daughters

The Thirty-Seventh Letter: Generations of Women

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

Yesterday, as I picked up a frowning, teary, and inexplicably needy just-turned-two year old, I heard myself asking her, What’s the problem? The way I said it was comforting, not accusing, a question more along the lines of, How can I help?

As baby girl leaned her face into my neck, pulling herself tight against me, I asked again without thinking about it: What’s the problem?

Then something surprising happened.

In my head, I heard the question repeat in my maternal grandmother’s voice. Clear as day. As if I’d heard it a million times before, though I don’t have any distinct memories of her saying it.

And then, as I listened to the reverberations of her imagined voice, I heard my mom’s voice saying it, too. What’s the problem?

I listened more, still holding baby girl, who had wrapped her legs around my waist, and the two voices–my grandmother’s, my mom’s–became indistinguishable.

Because they’re nearly the same voice.

Sometimes when I’m on the phone with my mom, I hear in my mom’s voice the distinct intonation that was my grandmother’s. Actually, I hear it most clearly when I listen to her speaking to you, probably because what I’m remembering is the way my grandmother spoke to me.

I remember once as a teenager listening to my mom and her three sisters visit during a holiday gathering. They all had the exact same laugh, it seemed to me, and even twenty years ago, I recognized in it my grandmother’s laughter. Grandma was still alive then.

Sometimes, when I answer the phone, your dad says to me, “You sounded just like your mom.”

Sometimes, when I answer the phone, I myself can hear her voice come out of my mouth.

We named the eldest’s first babydoll “Elsie” because my mom’s first dolly was “Elsie” when she was a little girl. We have a photograph of my mom and her Elsie back in the 1950s. It’s amazing to me that Mom’s bright eyes and round cheeks foreshadow yours so strikingly, girls.

So much of what I think of as “me” as a child, I see in you. And the older I get, the more I realize much of the me part of me is really my mom. And that part of her has a lot to do with her mom.

Mother’s Day was Sunday. Yesterday was my mom’s birthday.

A few years ago, one of my dad’s sisters came to visit, a woman who of course had known my mother well when Mom was my age. They’d sat in many a church pew next to one another. While in town, Aunt Diana went to church with us, and later she told me that sitting next to me in the pew was like sitting next to a young Bonnie. She said my mannerisms were the same, the way I sat, the way I crossed my legs. Those details were just like my mom.

Nobody had ever mentioned those likenesses to me before.

Last weekend, I put a new pair of stretchy jeans on and stood before our full-length mirror, something I don’t do very often. I saw my mom looking back at me. I’m a lot taller than Mom, but it was uncanny. In fact, I came down the stairs and told your dad, “I look just like my mom.”

Girls, you and I come from strong women. Women of courage.

My grandma died before you were born, and because it was important to me that the eldest carry her name, I hear myself saying Grandma’s name all day long, day in and day out. And Grandma’s voice echoes to me each time I see you print those five letters on your artwork. You are so proud of being able to write your name.

In those early, hazy days of being a mom, when I felt like I was sinking rather than treading water in the ocean of parenthood, one of the few things that brought me comfort when rocking you or nursing you or bouncing you on the yoga ball was doing a very non-Protestant thing.

I talked to my grandmother about being a mom. My grandmother who was deceased.

I asked her to pray for me.

She had six kids, and the first three were really close together. I thought she must have known a thing or two about how I felt, exhausted, hormonal, focusing on getting through the minutes because the day as a whole was too overwhelming.

My mom was her firstborn. My first name is Grandma’s middle name.

I figured if Grandma could get through this thing called motherhood and end up the sane woman I knew her to be when I was a child, she could help me get through it, too.

And she did.

My mom tells me that the first time I crawled, it was because she was catering a meal at a church and was busy in the church’s kitchen. Mom had left me down the hall in the nursery, and she could hear that I was crying, but she couldn’t stop what she was doing and come to me. In a little while, here I came, still crying, but crawling out to find her.

I love that story.

Maybe the ending goes something like this:

Mom sees me crawling and crying, my face red and frustrated, my bottom lip sticking out the way both of you do when you’re sad. She washes her hands and walks over to me, and I pull myself up on her legs to stand. She picks me up. I lean my head on her shoulder, pull my body in tight, and wrap my legs around her waist. She rubs my back and asks me, her baby girl, “What’s the problem?“

And maybe she hears her mother’s voice.

Love,

Your Momma

 

The Thirty-Fifth Letter: Metaphors & Daily Life

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

We purchased a vintage Sears Kenmore sewing machine at a yardsale before the eldest was born. It was missing a piece, a screw, something minor that enabled it to fold down into its sewing table. It had a needle though, and it seemed to work when we plugged it in, and yet until this week I had never threaded the bobbin. This might be a metaphor.

Our memorial Easter lilies and tulips brought home from church have been knocked over repeatedly, sometimes multiple times a day, petals blown off during high wind warnings, leaving bald stamens full of pathos. We’ve brought them inside for the myriad freezes since that exceptionally warm Easter morning a few weeks ago. Then they go back out onto the porch steps, looking forlorn. Everything feels like a metaphor.

The thing is, the dailiness of daily life often feels hard, even knowing that others have it harder. Friends with chronic illness. Friends mourning spouses. Friends with crumbling marriages. Friends with infertility.

Meanwhile, my daily life is sunshine and seeds explained to a preschooler. Death and heaven and Jesus and God in a 3-year-old’s terms; a toddler alongside me in the pew at a funeral.

Daily life is sunshine transforming the smell your scalps from baby shampoo into wood chips. I don’t know why, but it’s true for both of you. You smell like wood chips, like bark mulch, deep in your hair, when you’ve been outside. We don’t have wood chips in our yard.

Daily life is novels read with a 30-pound toddler on my lap drinking milk, playing with my phone, using a wet wipe to swab the book down.

It’s reading and painting rather than writing, most of the time, but when I do write, it’s laying in the grass alongside both of you, half of my note pages covered in preliterate scribbles. I always bring two extra pens outside. My writing these days is jotted notes and ideas rather than poems or stories, reserving brilliance for some other day, some other season, some other unimaginable-for-now life.

Daily life is hot jeans in the sunshine, and barefeet sensing the cold mud through the warm, early-spring grass. Also perhaps a metaphor.

Daily life is squeezing freelance work, which is kind of drudgery, and creative work, which is not, into two mornings a week and an hour in the afternoon. The schedule doesn’t work well, dissatisfies and exhausts me, without pointing to a better solution for today. For this week. This month, this year.

I can sing the theme songs for Dinosaur Train, Doc McStuffins, Daniel Tiger, and Dora the Explorer. This is not a metaphor.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are. When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, ‘Here, I guess, since this is where I am‘” (An Altar in the World, 56).

Looking down at my feet, I see chipping toenail polish, and I see, well, I guess I see hope. I see hope in the daily, when I’m not too exhausted and worn down by it.

You sometimes play together these days, for example, sometimes keep out of my office while I’m trying to squeeze a little more work in the day, sometimes keep out of the kitchen, off my legs, sometimes don’t tug on my clothing or put items in my back pockets for safe keeping.

There is hope in these small victories, these small glimpses of independence.

There is also hope when you do crawl up onto my lap again, require a nose-wipe or new ponytail or snack, ask another question that cannot be answered, want me to read another book, or even the same book, again and again.

Yes, most days, there is hope and beauty. Most days I love something, even if it is simply that the day has ended and you are asleep.

I do love this whole sunshine, hot jeans, and mud-cold toes combination, which I would experience less, without you itching to be in the yard.

I love the wood-chip smelling hair, the goofy songs the preschooler sings while she swings, that the toddler asks for “Swing Low” to be sung before bed.

I love that you eat lentils and tofu as well as chicken nuggets, that the preschooler’s face is sprinkled with freckles, like mine.

I love that the toddler wants to cuddle even when I’m drenched in sweat, that you both cheer me on–“Go, Momma, Go! Go, Momma, Go!”–when I run with the stroller.

And I love that there is still a me here, beneath this mom-ness. A lover of a good story, a hot cup of tea. I still love new pens and fresh, college-ruled paper, and the art aisle at Walmart, though I still despise Walmart. I love big, blank canvases, country music in the car, toe-nail polish, and big earrings. I love eye-liner, Post-It notes, to-do lists, and flip-flops. I love cutting things out of magazines and unbaked cookie dough. I like singing and laughing and flannel sheets under down comforters. I myself love a good snuggle.

The daily life is this, all of this.

And most days, I love its dailiness.

Love,

Your Momma

The Thirty-Fourth Letter: Where, O Death?

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

We live a few blocks away from a funeral home, so I’m reminded every other day or so of the reality of death and suffering. On long walks, we pass by cars full of mourners, with you two happily in the stroller eating your snack, oblivious to what’s going on. On our way to head out to eat for dinner, on the way to Lowe’s for a quick construction run, on my way to reading group, heading to a playdate, picking up your dad from work when it’s raining: those who have experienced recent loss are nearly always present. I drove by black-clad mourners on my way to get a soy latte this morning.

I have always found this reminder of death in the midst of life helpful. It’s a proverbial wake-up call each time, that whatever is on my mind or burdening me at the moment is fleeting and that there is real suffering all around me.

I love our church’s Easter tradition of carrying lilies down the center aisle in memory of loved ones who have passed away the previous year. The preschooler carried one this year, in memory of my grandfather who died on Christmas Eve. The plant swayed as she walked, but she made it safely to the altar.

As the lilies pile up in the front, filling up the absence left when the altar is stripped at the end of the Good Friday service, our congregation stands and sings “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” I can never sing the song, of course, because as I watch my friends carrying down lilies–or those years I’ve carried them down myself–I think of all the loss we’ve experienced as a community. I think of all the meals we’ve delivered. All the prayers we’ve prayed.

My throat catches, and I don’t sing. Our loved ones die, and we feel so much pain.

The lyrics to many of the great Easter hymns, including “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” have a line or two echoing the sentiment of 1 Corinthians 15:55: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (sometimes the King James Version just says it best).

I counted at least three references to that verse in the songs we sang Sunday morning. And, I’ll confess, it kind of annoyed me each time.

A friend of mine who lives many states away texted me an update about her dad, who is having significant health problems and was in ICU. She was travelling back from visiting with him, and she concluded with, “I’m exhausted and sad. But He is risen, so there’s that.”

So there’s that.

Where, O Death, is now thy sting?

One of my strong and beautiful friends lost her husband suddenly last year. She carried a lily down the aisle at church.

Where, O Death, is now thy sting?

A vibrant 26-year-old mother in our town was diagnosed with two forms of terminal cancer this week. She was given three to six months to live.

Where, O Death, is now thy sting?

I can tell you where. It’s right here.

Right.

Here.

People are hurting all around us, girls. It is hard to live in this world and know pain and love people who know pain. And we get numb to these words of Scripture–O death, where is thy sting?–and it kind of makes us, okay, me, mad. Or sad. Or frustrated. Or helpless.

All of it.

Sometimes I think we sing Where, O Death, is now thy sting? followed by Alleluia (adding a little salt in the wound) without remembering that many among us don’t feel encouraged by the creeds. And I’m talking about those of us who do have faith in eternal life, who do sincerely believe that eternal life brings relief from suffering. We know it intellectually, and we might even know it on a deeper level, but it doesn’t always ring true to experience.

What we feel is the very real sting of death.

The very real sting of our loved ones being diagnosed with cancer. Of babies dying. Of marriages crumbling.

I have faith, girls. Most days, I have it in spades. But I have faith alongside a healthy dose of reality, which is that life in this world hurts a lot of the time, and I don’t want to pretend that’s not the case.

I am careful when I write condolence cards because it’s too easy to be trite.

Of course, Easter reminds us that death does not get the last word. I appreciate that message. But I think we need to be careful where we go from there.

Easter does not tell us that we won’t feel the very real pain of losing loved ones in this life.

We can believe and have hope in eternal life and in the good God whose own creation sings praises, while we also say, no, I’m sorry, there is a sting of death.

Part of me hopes that you feel the sting of death a lot, girls. Because that means you’re really living in the world and loving people.

And I hope when you see full parking lots at funeral homes, you are able to pause and reflect on the death and suffering that coexist with your own lives, that trump your own annoyances and frustrations and pride and self-centeredness.

But I also hope that when you see Easter lilies, you remember why we carry them down the aisle on Easter morning. I hope you remember this little nugget of the truth of Easter that sometimes gets buried: even when we’re sad and exhausted, He is risen.

Because there’s that.

Love,

Your Momma

 

The Twenty-Fifth Letter: Boom Boxes & What I Can’t Imagine

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

One of your lift-the-flap children’s books features a boom box hidden behind two cabinet doors. I honestly don’t know why. The book is nonsensical: under the pillow flap is a banana, for example. It’s silly.

When we lift those flaps to reveal the boom box, I’m never quite sure what to say. “There’s the boom box…radio…music-playing thing,” I trail off.

You don’t know what a boom box is. Obviously.

Though we are hipster enough to play music on a record player occasionally, we primarily stream it on our “devices.”

Back in the 90s, I had a boom box in my bedroom as a teenager. It had a double cassette player and a CD player. I used it to make mix tapes for your dad when we dated in college.

Believe it or not, our 1999 Volvo station wagon has a working cassette player in it. That feels comforting to me. We still have those mix tapes.

My point is this: I’m not very old.

This was not very long ago.

I wrote a poem once about saving a set of encyclopedias for you, despite their obsolescence. Because I loved encyclopedias growing up, loved their pictures, loved the feeling of research. I still do.

In seventh grade, we learned how to write a research paper. It involved reference books and card catalogs and hand-written notecards.

We couldn’t even imagine a world of the Internet.

This was not very long ago.

I was the first of my friends to have a cell phone in high school, and all it did was make calls. I remember my dad’s first car phone, with a huge bag of cords inside on the floor and a giant magnetic antennae outside.

We couldn’t even imagine a world of tweeting and texting, weather apps and Amazon video, Facetiming and asking Siri how to roast pumpkin seeds–all on our phones.

This was not very long ago.

My high school graduation present was a 35 mm camera.

The learn-to-type games we played as kids came on floppy disks. The actual bendy kind.

I was incredulous that wi-fi was a thing when I first heard about it, was confused when USB drives came around, and thought “Twitter” was one of the lamest words I’d ever heard.

This was not very long ago.

It’s not like I lived through the transition to automobiles from the horse-drawn carriage, girls. Nothing that drastic.

Except maybe more drastic.

Because the world has gotten so much smaller in the last thirty years. And also bigger.

Our lives are more public and we’re also more capable of keeping our real selves hidden. We’ve gotten more vulnerable and also more equipped to rally and proclaim. We’ve gotten stronger voices and also more polarizing discourse. We’ve come to expect a diversity of choices and are also more dependent on a global economy. We have so much knowledge at our fingertips and also learn about news instantaneously, errors in reporting and all.

It’s inspiring and frightening, these changes.

I can’t imagine the next thirty years. How can I?

I can’t imagine what life will be like for you. How can I?

In the 1990s, a boom box was pretty amazing.

As I type this, the two of you are watching a PBS show on the iPad about dinosaurs. (For the record, even the dinosaur names have changed since I was a child.) The toddler already knows how to turn off the iPad and begins to swipe the screen. You know which icon gets you to look at pictures, know that the little triangle in the middle of a screen means that a movie can play if you press it, know that talking to faraway grandparents means you get to see them. You even pretend to “text” with your phone toys.

What will life be like for you, girls?

I wonder about it, and I’ll be honest:

It frightens me sometimes.

It gives me hope sometimes.

Sometimes even at the same time.

But I try to focus on the hope part.

You are watching PBS, after all, not princesses. That’s hopeful.

Love,

Your Momma

 

The Twenty-Fourth Letter: Gratitude and a Full Life

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

Life has been full.

I don’t like the word “busy.” Everyone is busy. Busy is overcommitted, flustered, multitasking, doing, and going. Busy is the struggle to find time that doesn’t seem to be there.

Full is in making time.

Making time for a full life is staying in bed to cuddle with a sweaty child who arrived in the wee hours of the morning instead of rising early to write my morning pages.

A full life is playing pingpong while a preschooler circumnavigates the table. It’s cinnamon sugar cookies for a trivia night fundraiser, campfires and s’mores on Saturday night, Sunday morning bran muffins, and a Mary Kay open house.

A full life is hot black tea with milk and sugar every morning, children who take ages to finish dinner, dealing with congestion at 4 am…getting another cup of water, dosing Benadryl, falling asleep on the couch with a no-longer-lap-sized baby breathing heavily through the timer light kicking on at 5 am. It is a de-scaled humidifier, abhorring Wal-Mart but going there anyway, and eating lunch at Chick-fil-A so often the three-year-old says “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome.”

A full life is a child who sings “Through many dangers, toils, and snares…” as well as “The doc is in, and she’ll fix you up…,” who asks beautiful questions about Jesus being in her belly, and says spontaneously, “All of the days I love you, Mom.” A full life is a baby who shrieks “Yay!” when I tell her that Daddy is on the way home, who “counts” for Hide-and-Seek like this: “Nine…Nine…Nine…Nine…”

A full life is leading a women’s Bible study, meat-heavy Wednesday night dinners at church though we’re primarily vegetarian at home, looking forward to Advent, gifting spray-painted mason jars.

A full life is a preschooler who says her mom’s job is “artist.”

A full life is a 12-week Artists Way class winding down, writing an Advent devotional, a poem about cardamom, getting inspired at the Peddlers Mall.

A full life is signing up to bring Crockpot macaroni and cheese to the preschool Thanksgiving feast, a child who remembers her Sunday school lesson about the Ten Commandments, who out of the blue said “Saul was good at being good” (quoting her children’s Bible), who continues to think that Goliath is the best Bible story, who can write her name and spell her sister’s name.

A full life is taking the time to go to the library, to spell out words and practice letters, to collect leaves until every window and arch is covered with construction paper leaf flags. A full life is a monthly reading group at Panera, buying fundraiser items from the neighbor kids, loving on Lulu-the-Cat, our neighbors’ pet who lives in our yard and prefers our porch to hers. A full life is scarves and gloves and snotty noses outside but going outside anyway. A full life is too dark at 6 pm to go running on uneven sidewalks covered with leaves.

A full life is the large tupperware on the toddler’s head, a homemade grape costume and comments about Fruit of the Loom, and a list of gratitude for November.

A full life is being grateful for the simple things that make up a full life.

A full life is a grateful life, girls.

A full life is gratitude.

A full life is grace.

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