We have to actually believe that our kids are okay.
I know. Tough. But it can be done. We can start believing by erasing the idea that education is a race. It’s not. Education is like Christmas. We’re all just opening our gifts, one at a time. And it is a fact that each and every child has a bright shiny present with her name on it, waiting there underneath the tree. God wrapped it up, and he’ll let us know when it’s time to unwrap it. In the meantime, we must believe that our children are okay. Every last one of them. The straight-A ones and the ones with autism and the naughty ones and the chunky ones and the shy ones and the loud ones and the so-far-behind ones.
Because here’s what I believe: a child can survive a teacher or other children accidentally suggesting that he’s not okay, as long as when he comes home, he looks at his mama and knows by her face that he really is okay. Because that’s all they’re asking, isn’t it?
Mama, am I okay?
In the end, a child will call the rest of the world liars and believe his mama.
So when he asks us with his eyes and heart if he’s okay, let’s tell him:
Yes, baby. You are okay. You are more than okay. You are my dream come true. You are everything I’ve ever wanted, and I wouldn’t trade one you for a million anybody elses. This part of life, this school part, might be hard for you. But that’s okay, because it’s just one part of life. And because we can do hard things, together. We are a team. And I am so grateful to be on your team.
And then, before we dive into “helping,” let’s just eat some cookies together and talk about other things. There are so many other things to talk about, really.
Let’s be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus’s children, Scout and Jem, carefully watch their father’s behavior as the house next door to theirs burns to the ground. As the fire creeps closer and closer to the Finches’ home, Atticus appears so calm that Scout and Jem finally decide that “it ain’t time to worry yet.”
We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they’ll say, “Huh. Guess it’s not time to worry yet.”
Then we’ll watch carefully. We’ll just watch and wait and believe until God nods and says, “It’s time. Tear open that gift, Mama.”
And we’ll get to say our Mama FAVE. Told you so. Told you so, World.
Mommy Do-Little
I have a teeny, tiny, furry problem.
One August morning, Craig asked if he could bring his parents’ toy poodle to our house for a few days. I said yes, but only for the sake of the children.
I don’t dig animals. I allow Chase to watch Animal Planet when I’m not in the room, but other than that, I keep my distance. All the licking and sniffing and scales and feathers and fur . . . I mean, really. Life is messy enough already.
Speaking of messy, I recently quit parenting. I do not parent in August. August parenting is not a good look for me. It’s hotter than hell, and the children and I have already had a whole lot of togetherness. Don’t get me wrong, summer is grand, and I really enjoy all the lack of structure and living in the moment and so on and so forth. Truly. Just lovely. But no more. I refuse to enjoy another moment until the moments change significantly. So at August’s family meeting, I smiled pretty and announced to the children that I was officially done with the following:
1.Smiling when you people spill things. I am past the mommy point of no return. Which means that I can no longer pretend that I’m not mad at you when you spill your cereal, water, or entire dinner plate fifteen seconds after I put it in front of you. I know I’ve been acting calm and saying, “It’s okay, sweetie,” through clenched teeth for a few years now. That’s all over. It’s not okay, actually. If you spill, expect the wrath. Prepare for it, take a deep breath, ’cause it’s a-comin’. Oh yes, I know it was an accident, Mom! and I’m sure your future therapist will be happy to talk to you about how this injustice made you feel. Please know that I have forgiven myself unequivocally for my unfairness, random rage, and unforgiveness, and I can only hope that this will bring you comfort.
2.Feigning fascination with stories that have absolutely no point and are punctuated by excruciating pauses of approximately three minutes after each and every word. Your stories start after breakfast, and by the time you are done, it’s time for me to prepare lunch. And they’re not good. They are really NOT good stories. I really don’t even understand what you’re saying. I plan to suggest that your teachers skip geography this fall and instead teach some storytelling skills so that your audience is not forced to smile manically at you while internally twitching and fantasizing about how to suffocate herself. Every time you say “Mom . . . listen,” I feel as powerless and panicked as an unarmed hostage. For the remainder of the summer, I am going to carry a buzzer around with me. If you begin a story and it does not end within two minutes, I am going to buzz you very loudly and walk away.
3.Putting you to bed forty different times each night. Every bedtime is like a twisted game of Whack-A-Mole. If you come out of that room, prepare to get Whacked.
4.Also, no more “reading to me” at bedtime. Let’s see. It takes you six minutes to sound out each word, so if your book is one hundred words, well, I don’t specialize in math, but I’m pretty sure we will be “reading” that book until I die. And I can’t help but notice that the ONLY TIME YOU CARE THIS MUCH ABOUT READING IT YOURSELF IS AT BEDTIME. When you can again hold me hostage and stay up six minutes later with every sounded-out word. And so while I’m supposed to be thinking sweet prideful thoughts about your reading and smelling your freshly washed hair, all I can think is: OH MY GOD. I AM GOING TO DIE. YOU SUCK AT READING. From now on: Reading is for SCHOOL ONLY. If this means you’ll go back to school in September unable to keep up with your classmates, so be it. A little humility never hurt anybody. NO MORE READING.
5.Refereeing. I will no longer intervene to save you. So as my wise friend tells her children, if you are going to fight, be prepared to fight to the death.
6.Cooking, cleaning, playing, teaching, smiling . . . talking, even, really. If you need parental assistance, call Bubba and Tisha instead. Number’s on the fridge. I’ll be in my room. Please knock only after you observe pumpkins and football jerseys and piles of leaves and you have enrolled yourself in several after-school activities.
Love you forever.
• • •
Anyway, Craig suggested poodle sitting the day after I’d submitted my mommy resignation, and I thought, Jackpot. I figured the kids could play with the dog for four days, and it’d seem like a family activity without my actually having to organize any family activities. My personal goal for the dog’s visit was to disguise my disgust for her as effectively as possible. Then she arrived.
Oh My God. I loved her. I decided I needed my own, exactly now.
So I wrote on Facebook that I needed advice “for a friend” who was considering dog adoption. I couldn’t admit that the friend was actually me because I didn’t want anyone trying to talk some sense into me.
In response to my request, my old friend Mandy suggested that “my friend” consider adopting a rescue dog. Mandy spends most of her time and heart taking care of homeless doggies. After I admitted that “my friend” was me, Mandy asked specifics about what kind of dog we were looking for. I told her that I wanted a near-comatose dog. I wanted a semi-stoned dog. I wanted a dog that liked the couch as much as I do. She promised to keep her eyes open as she visited the local shelters.
Eventually, Mandy e-mailed me and said, “I may have found your dog. Just did a behavior evaluation on a stray Lhasa Apso that was the chillest, most gentle dog I’ve ever seen. He’s white, about five years old, and he’s got a Brando-like underbite that makes him so ugly he’s cute.”
When I read the ugly thing, I knew he was mine. With the exception of husbands, I always choose
the ugly one. Craig won’t let me choose our Halloween pumpkins or Christmas trees. When I told Craig that Mandy found our dog, he said, “NO, Glennon. I am not feeling a dog right now. No. No way.”
I looked at him for a minute and smiled.
He paused and said, “Yeah. I’m done. When can we meet him?”
So the next day we told the kids we were going to visit some homeless doggies and love on them for a while. When we arrived, the shelter people led us through a huge room of kennels. Every single dog was barking like mad. It was a little chaotic and intimidating. Amma was scared. And by Amma, I mean me.
But then we got to the very end of the row of kennels, and in the very last cage, this little fluffy guy quietly walked toward us, peeked his head out, wagged his tail, and licked Chase’s hand. No barking, no jumping, just wagging and kisses. Craig later said that Theo seemed to be saying, “Well . . . there you are. I knew you’d come.”
We named him Theo because Mandy’s maiden name was Theobald, and since she found him for us, Theo seemed right. We later found out that Theo means “gift from God.”
The next day the shelter called us and said that our doggie was very close to becoming our doggie, and that we could pick him up as soon as they sent him to be groomed and neutered. They explained that since Theo was a stray, he was quite matted and dirty and needed to be freshened up.
I called Craig and said: “Husband! We have a problem. No way are they grooming him before he comes home.” Craig paused and said, “Why, honey?” (A little too wearily, I thought.)
I said, “Because! I don’t want him to think that he has to be all cleaned up and pretty in order for us to want him! No way. He comes home just as he is. We’ll clean him up. I love him all jacked up. He comes home all jacked up.”
Craig: I can’t say I really understand that.
Me: Well, that’s fine because I understand it enough for both of us.
(silence)
*Sister beeps in on call waiting*
Me: Gotta go, husband, Sister is calling.
Husband: (sigh of relief)
Me: Sister! They want to groom Theo before he comes home, and this is unacceptable!
Sister: Why, Sister?
Me: Because I don’t want him to feel like we didn’t love him enough as he is to bring him home.
Sister: Oooooookay. Let me try to understand. You . . . don’t . . . want . . . him . . . to . . . feel . . . like . . . you . . . didn’t . . . love . . . him . . . enough.
Me: Why do people always repeat what I say verrrrrrrrrrry slowly and make it sound all crazy???
Sister: It doesn’t sound crazy because it’s being repeated slowly, Sister. That’s not the reason. The things you say sound crazy before they’re repeated. We are just hoping you’ll hear the crazy if we repeat it back to you.
Me: Whatever. Listen, Amma’s pretty now, but do you remember what she looked like when she was born? We didn’t insist on a make-over before she came home.
Sister: (silence) You are unreasonable, Sister.
Me: (silence back) Well. Hm. While we are on the subject of unreasonable, Sister, I feel obliged to tell you that I find it completely unreasonable that you continue to try to reason with me after having known me for THIRTY-FOUR YEARS.
Sister: You have a point, Sister. Yes, you do. Go get your dog. We’ll groom him later.
Me: ’Kay. Thank you. But I’m taking him back to the shelter next week so they can send him to get neutered. I don’t want Theo to think that part was my idea. That’s on them.
Sister: (Silence) Fine, Sister.
I went to pick him up at the shelter later that week. I was extremely nervous for the final interview, so I called one of my besties, Christy, because she fosters dogs and often facilitates interviews with potential families. When she answered, I said, “Oh my God I’m on my way for my final interview and what if they ask if I take antidepressants and what if they read my blog and what if they ask me if I have ever been to jail or inhaled and just, oh my God.”
And Christy said, “Glen. Breathe deep. This is not like adopting a person. Just don’t mention Michael Vick, and you’ll be fine.”
So I took a deep breath and walked into the shelter. I began my interview with a lovely dog trainer named Feather, and as soon as she started talking, I knew I’d be okay. I mean, really—anyone who dedicates her life to helping animals or young children is okay in my book. It seems to me that these are two of the only vocations for which there can be no other motive than gentleness and love. Because when you are working with animals or children, there are usually no grown-ups around to give you kudos or respect or much money. It’s just you and the powerless ones and God.
So, as you would expect, Feather was good to me. And halfway through the interview, Sister showed up at the shelter. Because Sister always shows up. And now since she is John’s, he’s gotta show up too. He doesn’t mind too much because he’s a natural shower-upper.
Sister was so excited she looked like she might pee. A new nephew, you know. The previous night she had arrived at my house with a doggie car seat and a zebra-striped doggie bed and thirty-dollar Bed Head strawberry banana doggie detangler spray. I know. But that’s Sister. When they brought my doggie out, Sister held him first.
When Tish was born, Sister was the first one of us to touch her. She held Tish’s hand first. Before me, before Craig. It’s natural for us. My babies are her babies.
And then Sister handed me my doggy, and we left together. Just me and him. He sat in my lap the entire ride home. He was a little shaky, but that was okay, because so was I. I cried a lot. Because after years of praying and wishing and hoping I would get to adopt, God finally let me.
When we got home, Craig was waiting on the floor in the foyer and Theo walked straight over to him and lay down in his lap—belly up, ready to soak up some love. The next morning we let Theo wake up each child, one at a time. The kids didn’t know he had come home the previous night, so when they woke up to their very own doggy licking their cheeks, well . . . it was a good morning.
I don’t know what this life is doing to me with all these love experiments, but I think one of these days I am just going to melt into this beautiful world.
The Golden Coin
A friend recently asked me this question:
How can we give our children the confidence they need to survive on earth and still encourage the humility that is pleasing to God?
My little brain’s been flipping this over and over like a pancake that won’t cook through. But I haven’t considered it in terms of parenting. Usually when someone asks me a question about parenting, I switch it into a question about grown-ups. How do I encourage my child to be kinder to others? becomes, How do I become kinder to others? After reading the sixteenth parenting book that contradicted the first fifteen, I quit trying to become a better parent and decided to try becoming a better person.
• • •
We usually think of confidence and humility as character traits. She’s so confident. He’s so humble. But these character traits are easy to fake. Insecure people hide it by boasting. Prideful people hide behind false humility. It seems the more insecure a person is, the more likely she is to behave confidently. And vice versa. Tricky.
Then there are people like me who just get the two constantly mixed up. Like when I write an essay about humility and then spend the rest of the day wondering whether it might actually be the best humility essay ever written by anyone in the history of the world. The character trait I am most proud of is my humility. I am so humble, it’s not even funny. Seriously, just don’t try to out-humble me. I will wreck your teeny little humility with my HUGE HUMILITY.
Even though I feel like a lost cause in regard to this confidence/humility issue, I do think it’s an important thing to explore. Because if we are humble without confidence, we miss the opportunity to become wha
t we want to be when we grow up. And if we are confident without humility, we miss out on becoming who we want to be when we grow up.
I think about it all the time in terms of my writing. Spilling myself out like this, is it an act of humility or confidence? I share my faults and flaws, which seems humble—but doesn’t the fact that I assume that others will care enough to read and maybe even find my flaws charming betray the confidence behind my humility? Writing, painting, acting, creating, living out loud: Are they acts of humility or confidence?
Yes. They’re both. That’s what I’ve decided. Confidence and humility are two sides of the same coin. They are character traits that stem from the two beliefs I hold most dear. I think most of our character traits are simply manifestations of what we believe to be true.
I am confident because I believe that I am a child of God. I am humble because I believe that everyone else is too.
They go hand in hand. They’ve got to.
If I am humble but lack confidence, it is because I haven’t accepted that there is a divine spark inside me. It means that I don’t believe in the miracle that I was made by God for a purpose all my own, and so I am worthy of the space that I occupy on this earth. And that as a child of God, no one deserves more respect, joy, or peace than I. As a child of God, I have the right to speak, to feel, to think, and to believe what I believe. Those dreams in my heart, those ideas in my head, they are real and they have a divine origin, and so they are worth exploring. Just because I am a child of God. And thankfully, there is nothing I can add to that title to make it more impressive. There is also nothing I can do to lose that title. I am confident not because I am pretty or smart or athletic or talented or kind. Those things change and can be given and taken. I am confident simply because I am a child of God.
Carry On, Warrior Page 13