of these things take work. Even the ones that seem easy. They’re not. They take time and attention and consistency and, quite honestly, they wear me out.

A lot of the time.

Especially the discipline part.

But somehow I know that being deliberate is worth it, not taking the easy way out simply because it’s easy is worth it, making normal normal is worth it.

That’s what I wanted to tell you this week.

Even in your mundane life routines, girls, choose the harder option that’s better for the long run. It’s much too easy to fall into mindless habits, especially when you’re busy.

Remember how we use cloth napkins? We also normally wash dishes for big group gatherings—even potluck-sized gatherings. We use real plates and real silverware and real glasses and coffee mugs. And we don’t have a dishwasher.

But when I was buying groceries for your birthday party last weekend, I grabbed two packs of paper plates and a large pack of white paper napkins. Just in case we needed them, I thought. I set the plates out for the party and then left them out the rest of the weekend, since we had a house full of company to celebrate with us. Having paper products throughout the weekend made life a million times easier, it seemed, and even so, your grandmother washed dishes quite a few times to help out!

Still, here’s my point. Over the next two days of leftovers and takeout barbecue, all the plates got used. Both packs. And the paper napkins sitting on the table? Well, I restocked them twice, and then for the last few days, we’ve continued using them, even though the company is gone and it’s back to just the four of us at home. Because the napkins are on the table. That’s the only reason. Easy to grab.

I’ve been using them instead of the cloth napkins to wipe up the mushed banana, to catch the sweat from my glass, to wipe the marker off of your little whiteboard.

When you spilled water on the table yesterday and I grabbed the paper napkins to soak it up, I realized that even for me, with my love of cloth napkins and real dishes, and a closet of rags to be used for these exact purposes: It’s just too easy to grab the disposable thing, when the disposable thing is right there.

It’s harder to wash the dishes by hand than toss out the paper plates.

It’s harder to make the pizza instead of order the pizza. (Maybe not harder, actually, if children aren’t hanging off your pant legs. I wouldn’t know.)

It’s harder to invite people in to a usually messy home than meet at a restaurant, hardest yet to invite them in and treat it as normal, a non-special event.

It’s harder to provide creative activities for you, read books to you, cuddle with you and tickle you and play the ridiculously boring, run-in-circles, “Ploops and Pleeps” game you made up, than to just pull up Amazon and turn on an episode of Diego.

It’s harder to enforce discipline, to apologize, to forgive.

It’s so easy to do… the easy thing. The disposable thing. The fast, multi-tasking thing. The least amount of sacrifice thing. The squeeze the most out of every day thing.

But I hope that’s not your default, girls. Go for hard instead. Invite the friends for dinner.

Use the cloth napkins.

Love,

Your Momma