Her own drummer

Dos dressed herself this morning.

I tried to tell her that her shirt didn't exactly match the pants.

"But Mom," she said, "they both have pink on them."

I tried to tell her that the patterns didn't match.

"No, look," she said. "The pants have flowers. The shirt haves flowers. They totally do match."

I tried to tell her that her outfit looked "busy."

Blank stare.

I told her that if you have a lot of decoration on your shirt, it's good to have plain pants. Or if you have a lot of decoration on your pants, it's good to have a plain shirt.

She rolled her eyes and sighed, obviously weary of explaining things to me.

"Mom," she said. "This is fashion. You just don't know it."

So we clipped an orange and yellow and pink curly bow in her hair, rounded up her red plastic Lightning McQueen shoes, and off we went to school.


~RCH~

...And in much cuter news:

I think Tres has an official First Word! I could be wrong; she may only say it over and over and over because the sound gets a consistent response, and not because she knows what it means, but oh well.

So, are you ready for it? Tres's first word appears to be [drum roll, please]...

"Hi!"

She says it to everyone. Repeatedly. With a big friendly smile on, so it must be her intention to say hello, right?

Sure.

I once guessed that, if they had to choose a profession right then and there in baby / toddlerhood, Uno would grow up to be a politician (that would still suit her) and Dos would become a podiatrist (eh, her love of stethoscopes and shoes has waned). Playing the same game for Tres, I'd say she's destined to be a late night talk show host. She is, as I said, super friendly -- and she gets chattier the later it gets. It's nearly midnight now and, aside from a break here and there to chew on USB cords, she's babblier than a brook in springtime.

What a sweet baby, that girl.


~RCH~

State of Mind

Life isn't one thing after another; it's the same damn thing over and over.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I don't know why (not true; more on that later) but I continue to let a particular incident sniggle at me. I continue to be hurt by the fact that someone I don't know and have never met finds me ridiculous -- and not in a charming, "Oh, isn't she funny! What a great sense of humor!" kind of way. No, she finds me worthy of ridicule. That stings a little more than simple dislike, for some reason.

Her opinion shouldn't matter to me. We've never met and likely never will. I couldn't pick her out of a lineup. I don't admire her or aspire to be like her in any way (which is nothing personal; aside from her remarks about me and the name of the street she lives on, I know next to nothing about her). She holds no influence with people I care about.

But still. Ouch.

Every time I think about it (embarrassingly, stupidly often) I feel freshly humiliated. I dredge up old insecurities that have lain dormant since my early 20s. I fall into bad habits and a spiral of negative mental chatter. Add a tragedy to get my morbid emotions stewing and I worry I'm on my way to being depressed.

I'm on the lookout because I've been there before, and it isn't pretty. It isn't tragically romantic; it isn't lying in bed all day in a silk robe while the world goes on around you; it isn't waiting with a heavy heart for some doe-eyed lover to save you from your sadness. Clinical depression is the ugly cry and irrational outbursts; it is raw and angry and mean; it is days without food; it is an incessant prayer for annihilation. Nearly everyone leaves you, and you push away those who don't with whatever force you can muster until you are completely alone.

I'm not there, don't worry. Not even a little bit. But the fact that I've let an incident so small completely overtake my interior life concerns me. I've been through this before (which means I'm vulnerable to relapse). I know that it can begin as small as this and snowball if I'm not vigilant.

I didn't used to be so thin skinned. I felt very brittle after my first (let's hope only) bout of depression -- like a shattered ceramic vase put back together with scotch tape -- but when I came back to myself, I came back awesome: Confident and strong (and still a little neurotic, because hey, spiders really are gross and potentially life-threatening, and the phone really is the worst of modern inventions -- ask anyone in my family). Quirks aside, I was independent and adventurous and I had the courage of my convictions; I no longer cared what anybody else thought. I rocked the house.

What changed? Honestly, motherhood. (Is that awful to admit? It is, isn't it?)

I was a good mom of one: I doted; I cooed; I beamed. Every moment was a learning opportunity seized. Someone told me that, through motherhood, I had "blossomed" -- and while that sounded really incredibly cheesy even at the time, I took the compliment to heart. I believed it. I thought, "Wow, so this is what I was meant for!" I wanted more, more, more! A whole fun brood of closely spaced kids, just like the family I had grown up in.

And then we had Dos. She and Uno are precisely 18 months and 2 weeks apart, which didn't seem too awfully close to me at the time. My mom had the first three of her eight children in slightly less than three years (Irish Triplets!) and she made it seem absolutely effortless. She and I are a lot alike, I thought, so why wouldn't I excel at this mothering business like she had? But I found out the hard way that I am not my mother.

The transition from one to two -- the sleep deprivation, the delicate negotiation of simultaneous needs, the isolation, the hormones that hadn't quite settled after the first pregnancy ramping up, then dropping again -- overwhelmed me. My nerves frayed until they were completely exposed. I was tightrope walking on barbed wire. As the girls got older and more independent, that feeling faded ... but I've never regained the confidence I had from my mid 20s on, the confidence I had when it was just me and Uno. I am not a puddle of maternal goo. I am not an energetic guide on the learning highway of life. I am not the mother I had, nor the one I wanted to be.

It doesn't help that Uno has entered that charming phase in which every discipline or simple request is met with a stomp and a squeal: "You're the worst mother EVER! Daddy is much more nicer than you!" I know she doesn't mean it. I know it's just a stage she'll pass through on her way to other, more exciting outbursts, lol. I remember saying similar things to my own mom at that age, and we're about as close as can be.

But still. Ouch.

Uno's fits sniggle at my deepest fears. Random Lady Who Doesn't Like Me exacerbates the problem. I've already come to terms with the fact that I am not a unique and special butterfly -- my life is a total cliché (which amuses more than bothers me) and my talents, while I have and enjoy them, will never rise much above pleasant mediocrity. That's fine, because I was meant for something bigger: The noble job of motherhood!

...Problem is, I'm not very good at it, this most important of important jobs. If I'm not a very good mother, I must not be a very good person and thus everything Random Lady says must be true and certainly what Uno says must be because she's down here in the trenches with me, she sees me how I really am when nobody else is around, and slowly the mental chatter escalates and the onion peels and my proverbial skin gets thinner and thinner until....

And this is where I have to put my foot down. I have responsibilities. I can't do this again.

*Sigh.*

I suppose I'm just asking for criticism with posts so confessional, with such (let's be honest) patently ridiculous idiosyncrasies celebrated as if they were cute.... I shouldn't be surprised when strangers think I'm weird.

But in any case, I need to stop caring.


~RCH~

It's hard to be Dos

Dos came to me, wailing and sobbing.

"Mom! Uno punched me in the tummy!"

"Are you okay?" I asked her. "What happened?"

"She PUNCHED ME in the TUMMY I said!"

"No, I mean why were you guys fighting? What happened right before she punched you?"

:: insert sobs here and an unintelligible whiny explanation ::

"You have to calm down and speak slowly," I told her.

"I said, we were watching PBS Kids and I know Super Wide was coming on next but she said it wasn't but I knew it was so I kicked her in the face."

*Sigh!* So much for Dos being the innocent victim here. (And now I'm wondering, was karate really the right extracurricular for these two...? Yeeps.)


~RCH~

Obit

I attended the funeral alone yesterday; my wonderful sister Mary volunteered to take a day off from work and drive the 100+ miles up here to watch my girls for me.

After much prayer and discussion with anyone who would listen, I decided that -- now that I had childcare options -- I would bring Uno if she wanted to come, and leave the other two at home. We talked some more about what a funeral is, what would go on, and she asked me if we could bring snacks. I said no, probably not; a 5yo ought to be able to last an hour or two without a Ziploc bag full of Cheerios and Cheez-Its. Uno decided she'd rather stay at home with Mary and play the Wii.

That was fine. I'm sure she and Dos would both have been okay had they attended (and if I'd agreed to bring snacks, coloring books, and crayons, like we do for church each week), but I wouldn't have been fully present to celebrate and mourn my friend because I would have worried about the girls the entire time. It was nice to be able to focus.

In any case I'm so grateful to Mary, who saw a need and jumped on the chance to serve. My parents were also trying to figure out a way to come up and help -- also completely unasked for -- but Mary beat them to it. I've got the best family ever.

The funeral was difficult. I started crying right as I walked in the door of the church (and realized I had forgotten to bring any tissues, ugh). I sat next to the mother of one of Uno's friends (whose name I ought to know, but I don't, and two years after we met is way too late to ask). She has the gift of small talk, which kept me somewhat composed as we waited for the service to start. But oh....

When they brought the casket in, wheeled on one of those gurneys so the youngest pall bearer, my friend's 3yo brother, could help push it.... His parents trailed behind. His mother -- oh my goodness, his poor mother! -- she looked so.... Like she wasn't even there. Like all the grief had been squeezed and wrung and tortured out of her over the preceding five days, and she had nothing left. It broke my heart. Behind the immediate and extended family came the honorary pallbearers: The high school football team (of which he was a freshman member), all in their jerseys, and the city league baseball team he played on, all in their uniforms.

The boy's lifelong best friend and his best friend's father gave the life summary. I don't know how his best friend kept his composure throughout -- it must be a boy thing -- but he didn't crack once. They told funny stories and sweet stories, and none of it felt like the typical overblown canonization of the dead (once you're gone, you're immediately a saint!). It all rang true to the boy I knew, who was everything they said he was: An incredible kid, smart and funny and kind, a friend to everyone. A youth and Scout leader from church spoke next, along the same lines, and the bishop (who did struggle not to cry) concluded with a message about the reality of the resurrection and the promise that we will all see our loved ones again. Cousins and a group of young men from our church congregation provided two musical numbers respectively. It was a really good service (if such a thing can be said about a child's funeral.)

Our town has a weekly newspaper that gets published every Wednesday. My mind has been preoccupied with my friend's unexpected passing, with sympathy for his poor family, since I heard on Monday what happened, and when I got this week's paper I half expected to see his picture printed large across the front page with a two-inch headline shouting his loss. Because really, what other news matters? Instead, they printed a report of a recent County Commissioners meeting on the front page; I found my friend's obituary on page 6. The highlights:

Joe (not his real name, but it's not my place to breach his family's privacy) turned 14yo two weeks before his passing as a result of an acute asthma attack. He was the second of four sons and is survived by his entire immediate family. (His maternal grandmother, I found out at the service, preceded him in death by about a month.)

He loved to read -- learned how from his brother, two years older, before he began kindergarten -- and loved learning. His teachers last year nominated him to attend a Youth Leadership conference in Washington, D.C. He had a 3.9 GPA, and planned to take enough college-level courses to earn an Associate's Degree by the time he graduated from high school. He would then serve an LDS mission, return to finish college, and enroll in medical school. He planned to return to his hometown as a family physician (good ones are desperately needed here, believe me) (and boy does that tug at my heartstrings).

Joe loved sports. He was on the football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, and track teams; he assistant coached peewee league baseball and community swimming lessons; he loved the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He loved Scouting and was working toward his Eagle Award.

Joe loved the gospel. He had a strong testimony of Jesus Christ, of the restoration, and he loved the scriptures.

Joe will be deeply missed by his parents, brothers, and all who knew him. (I can vouch for that.)

Ritual has power; I felt the weight that has pressed on me all week lift a little as I drove away from the church. I can think of my friend now without tearing up (mostly). I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that I was able to attend the funeral and mingle my grief with hundreds of others'. But I also know that the intensity of the loss will focus more sharply now on his parents and brothers: We as a community have cried and let go and can move on, but every day a room in their house will be empty, a place at their dinner table will not be set, and though they have faith in the promise of a reunion, life (for most of us) is so very long.

I don't know his parents well, and as you all know I'm not good with people in general; I'm awkward even under the best of circumstances. I would appreciate your prayers on their behalf -- but please pray for me, too, that I can find some way to serve them. Because I really feel like I should. I don't know how, but I need to do something.

He was a really, really great kid.


~RCH~

Reader input, please

The funeral for the boy in my Sunday School class is scheduled for this Friday; school is letting out early so that all who want to can attend.

I feel like I should go, but I don't have anyone to watch the girls; everyone from church, all of our usual high school babysitters -- everyone will be at the funeral. None of my family is near enough to watch them.

So here's the question, which I feel personally conflicted about (and I've had mixed opinions from others about): Do I take my 11mo, 4yo, and 5-1/2yo to the funeral? Or should none of us go?

Pros
It would provide an excellent opportunity to teach the girls more concretely what we believe about death / heaven / eternal families / the afterlife, etc. (We've been talking about it already, but it's all abstract for now.) It might give Uno some closure about what happened to her friend and swimming teacher (though as of yet, I don't think she realizes the finality of death, so maybe she doesn't need anything like closure). It would allow me to go.

Cons
They are 11mo, 4yo, and 5-1/2yo. I can't guarantee that they'll behave themselves (Friday is DH's busiest day, so he won't be able to leave work to attend and/or help me). An open casket might freak them out. An open casket might freak me out, for that matter; he was so, so young!

Your thoughts? I think I went to my first funeral at ~6yo or so (Dad, how old was I when your mom died?). I don't remember feeling traumatized by it. But this is a funeral for a child, so it might be a whole different thing. I don't know what to do. I would hate to miss it, myself, but on the other hand, I'm going to hate going just as much. I wish nobody had to. I wish he were still here.


~RCH~

Perspective

I found out today that a boy in the Sunday School class DH and I teach --- just barely 14 years old -- passed away last night during an acute asthma attack.

We teach the 12-14yo kids, so he's been in our class for two years; I feel like I know him well. He was one of Uno's swimming teachers last year (do I tell her what happened?). He was going to be on the freshman basketball team that DH is coaching this year.

DH got a call about it as we were heading to the big city on some errands; I cried the entire 50-minute drive, and really struggled to pull myself together as we got into town to do our shopping.

14 years old. He was a good kid: Funny and kind and and smart and he actually listened to our Sunday School lessons (not all do, lol). He was great with Uno.

I can't imagine what his family must be feeling today (if they're feeling anything at all; I might be struck numb with the grief if it were my child). I know, at least, that they have the gospel in their lives and the promise that they will see him and hug him and hold him again. I don't know how anyone goes on after a tragedy like this without that assurance.

My heart and my prayers are certainly with them. I can't believe he's gone.


~RCH~