Then she’d say, “Oh, I don’t know if that sounds right. I’m not sure she’s loved more than she knows. She knows she’s loved. Her parents have spoiled her until she’s totally rotten.”
And I’d stand there, trying to be patient, thinking that Tillie was never going to find a card that read, “To a dear niece who knows how much she’s loved because her parents spoil her rotten and bought her a BMW for her birthday and it’s total foolishness and it symbolizes everything that’s wrong with kids today.” Because Hallmark really fails to reach that particular demographic.
On the way home from Hallmark, we’d usually stop at the HEB, which is our local grocery store. Tillie had never gotten over the fact that the HEB used to be a Handy Andy and would always tell me, “Honey, you could even buy your underwear at Handy Andy, and I am always in need of new underwear.” Tillie had reached the point in life when you can just air all your thoughts and no one really thinks twice about it. And if they do, you don’t care.
I’ll never forget our first trip to HEB, when I helped her get a basket and she assured me I should just go ahead with my shopping and we could meet at the register. I zipped through the store, got everything I needed, and came back to find Tillie about one aisle from where I had left her. From then on, I always walked through the store with her. One of my greatest memories from these trips is when she cornered the store manager and went on and on about how you can buy cheese in cubes or slices or any other such foolishness, but “Why in the world can’t you just buy a block of rat cheese?”
He had this blank look and questioned, “Rat cheese?”
She replied, “Yes, you know, like you put in a rat trap to catch a rat.”
“Ma’am, are you needing to catch a rat?” he asked.
She looked at him like she couldn’t believe she was having this conversation and said, “Of course not. I’m needing to eat some cheese. A block of rat cheese.”
Perry and I started taking her out to eat about once a week. One night we were at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant where Tillie had eaten for years. When our waitress came to take our order, Tillie told her, “Honey, I hardly recognized you because you’ve gotten so fat.”
I wanted to crawl under the table, but Tillie told me, “Honey, she needs to know. She has gotten fat, and I’m just being honest.” I’ve never been more certain that a waitress spit in our enchiladas before serving them.
The priests from Tillie’s parish came to visit her on Sundays, and she’d always talk about how they liked to drink her vodka. In fact, she claimed that drinking vodka was part of what had kept her alive for so long. Sometimes she’d start to lose her balance while we were out, and she’d say, “Honey, I can’t remember if I’m drunk or just old.”
A few years later Tillie had to have her gallbladder taken out. After she got home from the hospital, I went over to visit and she insisted on showing me her incision because, “Honey, you just won’t believe it, they just take it out through your belly button. Have you ever heard of such? Through your belly button.”
And as I tried to protest that I didn’t really need to see it, she lifted up her nightgown to show me her belly button, and let’s just say that gravity isn’t kind to you when you’re ninety-nine years old, so along with her belly button, I saw other parts of her anatomy hanging down there right next to it. Oh yes, ma’am, Tillie and I knew each other well.
A few years after we moved into our house, my former hairdresser and his life partner moved into the house behind ours with their two adopted girls from Cambodia, a seventy-year-old Hispanic housekeeper, and a Filipino nanny. Their house was clearly visible from Tillie’s house, and one day as we were headed to Bun ’n’ Barrel to pick up a barbecue sandwich, Tillie pointed to their house and said, “Honey, that is an ODD assortment of people that live in that house. What do you think is going on over there? I can’t figure out who goes with who.”
God bless her.
Anyway, for years I wondered why God had brought Tillie into our lives, and once I had a child who became a toddler, I quickly realized at least part of the reason why. He was preparing me for what life is like when you are with someone who has no desire or inclination to filter their every thought.
Because as much as they need to learn not to throw sand, they also need to learn you might not need to say everything that pops into your head.
One day when Caroline was about two, we went to the park. I watched her go down the slides and play on the various playscapes, and then she said, “Come on, Mama! Let’s go swing!”
I put her on one swing, and I sat down on the swing next to her, even though I noticed it had a little dried bird poop on it. No big deal. I’m a gamer like that. I laugh in the face of bird poop.
(Not really. I don’t even know what that means.)
After a few minutes, she said, “Let’s switch swings, Mama!” So, we got off our respective swings, and she walked over to mine, looked down, and yelled, “OH, MAMA! DID YOU POOP IN YOUR SWING?” As if I were her incontinent mother who makes a habit of pooping on playground equipment.
Then there was the day I was sitting in the kitchen with a Bible study workbook and my Bible, pen in hand. The very picture of studious. The portrait of a godly woman.
Caroline could sense that I was having a moment to myself, so she came over to see what was going on.
“What are you doing, Mama?”
“I’m doing my Bible study.”
“Oh, I’m going to do my Bible study too!”
She climbed up on the bar stool next to mine, grabbed a pen, and started scribbling on a notepad. I watched her for a few moments and thought, This is what it’s all about. I’m showing her my love for Jesus. I’m creating an example of living a life dedicated to God, and how precious that she wants to model that behavior. And secretly, I even wished the other person who lives in this house (that would be Perry) would notice this moment of mother/daughter/God closeness and take a picture of the sweetness.
I went back to reading my study when Caroline said, “Mama?”
“Yes, my precious angel baby darlin’?”
“I just drew this picture. It’s a picture of what my poop looks like.”
See? No filter.
A while back Caroline had the croup. She couldn’t get to sleep, and I could hear her hacking away in her bedroom in spite of the cough medicine I’d given her earlier that evening. She finally came out of her room in tears because she felt so bad and couldn’t go to sleep.
And so began a marathon of every home remedy I knew and some I didn’t know but learned thanks to Twitter, which is a better resource than WebMD because it’s filled with mothers and no one is telling you that every little symptom is a sign of cancer.
I sat with Caroline on the front porch so she could breathe in the cold night air, rubbed Vicks VapoRub on her feet, sat with her in the rocking chair, gave her a teaspoonful of honey, and sang her lullabies in spite of my bad voice.
Finally I ended up turning on the hot water in the bathroom with the hope that the steam would help. I sat on the toilet lid with her snuggled on my lap while the thick steam enveloped us. She seemed so little and delicate, and my heart just hurt because I could tell she was miserable. I rubbed her feverish back and encouraged her to breathe in the steamy air to help loosen up all the “fungus” (as she called it) in her lungs. After a few minutes she pulled away from me, put both her hands on either side of my face, and looked at me closely.
“Mama?”
“What is it, baby?”
I thought maybe she was going to tell me she still didn’t feel good. Or maybe say she loved me.
“Mama?”
“What, love?”
“I’m not saying this to be mean, but it’s time for you to do something about your mustache. I just thought you might want to know.”
Well. I did not see that coming.
But you know what? I did want to know. I needed to know. Because I’d obviously been walking around for weeks with
a little too much facial hair. Perry wasn’t going to tell me because he hates sleeping on the couch. Gulley might have said something, but she knows me well enough to recognize that could lead us down a whole rabbit trail filled with my insecurities. We’d start with my need to get my upper lip waxed and end up somewhere in the neighborhood of “Am I fat? Be honest. Do you think I need to lose ten pounds? Be honest.” Even though we all know that no best friend is going to say, “Yes, I’ve been meaning to tell you it’s time to drop some weight, sister. You are bordering on wide load.”
(If I’m wrong and you have a friend who told you that, then I’m going to gently suggest that you find some new friends.)
But kids will tell you, because they haven’t learned to filter everything out. And maybe that’s okay sometimes. Sure, you can’t go through life throwing sand and drawing pictures of poop, but what if we were all a little more transparent? What if instead of pretending something didn’t hurt our feelings, we’d say, “You know what? That hurt my feelings.” And then we could work it out instead of letting it simmer under the surface until the bitterness chokes us.
My sister, Amy, told me she was worried about my niece, Sarah, starting kindergarten last year because she just wasn’t sure about Sarah’s social skills. Amy was afraid Sarah wouldn’t be ready to interact with the other kids in the right way. Amy said, “Sometimes at the park I’ll see her walk up to other kids she doesn’t know and say something weird like ‘My jacket has four pockets. How many pockets do you have?’” I assured her that all kids are just a little bit bizarre and half those kindergartners will eat a whole tub of paste before the school year ends, so I wouldn’t really be concerned about what constitutes appropriate. The year Caroline was in kindergarten I volunteered in the school cafeteria, and there were kids who drank the leftover juice from their pinto beans with a straw. Bean juice. With a straw. In light of that, I think asking someone about the number of pockets in their coat is completely acceptable.
So, yes, I think we need to teach our kids to say please and thank you and you’re welcome. And if you live south of the Mason-Dixon Line, then I think they should say, “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, sir.” Maybe they should do it up North too, but I don’t live up North, so I don’t really feel qualified to comment on that. In the words of Suzanne Sugarbaker from Designing Women, “Having bad manners is worse than having no money.” That’s some wisdom right there. But maybe we can take a cue from the toddlers in our lives and not filter out all the real parts.
They aren’t going to get it right every time, but neither are we. Our job as mothers is to do the best we can to teach our children that life is better and friendships are richer when we treat others with kindness, when we remember to share, and when we use nice words. To remember that every person we come in contact with may have a few cracks in their hearts even if we can’t see them and that love is always the best response.
But it also might be better if everyone kept their belly buttons and at least some of their thoughts to themselves.
Chapter 14
I Can No Longer Bring Home the Bacon
When Caroline was three, I received a call from my manager informing me the Human Resources department had some questions related to my work performance. They needed both of us to fly to Dallas so they could question me and/or fire me in person.
The issues in question were completely false and due to computer error. I knew this and my manager knew this, but my fear was that this lady in HR, who didn’t know me from Adam, wouldn’t grasp this and there wouldn’t necessarily be a way for me to prove anything.
The best part was that they scheduled this career-deciding meeting a full week and a half from the initial phone call, which really allowed an abundance of time for me to do what I do best: completely freak out.
I got off that phone call with my manager, and in 2.8 seconds I had us living on the streets with no health insurance. I am, by the way, an insurer’s dream come true because I’m just paranoid enough to sign up for any policy within a five-hundred-mile radius.
I am obviously a risk taker by nature.
So I hung up the phone and walked out to tell Perry about the call. Given the fact that all the blood had drained from my face and I was hyperventilating, he intuitively knew something very bad had happened, such as losing my job or overplucking my eyebrows again.
As the news of our imminent homelessness came pouring out of my mouth, he sat and listened to me. When I was finally drained of words, he looked at me and said, “It will be okay. God’s in control.”
Umm, yeah. I knew that.
And the thing is, I did know that. But in that moment and throughout the following week and a half, there were times when I completely forgot. I let fear grip me instead of letting God’s peace envelop me.
In short, I was the Bode Miller of Christian faith. Remember Bode Miller? That skier in the 2006 Winter Olympics who was supposed to win all the medals? He was highly trained, he had tons of experience, he was the media favorite. But when it came time for the biggest event of his career, he choked. He didn’t win one medal.
That was me. I had experience. I’d walked with Christ for years. He’d carried me through the lonely days of being a new college graduate in a town where I knew no one, through bad job situations, through the deaths of people I loved, and through a heartbreaking miscarriage. I’d watched him bless me with a great husband, a beautiful daughter, wonderful friends, and a happy home. I knew him. I’d tested him, and he had always proved faithful. Always.
Yet I was so quick to prove faithless. One unexpected turn, and I was down for the count. In the Olympics of Christianity, I wasn’t even going to get a bronze medal.
After the meeting it became apparent to everyone that all the allegations were false, and I came home from Dallas knowing my job was secure for the time being. But something had shifted. This whole turn of events served as a catalyst for me to think bigger than myself, to quit looking at what I could tangibly see, and to take the leap of seeing my life and my potential through God’s eyes. I realized how much I’d been walking in fear and trusting myself and my ability to provide instead of trusting God.
A few weeks later I was watching an episode of Friday Night Lights (which, incidentally, is the best show that has ever been on television, and I still mourn for it to this day). At the end of the episode, Tami Taylor finds out she’s pregnant. The nurse asks her, “Honey, do you want this baby?” and she replies, “I prayed for this baby twelve years ago and then eleven years ago and then ten years ago and finally realized that God must have other plans.” The nurse looks her right in the eye and says, “Well, honey, it looks like God changed his mind.”
And I began to cry.
I cried because I knew how it felt to pray and get an answer. I knew how it felt to hope that God would change his mind. And the irony is, while I was watching that show, I had no idea what God was about to do.
My manager called me the next day and told me it appeared my job might be in jeopardy after all. The weird thing was that, as she talked, I felt perfectly calm.
In fact, I remained so calm I wondered if I was having some kind of breakdown that was preventing me from properly computing information.
Perry got home and we talked about it. He asked me if I thought this was God’s way of pushing me to take a step of faith and resign from my job. He put into words exactly what I was feeling. I knew it was time to walk away.
It all came together in the right way, at the right time.
Perry and I sat and talked about everything, and we couldn’t believe the peace we felt about this decision. After three years of questioning why, I suddenly saw the hand of God’s timing and provision. We were at a point where Perry’s business was becoming more consistent, and I was making tens of dollars from some freelance writing opportunities. Plus, we’d had a few years to accumulate more in our savings account like real grown-ups.
Don’t get me wrong—it wasn’t like everything was just perfect
. There were huge obstacles, like the seasonal nature of Perry’s landscape business and the loss of my company car, our sweet insurance, and a nice, dependable check that was direct-deposited into our checking account every two weeks. We were jumping into the deep end and trusting God to an extent we never had before. And it was scary.
Yet I was so grateful God had changed his mind, and over the next several months Psalm 16:5-8 took on a whole new meaning for me:
LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
I resigned from my job a few days later with trembling and fear but also with excitement to see what God had in store for us. It was the beginning of my new career as a stay-at-home mom.
After a few weeks of being home, I decided to compare how I spent my days as a pharmaceutical rep with a day spent as a stay-at-home mom.
Drug rep: 6:30 a.m. Wake up to the sound of a belligerent three-year-old yelling, “Mama, come get me! It’s morning!”
SAHM: 6:30 a.m. Wake up to the sound of a belligerent three-year-old yelling, “Mama, come get me! It’s morning!”
Drug rep: 7:00 a.m. Stumble into the kitchen and try to come up with something she’ll actually eat for breakfast while she begs for candy. Listen to her throw a fit after I say that a York Peppermint Pattie isn’t really a breakfast food.
SAHM: 7:00 a.m. Stumble into the kitchen and offer several breakfast options, all of which are turned down because they aren’t York Peppermint Patties.
Drug rep: 8:30 a.m. Load myself up like a pack mule headed for a ten-day camping trip in the Grand Canyon. With one shoulder, support Caroline’s school bag, my purse, my work bag, and my laptop bag. In the other hand, carry her lunch box and my car keys. Follow her out to the car while she stops to examine every crack in the sidewalk, look at every bug, and give the dogs a hug good-bye. Finally get to the car right before my arm falls off from the sheer weight of items I’m toting.
Sparkly Green Earrings Page 8