Of Mess and Moxie

by Jen Hatmaker

  We live.

  Hallelujah.

  Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply.1

  — JANE AUSTEN

  CHAPTER 6

  PRIVATE BABY

  My mom and dad had three daughters in a row, then had a surprise fourth baby they called “Product Failure” behind closed doors. I was the oldest, and Drew was born when I was nine and a half. We only had girl cousins on both sides, so the addition of a boy to such an estrogen-laden family felt like an honest-to-God miracle. My sisters and I were charmed out of our minds from the first second he took a breath.

  Because he was an oopsie-daisy, Mom had given all her baby stuff away by the time he arrived. So Betty Blanchard, head of the church nursery, snuck us a round metal crib from the children’s ministry, and Mom put it in the corner of my bedroom. All of a sudden, during fourth grade, I had a new roommate. Every night after Mom spent the minimally necessary five minutes to put Drew to bed (because by the fourth baby, Mama ain’t going through a forty-five-minute process to get a kid to sleep—girl, bye), I’d pull him out of his crib and put him in bed with me. This was entirely unsafe—no guardrails, no pillow blockade, no concern about “tummy sleeping”—but I’d tuck him in tight next to me and curl around him and marvel at how much I loved my own private baby.

  That poor boy grew up exactly like you’d imagine with three older sisters. When he was around seven, my mom asked him, “Has it been really bad being the only boy in a family of sisters?” and Drew deadpanned, “Oh, Mom. If only you knew.” He had no immunity against us: we dressed him up with barrettes and makeup and paraded him around with painted nails at our command. Ladies and gentlemen, he had a favorite purse. Because he was the fourth kid and it was the eighties, Mom never really knew where he was (at some point, one becomes fatigued with parenting), so we jointly raised him, not unlike a pack of wolves.

  Don’t you dare feel sorry for him: he found a way to benefit from older sisters. He would “randomly” show up when we had sleepovers and pool parties, and our friends kissed and fawned over him his entire childhood. Drew had a knack for charm and exercised it shamelessly if it meant he could cozy up to my girlfriends during a movie. Joke was on him, because small-town life meant three of my best friends became his middle school health, geometry, and science teachers with memories of Drew leaning innocently against them like he had no idea those were teenage breasts under his cheek. Yes, ma’am, Ni . . . uh, Mrs. McMullen, and please try to forget how I took pictures of you in the pool through my bedroom window five years ago.

  Let me assure any reader with a bunch of girls and one boy, especially if he is the baby—that kid will be overloved his whole life. He will have extra mothers who continue to coddle him long after it is remotely appropriate. Furthermore, they will compete for his attention as if he is the dreamy star of a Disney movie. Once, after a family gathering, my sister Lindsay called me, sincerely furious at our other sister: “I get so mad when we are all together, because Cortney hogs Drew the entire time!” Just LOL, you guys.

  Brandon has forever eye-rolled me and my sisters for over-attending to Drew who is, by the letter of the law, a grown man, although he was seven years old when Brandon first walked in our door. Much like our guy friends and boyfriends always took Drew under their wings like stand-in brothers, Brandon became a true brother, as did Cortney’s husband, Zac. When Drew was still in elementary school, he and Brandon would slap each other’s inner wrists with two fingers, and the first one to quit lost. My sisters and I objected in horror as Drew refused to give in while tears rolled down his face. This was boy behavior we never understood, not unlike Brandon driving his car parallel to us on the highway while Drew hung his naked butt out of the window, then pulling in front of us and lobbing strawberries from their Sonic Dr. Peppers at our windshield. Never mind that one was a married adult in his twenties and the other was in middle school: they both only had sisters and were making up for lost time.

  You might think two parents would object to these shenanigans, but you would be wrong. Drew had an entirely different mom and dad than I did. I had parents who enforced an 11:30 p.m. curfew until I went to college. Drew had parents who vaguely remembered him coming in at 2:30 a.m. as a high school sophomore, but they can’t really recall because of all the sleep they were prioritizing. Mom and Dad disciplined me with spanking spoons, five hundred sentences (“It is always best to tell the truth . . .”), groundings, and revoked privileges, but when I mocked Drew’s spring-break-teen lifestyle, Mom told me, “Groundings were difficult because it punished us.” Oh my gosh. I cannot. This is the same mother who capitulated to her twelve-year-old son to let him drive. She protests this charge by noting that “it was only the last five miles home from church.”

  During our teen and college years, Lindsay and I formed the top group of siblings, and Cortney and Drew comprised the bottom team. That was the season when a six- and ten-year age gap was the most pronounced. Drew was an eighth grader the year I delivered my first son. I largely missed Drew and Cortney’s teens while traversing young adulthood. Because I was so square and by-the-book and my siblings were so, um, not that, we weren’t sure how to connect across personalities and life stages for a while. Lindsay was my bridge to Cortney, and Cortney was her bridge to Drew, but without them, we weren’t sure how to get to each other. I continued to loosen up while they started tightening up, getting us much closer to shared middle territory, but it took a few years to give each other permission to be different grown-ups than our childhood roles dictated.

  Now, in our thirties and forties, we’ve developed a whole new adult group including all four of us. We easily and seamlessly spend time in pairs, threes, or all together, which is so overwhelming and encompassing, it is a miracle our spouses have remained wed to us. We are quite a fortress. Our family vernacular is so concrete, Brandon can finish all our stories and predict every quote we’ll repeat for the ten-thousandth time, bless him lo these twenty-three years of marriage to a King kid.

  Observing the arc of our sibling relationships gives me so much hope for my own kids. There are days in this household I am convinced my children will never speak again once they move out. The fighting, the personality clashes, the different ideologies—fix it, Jesus. My headstrong teenagers tell us how to parent their siblings because they are convinced everyone else is going to hell in a handbasket. I have two cowboy-boot-wearing, deer-hunting, conservative button pushers and a Virginia Woolf–reading, vegetarian, liberal feminist. I have a relentless, literal, extroverted Ethiopian and an insatiable, sarcastic, competitive athlete who used to be an only child.

  It is like living in my own personal Real World series.

  It gives me immense comfort to recall destroying my sister’s closet because she wore my Pepé jeans without asking and watching my brother go Red Rage on Lindsay for calling him “Hup Head,” an invented nickname created to torment. There was a stretch of time I believed I’d absolutely never like Cortney, and Drew referred to me as “Cousin Jen” because we barely knew each other. One day, we were fighting like such psychopaths, our mom stood in the middle of the living room and screamed at the top of her lungs for ten seconds, stunning us into silence. The memory of this delights my heart as I sit here.

  Listen, parents in the trenches of sibling tension like me: I’m pretty sure it’s all going to work out. I suspect our kids will not be the first generation to remain in adolescence and never grow into regular adults with developed brains. My siblings and I heel-kicked each other until we were black and blue, but as adults, we moved to the same city like an invading gang and spend time together every single week. In pairs or as a whole, we vacation, watch football, have Sunday lunch at Mom’s, go to dinner, go to concerts, go to the lake, go on trips, group text, FaceTime, make inside jokes, get each other through crises, list each other as references on our résumés because we h
ave different last names. My siblings take my kids to ballets and come to their games. I asked Cortney if I could be in the delivery room for her first baby, and she said yes without asking Zac. We love each other and like each other, and this whole family thing stuck.

  Every time I read how Jesus described the kingdom as a seed or yeast, I think of parenthood. That seed is planted, that yeast is mixed in, but, my gosh, you cannot see anything happening for a while. So much investment in our kids involves delayed gratification. Is it working? Did it take? Will it ever produce anything good? Because for a bit, all you can see is hard soil with nary an inch of green growth; at first, that dough is just sitting there without a hint of rise. We know we planted, we know we included the right ingredients, but the result is invisible, hidden, terrifyingly absent. We did the work, we said the words, and now we are waiting.

  Family is far more resilient than I ever hoped. I bought the lie of hyper-controlled parenting for a while, but all it produced was despair every time my kids fought or went off the script. What was I doing wrong? How could I get this back on the rails? But the thing is, family is a messy business, especially in the building years. This is true for literally every family I know, regardless if they are sweet or spicy. No exceptions. When we sow seeds of love into our children, between our children, it will eventually bear fruit. Our job is just to plant, plant, plant, and wait.

  The waiting eventually paid off for our long-suffering mom. We quit fighting and sneaking out and driving her Jeep into the river (Drew), and we grew up into best friends. Of course, some things remain the same: Drew and his wife were recently house hunting, and Cortney and I kept sending listings in each of our neighborhoods with corresponding propaganda. We were still vying for his proximity, but good news, reader: they bought a house three streets over, because, after all, he was my private baby.

  HOW TO (PART ONE)

  Dear reader, maybe you, like me, find yourself often in need of instruction. How do I get Pandora to play out of my television set? How do I keep my texts from popping up on the screen for my nosy children to read? How do I color my own hair without looking like Liza Minnelli? What I’m suggesting is that life is complicated and we need someone to help us. We need tutorials. We need mentorship. We need guidance down life’s thorny paths.

  Well, I am here, a trustworthy advisor if ever there was one, amirite? I’ve identified a few sticky issues, tasks, and processes that bog us down and make our brains sad. How exactly do we do these things? How do we proceed? Are there rules or steps that might help us through hard things?

  Why yes, yes there are. You are in luck today, girl. The following are entirely reasonable how-tos born out of actual life. These are tried and tested, and the results are guaranteed. (I wrote these in conjunction with my hilarious Facebook tribe, and many apologies to the overt liberties I took with your tutorials. My writing mantra is this: Any shared material is mine to butcher, narrate, embellish, or make inappropriate. It is truly hard to be my friend.)

  HOW TO GO ON A DIET: THE “SLEEVING” METHOD

  •Breakfast: egg white and veggie omelet

  •Lunch: kale salad with 2-ounce chicken breast, assorted veggies, dressing on the side

  •Snack: ½ cup of plain Greek yogurt with berries

  •Dinner: 4 pieces of deep dish pizza, leftover mashed potatoes, chips and guac, 2 granola bars, and a sleeve of Thin Mints dunked in a mocha

  •Late snack: another sleeve of Thin Mints and a glass of wine

  •Pre-bed final snack: shame and regret

  HOW TO PLAN A FAMILY

  1. Tell everyone you meet that you only want two children spaced over four years.

  2. Actually have two kids in two years, because unprotected sex makes people pregnant. Feel confident that you are done.

  3. Share a firm handshake with your spouse. Have a third baby. Sell all baby items in a yard sale, because obviously.

  4. Make out with your spouse. Have twins, making your child count five in five years.

  5. Send husband to urologist for vasectomy, because your body has done all it is going to do here and if he even shares a meaningful glance with you, you’re going to have triplets.

  HOW TO WAKE YOUR CHILDREN UP PEACEFULLY FROM NAP TIME

  1. Tiptoe into your own bedroom. Make absolutely no sound at all.

  2. Ever so carefully climb into bed and assume a reclining position.

  3. Close your eyes.

  Programming Note: Your children should be fully awake by now and asking for snacks, but here is an extra step should you need it: Proceed with steps one to three above. Let yourself drift off for approximately ten to thirteen seconds but no more than fifteen. This should work without fail.

  HOW TO SHOP AT TARGET

  1. Make a list of two items: cotton balls and trash can. These are the only things you need.

  2. Get sidetracked by the Dollar Spot, and add fifty dollars worth of items that are “only” a dollar. It is all crap, but cheap crap, and you are thrifty. You are actually saving money. (File that tidbit away to tell husband later.)

  3. Rush past the clothing. Double back for the cute shirt/ sweater/yoga pants facing the aisle. No need to try on. If it doesn’t fit, you can put it in your trunk to return never.

  4. Decide you need new shoes to go with your new shirt, even though your old lady feet can’t handle cheap shoes anymore. Pick up shoe inserts to cushion the plastic. This is self-care. You are caring for your body like the Bible said to.

  5. Head back toward kitchenware for trash can, and put two big frames in your basket en route because you just remembered you wanted to attempt a feature wall in your living room like you saw on Pinterest. Also grab those storage bins because you were going to get organized this year.

  6. Get trash can and also placemats, because organized people have nice table settings.

  7. Head to toiletries to get cotton balls. Smell all the shampoo in the organic, natural section, and put a twelve-dollar lotion in your cart. Discover experimental face cream made of spun elfin dreams. Costs thirty-nine dollars, but your crow’s-feet are making you look like Robert De Niro and this hurts your feelings.

  8. Decide you need all the stuff to organize your desk. Better pens will make you smarter and more efficient.

  9. Proceed to checkout, where you pay the one hundred dollars (plus) cover charge Target insists on inflicting every.single.time.

  10.Grab a Starbucks or Icee for having some self-control (because you didn’t buy the themed Christmas dishes), and head to the car.

  11.Realize you forgot the cotton balls. Obviously.

  HOW TO ORGANIZE A BOOK CLUB

  1. Select a book.

  2. Purchase said book with real dollars.

  3. Place book on bedside table for the next three to four weeks.

  4. Look at book each night with good intentions. If intentions could read a book, you would have read 1,248 books this year. Feel proud of your intentions. They mean so well.

  5. Start book in bed and immediately fall asleep. Your intentions are genuine but they are very tired.

  6. Carry book around in your purse in case you can spontaneously read somewhere, sometime, somehow. (You can’t, you won’t, but now your purse is denting your shoulder between the heavy book and all the other mysterious and sometimes unidentified crap you cart around. What is even in your purse? Why does it all have a thin layer of filth on it? Why is your purse a Grime Generator?)

  7. Ten minutes before the guests arrive, flip through the chapters to learn the main characters’ names. Try to determine if it was set in modern-day Florida or 1922 Paris. Make a quick call: Is it fiction? Read the last page. Have a sense of conclusion in case someone died or came back to life or married the best friend.

  8. Serve enough wine in hopes no one will realize you didn’t open the book.

  9. Discover that three out of twelve girls read the whole book. Admit that “Book Club” is an excuse for women to leave their homes with impunity (“For literature
! Hello!”) and basically drink wine and eat snacks and talk about boobs and trash television.

  Programming Note: Do not disclose step 9 to husband. Maintain position that Book Club is about nourishing your minds with well-constructed prose. What actually happens in Book Club stays in Book Club.

  HOW TO GET IN BIBLE STUDY TIME

  1. Send your darling children to school, grab a great cup of coffee, your Bible, notebook, and pen, and settle in at the kitchen table.

  2. Bow your head in prayer to open your heart to the Word of the Lord. Get really serious and slightly emotional, because Jesus loves you and also God plus the Holy Spirit.

  3. Open your eyes to find your hubby buck naked strutting across the dining room on his day off, because this was obviously the right moment for sexy time. I believe it’s deep in Song of Songs: “He shall strut himself like a mighty steed across thy gaze . . .”

  4. Apologize to God. (Don’t worry about Jesus; He was never married. He wouldn’t understand.)

  HOW TO LOSE BABY WEIGHT: DIY/NO-GYM METHOD

  1. Tell yourself you can do it. Look how great you were at gaining the weight! Positive affirmation is important here.

  2. Load baby into stroller and set off for epic one-mile walk or jog.

  3. Walk or jog for what feels like eight miles. Discover it is two-thirds of one.

  4. Lift five-gallon tub of laundry soap as “weights.” Do five sit-ups. See? Who needs a gym? You are so motivated and thrifty. You are a Proverbs 31 woman.

  5. Feel your muscles cramping and spazzing. Self-medicate with a bowl of potato salad and a side of Doritos, because you can double down on your carbs if you want to. They are in the food pyramid.