Numbers

Numbers are not my thing. Every time I bake, I have to ask Paul if 1/3 plus 1/3 equals 2/3.

He'll shake his head and say, "Were you adding the denominators again?"

I'll pretend to be very interested in the counter top, and squeak out an embarrassed, "Uh-huh." In my head, it makes sense every time. 1/3 + 1/3 equals 2/6, which rounds down to 1/2!

This is my secret shame, so secret that I am posting it on the Internet for mocking purposes. Enjoy!

While my practical applications of numbers are...lacking, I enjoy numbers as a concept. Like my grandmother, I get very excited when the digital clock reads certain things, such as 3:33. Ah, the symmetry! I also enjoy 1:23, because it is chronological. Ditto 4:56.

I find Paul's birthday 1-7-74 troubling because that 4 ruins the whole thing, being the only even number in a sea of odds. Mine--3-5-75--is much better. My brother's is also okay: 10-20-76, for everything in his birth date is divisible by two.

Both of my sons have messes of birth dates: 2-21-06 for Owen and 7-29-08 for Joel.

The only redeemable aspect of Owen's birthday (besides the fact that it is his birthday and I love him, blah blah blah...) is that 3x7=21 is my favorite of all the times tables. Just typing it feels so very satisfying.

21 is also a happy birthday for most Americans. I went out for lunchtime margaritas with my friend Sunshine, then attended my creative writing of poetry class.

Yes, I am just that badass.

Perhaps Owen's birthday is okay because it has the number 21 in it, even though it is otherwise an even/odd mess.

Joel's birthday was a missed opportunity. I was so tired of being pregnant that I was induced. Meaning: if I had allowed nature to take its course, I could have had a cooler date for my second born.

He was supposed to be born in early August, which was very exciting, because it was possible that his birthday would have been 8-8-08. The very idea warmed my nerdy little heart.

Alas, my aching back and surly temperament were stronger than my nerdy inclinations, and I jumped at the induction date. My only consolation is that 29 is a prime number.

However, I don't understand the whole concept of prime numbers, so this is an empty victory.

One more number story: we just bought new telephones, because our old phones were tools of the devil--cutting out, beeping loudly, going on mute for no logical reason. The other day, I was dialing a number to check my voice mail. Suddenly, the phone decided to beep loudly while the number 6 filled the entire screen. As in 666666666666666666666666. As in holy shit MARK OF THE BEAST. As in the film Maximum Overdrive, where all the household appliances become evil, slicing and dicing their hapless owners.

It didn't matter what I did. All I could do was stare at my demonic telephone, waiting for the sky to turn black and for the Four Horsemen to come tearing from the sky. It was quite chilling.

But then, I unplugged the phone and replugged it, thus performing a do-it-yourself exorcism. All was fine.

But, in the short moment, when my blood turned to ice water, and I was pondering my haunted phone, I couldn't help but note that 666 is divisible by both 2 and 3, and it is very pleasing, indeed.

I believe this is my nerdiest post yet! And it is exactly six hundred perfect words.

Longing

I know that things are off in my world if I have the desire to dye my hair a dramatic color or I miss Arizona. Today, I miss Arizona. Tucson, to be specific.

I was driving the boys home from the Sprayground, which is, as one would suspect, a playground with sprinklers. I think it's okay. Joel is partial to the chain-link fence. Owen, I imagine, will wish for his ashes to be scattered there ninety years from now.

Anyway, as I was driving home, the roads, as always, were surrounded on either side by a verdant phalanx of forest. Thick forest. Smothering forest. As I drove, I imagined the future, when the trees would grow over the man-made road and the vines would twist around the streetlights. Nature would claim what had been taken.

Just possibly, I was in a dark mood. But truly, the trees felt oppressive, claustrophobic. My Western soul needed some breathing space.

It needed big sky, and mountains, and saguaros. These are my forests.



August in Maryland is muggy. August in Tucson is unbearably hot, but it is also the monsoon season. The sky becomes dark. The clouds rumble, part, and pelt down violent, noisy rain. Sometimes, when God is feeling especially show-offy, the heavens preen and pose like this:



The air smells fresh, like creosote and new beginnings.

This, this, is what I miss.

Book Nests

My mother loves digging out this old chestnut: "When you were a little girl, you would ask me: 'How many book trip is this?' when we would run errands."

Mom tells this story because it confirms that I am a genius. That is, the kind of genius that took geometry several times and failed her learner's permit test. That kind.

I know I'm not a genius, but my mom's memory is true: I devoured books as a child. I would bring a stack of books when we would run errands, and happily read the tedium away. I always begged my mother to let me sit in the car while she made her purchases, but she never allowed it. For some reason, she didn't want to be the mother that cooked her daughter in the Safeway parking lot. With the Arizona summer temperatures soaring around 110 most days, this was a very real possibility.

I don't remember much about my early toddler years, but I do remember the moment when the letters became words and meaning. It was as if I had finally untangled a stubborn knot. While my mother was driving on the freeway, I loved to read the exit stops: "Greenway, Deer Valley Road, Thunderbird." My parents would clap and smile, and I felt so very capable and big.

One errand that I never resented was the weekly trip to the library. My mom, brother, and I would come in with our tote bags and library cards, and escape into the welcoming hug of the library. We would wander without any time restraint or purpose, selecting new friends and taking them home for the week. I remember loving the "Mr." books--as in Mr. Tickle, Mr. Happy, Mr. Silly. Something about those simple cartoons and stories made me smile.

My brother loved Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. He read it so often, in a variety of locations, that it became as tattered and worn as a beloved security blanket. My mother asked the librarian if she could buy a new one, and the librarian smiled and said, "A book this loved deserves to stay with Tommy. Take it." I can't imagine, in a world of computer cataloging, that such kindness could happen today.

The librarians knew us as "Nancy" and "Tommy," and we knew their names as well. We carried our bulging bags to check-out, said our goodbyes, and left the library like you leave the home of a relative--with no great sadness, because we knew that we would be back, and we would always be welcome.

This is why it brings me so much joy to take Owen and Joel to our library. Owen is like Norm from Cheers. Everybody, indeed, knows his name. We'll walk up to the counter, and Miss Barbara will ask me when I'm headed back to story time, while Miss Cynthia tickles Joel under the chin. Another librarian, Miss Wears Gloves All the Time, cried out today, "Is that OWEN?" the way others would cry out, "Is that Elvis?" She immediately showered him with stickers and bookmarks, while Owen took it all in stride. After all, this happens every week.

I'll make my selections, and then we'll get to press the magic buttons and ascend the magic elevator to the magic children's section on the second floor. There, I'll release both of the boys to the toddler section, complete with the life-sized sailboat and the the magic cube of wonder and awesomeness. Did I mention that magic is involved?

Today, Joel was not having the best of days. He was reacting to his vaccinations on Tuesday, and was clingy and whiny. I have bones that are more flexible than this child. He grumped his way through the morning with nary a smile or giggle. That is, until we got to the library. Then, all bets were off.

He ran, in his drunken-toddler fashion to the cube, and tackled it with alarming gusto. He laughed out loud and attempted to remove the hair from an unsuspecting toddler. He spun in circles until he collapsed into a heap. Vaccinations? What vaccinations?

Owen, meanwhile, was amassing all of the bean bags and soft pillows to make a nest by a glass wall, where he read books to himself. As the boys did their thing, I browsed the books, looking for new treasures to share with them, when we made our own book nests at home, later in the day.

Like National Parks, libraries are such giving institutions. You get knowledge, pleasure, relaxation, friendship, and community all under one roof. Your only expectation is to be kind to the books, leaving only footprints, and taking only pictures.

I choose to believe that all of my tax dollars fund National Parks, libraries, and medical research. After all, I'm a genius; I'm always right.

Don't be Mad, Miss Mommy

I just put Owen back to bed for his nap. He was doing his usual bull-in-a-china-shop routine in the bathroom, a long, elaborate, stalling ritual. He'll expel the poo-poo saved precisely for this purpose, after removing every stitch of clothing. He'll put copious amounts of hand sanitizer all over his upper torso, and then decide to do a jig in the bathtub.

I'll go upstairs, my face an angry line, and every day, he'll say the same thing: "Hi Mommy. Please don't be mad." He says this because it makes me feel like Mommy Dearest, all crazed eyes, cold cream and a wire hanger beating stick. Yes, he's that good. He has learned how to reduce his mother to a guilty heap before entering preschool.

Today, deciding to do the extended stall, Owen declared that he must wear pajamas to take his nap. He wanted to wear doggy pajamas with feet, to be precise. And only those. All other pajamas might as well have been covered with feces, in his mind. I wasn't going to have this fight, so we put them on.

Owen's body was a question mark, for the fabric was so snug that he couldn't stand straight. The sleeves ended around his elbows. A quick glance at the tag confirmed my suspicions, "Honey, you're wearing Joel's pajamas."

Owen eyed me suspiciously, and said, "Well, I like them. Don't take them off, Mommy."

"But honey, you can't stand up." I could easily see him splitting the seam, like those world-class swimmers in their ultra-tight racing suits.

"I like them," he repeated. "No, Mommy, no." He shook his finger at me as he backed away slowly, towards his bed. As if I would tackle him or something.

"Okay, then. Go to sleep. Now."

"Don't be mad, Miss Mommy. Goodnight!" He calls me "Miss Mommy" because I told him he was not allowed to call me Miss Nancy, like his friends. This is our compromise. Or, perhaps he calls me by a formal title because he lives in such fear of my wrath.

Based on the way I'm twisted around his finger, I'm guessing not.

***
Side note: My paranoid blog-tracking software says that NOBODY is visiting this blog site. If you have been visiting/reading the blog, please leave a brief comment or email so I can see if it's a software problem or a bad writing problem. Thanks!

Labor

Somewhere in between the time Owen dumped handfuls of sawdust onto the just-painted porch and the moment that he decided to paint his own foot, I realized that there was something harder than labor.

Home improvement with a toddler.

We had promised Owen that he would get to help paint the playhouse. I had these crazy ideals about Owen having a sense of ownership as a result. Owen, meanwhile, had a different goal: to paint every surface bright blue. We compromised somewhere in the middle.

At first, I did some prep work. And yes, looking at these pictures, it is clear that I am painting the walls white, not blue. We're priming here. All the nonsense I'm about to describe happened TWICE.



Once Owen joined the mix, my heart rate elevated like James Brown's on his third encore. When Owen paints, there's no room for niceties such as wiping excess paint off the brush, painting with the grain, or keeping dirt and pine cones out of the paint can. Instead of considering drips to be unsightly, Owen finds the dripping and splattering to be the best part. And, splatter he did: on the grass, the dirt, and the pressure-treated deck.

I truly could not stand looking at him. As he dipped his paintbrush into the can, moving past the brush, all the way to the tip of the handle, he asked, "Mommy, what's that noise?"

"Oh, it's just me, honey, grinding my teeth to nubs."

I finally had to give myself a kick in the ass. Painting the playhouse was an opportunity for Owen to play. And learn. If this playhouse is used correctly, it will be full of toys, and marks, and dings, and splatters, and all the blessed detritus of a child's imagination.

I needed to let go and allow Owen his fun. I also needed my mother to come out and help me. Those two things done, we accomplished our task:




And whenever Owen looks at this, I hope he remembers his mother's labor: allowing him, through an extreme act of will, all the messy, joyous fun he deserves:

Symmetry

There's this:



And this:



Not to mention this:



Or this:




Every so often, a similarity will strike and capture your breath. You'll see the shadow of the baby you once had in the baby you have now. You'll find yourself transported through time, once again the mother of your first child. The weather, or the noises, or the passage of time will strike you like a wet towel, and you'll return to the present. You'll realize that this baby is your second child, equally wonderful, but not the ghost baby of your memory.

You'll correct yourself when you call this baby by the wrong name, because the memories of the past are so sweet that just getting the words out is an achievement in itself.

You'll work hard to recreate this symmetry when you can--posing children in the same places, or in the same outfits, but it never matches the perfect, frightening serendipity of when you see your younger child do exactly what your older child did. At that moment, as if by magic, you will go back in time.

Fireflies

The continued successes of Ryan Seacrest, Kim Kardashian, and Kendra Wilkinson prove to me that God indeed works in mysterious ways. Not only does He give careers to people who are known primarily for their tanning abilities, God also shows me, again and again, that He's looking out for me.

Some background: when Paul and I were shopping for a church, shortly after Owen was born, we attended several large churches that were especially geared towards young families. They were flashy and fun and had strong youth programs. They were really quite nice.

Yet, we just weren't feeling them. They felt too large, too impersonal, and a little too sanitized. One church in particular strongly encouraged the children to attend the "kids' church" while the adults worshiped sans the kiddos. By "strongly," I mean that an usher told me at least FOUR times that there was a nursery for my (then THREE WEEK OLD) baby.

As you know, newborn babies that sleep twenty-two hours a day are not distracting. Spontaneous lactation accidents are, on the other hand, very distracting. Not wishing to "go with the flow," possibly flooding the sanctuary with my prodigious supply, I told the usher, as nicely as I could, to step off.

We continued to go church-hunting, until we found a nice, justice-focused church that focused more on loving other people and less on picking fights or throwing stones.

But you know what really got me? The children. During services, babies bounced on their parents' knees. Toddlers snacked on crackers. Schoolchildren and teenagers sat with their parents. All were welcome.

Yes, the sermon was occasionally interrupted with a babble or a cry. And while there were probably people in the church that preferred less noise, they kept their feelings to themselves.

It felt like home, probably because it was. All my life, I sat in church with my parents. As a toddler, I probably entertained myself with books. Once I was a schoolchild, I was expected to stand up and sit down at the appropriate times, sing, and generally behave myself. We were rewarded with lunch out if we did so, and time in our rooms if we couldn't keep it together.

In middle school, I remember being bored most of the time in church. When my brother and I realized it was a service with communion, or, Lord Help Us, a baptism, we would sigh and slump in our pews. We understood all too well the scene from The Simpsons, when Bart and Lisa run home after church, and cry, "This is the best part of the week, because this is the farthest point from having to go to more church." (Forgive me: I paraphrase).

We came around some in high school, and, as loyal readers know, I remain a fan of church. My brother will go when visiting my parents, to be polite, but I think there's still a bit of Bart Simpson in him.

And I must admit, I can be a bit conflicted myself. My church works for me, but I'll be the first to concede it's not razzle-dazzle. I worry that the lack of lazer beams, drums, fireworks, or interpretative dancing will cause my boys to suffer the same swells of overwhelming boredom.

I don't care if they are a little bored. At times, I'm sure, they will be bored with EXTREME PREJUDICE. That's just life. It doesn't matter where I take them or what they do: boredom happens.

My fear, however, is that they will be so bored that they will grow to hate church.

Yet, something has happened over the past three weeks that suggests that God has been leading us to the right place all along:

Owen sat through an entire church service. Start to finish. For the third Sunday in a row. In the past, he has spent most, if not all, of his time in the nursery. To me, this sitting still business is no less miraculous than manna from heaven or water to wine (one of my favorite miracles).

During the church hour, Owen will be a snugly-love. He will rest his head on my shoulder, hold my hand gently, or curl up close like a Joey in its pouch. He'll whisper, "I love you," and let me smell his hair as much as I like. I wish I could freeze this moment, for my insides glow as intensely as summer fireflies.

This is why I needed to listen to God's voice as we were finding the right church. He knew all along that my boys will hunger for love, for acceptance, for peace, and for still, sacred moments. As they sit in the pew, they will learn that it's okay to be bored, and that it is also okay to just sit.

Simply giving time is an act of worship.

And, if snuggling with your mother passes the time, it is also a supreme act of grace.