Category Archives: parenting

vigil keeping

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“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans”. John Lennon

In the thread-the-needle that is daily life scheduling, this summer was planned oh so carefully.

And then life happened.

Having just come out of the Boundary Waters with a group of youth I received a text: Son Jameson was in the emergency room with unspecified misery.

The drive home was endless. He was discharged. He was brought back the next day with more howling pain and admitted to the hospital and is yet at home recovering.

This on top of the death of my nephew has stuttered my life-cramming ways.

I was supposed to attend a conference in southern Wisconsin. I had looked forward to it all summer.

I didn’t go. I stayed home and kept vigil and thanked God for the opportunity to be present to my son and to the needs of my heart.

Really. Conferences and calendar cramming will all pass away.

People do too.

Having witnessed the searing pain of son loss, I got to son tend.

Life happens.

Advent 18

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My mom is coming for Christmas.

It’s a seemingly simple sentence dense in power.

We are, we two, not unlike lots of moms and daughters.  We have spent the 55 years of my life clashing wills and life views.

My mother is a woman who knows with certainty what is seemly and what is not and her surety has extended to the needful state of cupboards (pristine!) and planned menus for each meal.

Her daughter?  Not so much.  For some reason my mother was presented with a girl-child who resisted blacks and whites and rebelled against imposed order.

We have lived, we two, a challenge.

I don’t know what it is about mothers and daughters.  The desire to protect, the temptation to create in our own image or the image of what we wish we had been able to able to call our own; so many things swirl beneath the surface of this elemental heart dance.

What I know is that my relationship with my mother affects my daughters and will affect their daughters.  If there is work to do, running from it robs not only me and my mom but the generations that follow.

So we have worked.  When it might have made sense to let it go and play it safe, we have engaged with each other and risked the hurt and vulnerability of letting each other know that it matters.  Our honest hearts won’t let go of each other.

My mom is coming for Christmas.  She will be in the midst of the feasting and the laughter and I know full well that she will bite back comments about how things might be better organized and I know full well that sometimes those comments will slip their way out of her mouth and into my ear.

But they don’t have to take up space in my heart.

What takes up space in my heart is profound admiration for the mighty mite that is my mom.  She has endured much, lived much, and loved much.  She has not let go of me.

Gathering for Christmas means readying our hearts.  We will mourn those absent, mark in our hearts the shifts and losses and remember years gone past when things were different.

But oh, the chance to be present to the wonder of the Word Made Flesh in our midst is stunning gift.  We get to learn what it is to love.

My mom is coming for Christmas.

Thanks be to God.

 

we’re ok

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I spent part of last night in the company of our future.

I was at Minnesotans United for All Families for a phone bank training.  There were some fifty of us in a big room.  There were many places we could have been.  We were there.

We were there on National Coming Out Day in order to make phone calls to voters.  With a scant few days before the election and air waves being inundated with increasingly fear-provoking ads, the need for heart touching is great.

What I saw as I took part in it all was that I was easily one of the oldest people there.  I sat with my two daughters.  Around me were couples, singles, and a wonderful assortment of the kind of young people I would LOVE to have in the pews of the church I serve.  They were there because they do not want the constitution of their state to be contorted by discrimination.

I am hopeful.  With all the anxieties of this election season, what I saw last night gives me a great sense that there is a generation coming up behind us that knows the power of civic engagement and knows how vital it is to be attentive and engaged.

It’s about love.  It’s about love for country and love for the gift that is living democracy and it is about the living of love in families and last night that love walked into the room in the hearts of those who care enough to take action.

Join them.  Join those who were surprised a minister would be present.  Join those who speak up and have conversations via phone or in person.  Find a phone bank or invite a friend out for coffee or write letters to the editor and pray pray pray that love might live in a Minnesota that values justice for all people.

Maybe, just maybe, if the church of Christ Jesus speaks for love, those present last night might see their way into faith community.

We need them.  They have much to teach us.

roots

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We are rooted.

Today the Roto-rooter team is coming to pulverize our basement floor in order to tame the roots that have taken over our sewage system.

@#$% indeed!

Cooper spent a fine Wednesday dealing with the geysers that erupted in our basement.

Today we live into the healing of the problem, complete with a 24 hour no-water-use edict.

This root addressing comes on the heels of a wedding weekend that still has my heart humming.  Family came together to celebrate the wedding of Cooper’s youngest and on the dance floor and throughout the weekend we were a weaving of those who have gone before us and so very powerfully we participated in weaving that which is yet to be.

Blending families is no small adventure.  Those seeking to create the new are rooted in systems unquestioned and ways of being passed on from generation to generation.  In coming together through divorce and re-marriage, the ground shifts and sometimes it feels like nothing will ever feel stable again.

But oh, the fruit of years of negotiating and breathing and praying is heart luscious!

We are a different people now.  Somehow, in marking the powerful rite of passage that comes in joining families and hearts, we know ourselves to be rooted and grounded in amazing grace and we are whole and we know this.

We know this.

So the roots strangling our pipes?  They can be dealt with and matter not much (except for the obscene amount of money leaving our house with them).

The roots that ground and nourish heart are alive and well and we are family and thank you thank you thank you God for roots.

Ground is good.

 

bliss

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Ah, Saturday.  The living is easy.

Living in the same town as all three of my children makes me crazy grateful.  The pink scooter ferried Jameson and me to a rendezvous with daughter Rachel and out-of-town niece Chelsea.  We met at the bakery where daughter Leah is working.  Coffee and delectables on a sunny Saturday in Minneapolis is nearly as good as it gets.

This afternoon I will meet up with the eight other women heading into the Boundary Waters on Monday.  We will pack and check and double check our provisions and begin to get a sense of who we will be together.

Often times I wonder if I have time for these BWCA trips.  Being away from the church and the web of relationships that are mine to be present to is hard.  But every year as we put the canoes in the water and take the first paddle stroke I know myself to be home.  And every year, the building of relationships between those who venture out into the wild is priceless gift.  Being vulnerable and resourceful together changes everything.

And so it is in or out of the BWCA: being vulnerable and resourceful together changes everything.

Life is a good thing.

 

parenting

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In a conversation the other day there was appreciation expressed by those gathered about a family in our church.

Their children are amazing, as are all children.  There is a something more, though, about this clan, and the gathered women got to wondering about what it was that set those kids up to shine so fully.

My sense about one of the reasons for shine?  The parents know that they are the parents.

There was a columnist, John Rosemond by name, who used to have a syndicated column on parenting that ran in the Duluth paper while I was raising my babies.

He was a no nonsense kind of guy.  He was often blunt and gray seemed not to be in his color palette.

What he stressed was that kids need boundaries and limits.  They need the comfort and relaxing good of knowing that their parents are in charge.  They need to know at age 6 (or 2 or 16), when they are not equipped to run the world, that their parents will step up and make the hard decisions and set the limits that need setting.

I think he is right.  Saying “no” and maintaining chains of command is not always popular.  Kids are wired to push up against the authority we seek to maintain.  It’s how they learn.  They will fuss for sure and push all the buttons their clever and intuitive souls know how to find.

But in the end they will thank us, I believe.  The world is an anxiety-stirring place.  Knowing that they are not in charge of the big things (and sometimes even the little things!) helps children to explore their worlds safely and with confidence.

The other thing Rosemond stressed was the need for parents to order family life in such a way that they take time for themselves; both as individuals and as a couple.  When our lives are solely focused on our children, we send them the wrong message and for sure it is a set-up for disillusionment when they leave the nest and discover that the world does not revolve around them.

It’s been awhile since I was in the kids-at-home trenches.  It is hard and heart-stomping work, raising babies.  The list of needs is endless and the list of anxieties about doing it right (whatever that means!) is endless as well.

And, it’s the most important work I’ll ever do.

God bless parents.  May we find the patience, strength, joy and forgiveness to keep on keeping on.

 

love looks like

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One of my daughters is doctoring these days.  She has a befuddling quirk in her body that sometimes kicks into pain.  She is in one such time.

In the God is good category, she is working with the best doctor in the region.  He has carved out a specialty around her rare issue.  Today, he shoehorned her into his schedule.

The appointment was for eight AM.  The last time she encountered this issue, her sister was in lands far distant.  This time, she lives in town.  So, given the kind of calvary we are, three of us schlepped down to the Main U to get some answers and to hear about what is next.

Here is who we were:  we were mother and two daughters huddled around the stunning gift that is shared love.  The doctor was gracious about the small mob in the examining room.  Tests were ordered and explanations offered.  Time will tell us things, as will the magnificent gift that is my daughter’s body.

How to breathe thanks for love and support and presence?  How to name the priceless gift that is care offered and received?

We cannot take away her pain.  Would that we could.

But we can love.

And she lets us.

 

ground

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Today I get to buy my son shoes.

The years go by.  For a time in my life buying shoes seemed an endless task.  With three children, it seemed like every time I turned around someone needed shoes.

Lately, though, with said children grown and launched, the adventure of shoe seeking is a mother-less affair.  This is good.  Self-sufficiency is a good thing.

But today I get to participate in a ritual whose grooves I know well.

Really, it is not about the shoes.  It’s about tending.  Even though children grow and leave and commence living, they are always tied to their parental units with heart cords.  For the life of me, I haven’t much figured out how not to scan them every time I see them:  are they eating well?  Are their teeth tended?  Are they shod in ways that will keep them dry and warm?  What about that bike helmet?  Are they happy?

The many calculations live in me.  I have to squelch most of the questions I might ask.  I encounter enough eye rolling in our time together.  Said rolling eyes tell me that I have a limited fussing budget to work with, so I have to check in judiciously.

The last time we were together my question had to do with shoes.  Bless him, my son agreed to allow me to replace the beloved (and many-holed) shoes he was wearing.

It felt like victory.

If all goes well, Jameson will walk and bike his way through the winter city in dry and comfortable shoes.

And his mother?  She will feel the warm good of caring for one of her babies.  Sleep comes easier when basics are assured.  As important, I’ll get time to be with one of my favorite people on this planet.

As I anticipate the joy of this seemingly mundane thing, my heart lurches a bit.

I can buy these shoes.  I can fuss and tend and see to it my son is warm and dry.  We’re even going to buy them new, without taking the time to cruise thrift stores, which is often our wont.

This we can do.

What of the so many who cannot?

 

 

Generativity

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My children do not have children.

I am not in that “grandparent” stage of life; the one where wonder is born while watching life pass from generation to generation.

No, I am living the wonder of watching my children make lives with their lives; their own very lives.

I am blessed with three children.  Two girls and a boy are alive in this world and somehow I got to be a part of their borning.  Their dad and I did our best to love and limit and bless them and then we loosed them.

And they are borning yet.

I just spent our Christmas with them.  Given the realities of divorced families, their dad and I alternate face time for Christmas holidays.  It is his year, so we decided to dine and dig into presents early.

The rituals are beyond price.  The thought put into finding heart gifts is so clear and the joy of knowing that treasures are shared is palpable.

Given that their mom is living vegan these days, I was graced with a Cadillac food processor to shred the heck out of any vegetable that would defy me.

And, from my youngest, an amazing heart gift.  He recorded a CD of original compositions.  The CD carries his voice and his thoughts and his evoking of real through guitar and piano and mandolin and there he is, my son, trusting his parents and the world enough to share his tender and fine heart.

The house is now quiet.  My children have gone to the places that hold them as they make life.

And this heart of mine gives thanks for holding and loosing and borning and the wonder that is love.

 

treasure

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And so begins another season of life here on Blaisdell.

Oldest daughter Leah and her wildly alive Pit Bull have moved out.  The room that housed her life treasures (and mine, for surely she is life treasure extraordinaire) is emptied.

It surprises me each time I go upstairs, this vacancy.

I am filled with wonder about this elastic and colossal thing called love.  It is a force in life that finds endless ways to hum between parents and children, partners and pets.

Children come, they go, they partner with others, they hurt, they triumph and always always there is space and hunger within me for their being.

I had lunch with my girls yesterday.  We walked arm in arm down the streets of St Paul and shared Thai food, laughter, and hearts.  Advice was sought and shared, notions played out and life swapped.  This morning I had breakfast with my 21-year-old son.  Always this child has been tender of heart and voracious in his hunger for life and living and while being a sometimes terrified bystander to his questing is rough going, my faith in his amazing beauty is boundless.

I have loved every phase of their being, these people who shared my body for a time.  I sometimes long for the days of sleeper jammies and newly washed heads under my chin for reading marathons.  I long on occasion for the days when I could tuck them in at night and rouse them in the morning.  Their presence in my every day was ground of my being.

And, it still is.  They are flown, my babies.  Flown to the lives they are creating through their willingness to engage and stretch and live.

They are treasure unbound.