Heffalumps and Woozles

The Hundred Acre Wood was a second home.  When I was a child its inhabitants were my friends.  I made jokes and told stories about them; still as an adult, I attribute their characteristics to people I know (as in, "don't be such an Eeyore", or "Your bouncing is going to get you into trouble, Tigger")  some of my favorite sayings in life came from the pages of its book..."It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like 'What about lunch?'", and , "This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it."

When I was a girl, I had an eight-track tape with the entire works of AA Milne recorded and narrated.  I listened to it for hours on end, as I read along with my hard-back, illustrated copies of the very books being narrated.  At the time, it was a modern marvel.  I think that's actually how I learned to read, come to think of it.  I loved the sound of Tigger's bouncing, of Eeyore's melancholy, or Kanga's sweet mothering... they all had something most admirable in their character.  Even Rabbit, my least favorite friend, was loved for his hard work ethic and his organizational skills.  I believe I actually learned life lessons there, in the Hundred Acre Wood.

My copy of my beloved book is, as you can imagine, threadbare and love-worn.  It has dog-eared pages and childish ink drawings on the cover.  It has held a special place on the shelf as an "heirloom", too fragile to enjoy any longer.  Occasionally I'd dust it off and carefully open to the watercolor illustrations and hear the voices of my friends jump out of the pages at me, but I'd just as carefully put it back again, with a loving touch, like an invalid tucked into bed.

Last month we were shopping at a a discount used book store and my husband and I lingered over the "antique" books while waiting for the kids to finish their shopping.  He pulled a book off the shelf and opened it, the cover crackling in the unmistakeable sound of newness.  He said, "Look at this."  I was already looking at an old copy of Pride and Predjudice, and wasn't realy interested in a new book - what was it doing in antiques anyway - but looked, just to be polite (Pooh taught me that.)  You already know... it was an original copy of the Hundred Acre Wood, my copy, full of voices and bright, fresh, watercolored illustrations, and ink drawings.  Not in a childish hand.

I felt like I had just found a long-lost friend I didn't even realize I was missing.  I laughed out loud, and wanted to cry.  My dear husband bought that book and brought it home, and now I once again have the wonders of the stories and friends of the woods to keep me company.  And I can finally share them with my children.  They can learn that a bedtime snack is really just "a little something" and that "If you want to make a song more hummy, add a few tiddely poms", and most importantly, "A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference."

"The King's stinking son fired me, and thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject. While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? We're closed."

A dear friend of mine posted on her facebook that her sweet little daughter went to church and wrote her a precious, touching letter as part of her Primary lesson on families.  " Dear Mom, I love you for turning on the tv for me."  Ouch. 

I went to bed yesterday after church with a sinus headache.  In pain, I might add, thus the use of the word, "-ache".  I slept for about an hour, came downstairs still groggy and bleary-eyed, and my dearest, nearly twelve year-old daughter said, "you ALWAYS have a headache.  You ALWAYS sleep during the day." (EXCUSE ME?) "You NEVER play with me." Hmmm...  I reflected a minute and tried to clear my head - I've heard this story before from my children during allergy season when I really do spend a lot of time not feeling well - and wondered where this was coming from.  I had spent all day Saturday with her, had taken her shopping, had taken her to Sonic, had bought her the pattern and fabric for the new messenger bag she wanted to make for school.  (This partly out of guilt over Aunt Melisa being the first to sew with her and not me, too.)  Saturday had been a day of Hannah, just like when she was a little girl, all hers - Julia hadn't even wanted to come with us, so she had been the center of my attention for hours.

After asking her what she really wanted, and finding out she wanted me to sew with her RIGHT THEN, and telling her, no, I was not going to sew with her right then, that I had other things I needed to do and she could hang out in the kitchen with me and make cookies if she wanted while I worked on my other stuff, I decided that in our jobs, all mothers are just a paper cut waiting for lemon juice to be poured right on.

When I was a teen, I shamelessly accused my mother of not paying enough attention to me as a child, practically accusing her of not loving me.  She patiently explained I had required "holding" (as in "hold-me") for years, at least until I was 4 or 5 and that was part of why I felt angry and abandoned when Aunt Mel came along.  I don't even remember feeling angry and abandoned (I do remember running away after they brought her home - that story another time) I just remember thinking mom didn't love me.  She gave everything.  But didn't love me enough?  Aye yi yi.  So Hannah, and Julia - my "hold me" child, and likely Grayson and Emory, and maybe every child out there, believes their mother never feels well enough or doesn't play enough or always has a headache or doesn't have enough time or is just really good at turning on the tv.  Ouch.

Confessions...

I was maybe 5 or 6 years old at the time, and it was a typical balmy late spring in south-central Texas. San Antonio was already a "big city" then, the suburban sprawl had just begun, and my grandparents lived in a new subdivision, with big lots and too many neighborhood kids to keep track of.  When we got in the way, the adults just sent Melisa and me outside to play without a worry for our safety; there were plenty of older kids outside to keep track of us.

The details are necessarily vague, but the story I've been told goes something like this:  We came in the house after being gone for a long outside play-time.  Dad reports we looked positively green and were obviously distressed.  The adults noticed (that's a comfort...) and took to getting out of us what the matter was.  As I understand it, Melisa tearfully burst out with The Confession, "I Smoked!"  The adults may have jumped out of their seats in alarm (Mom) or covered a chuckle (Dad and Paw Paw) or just laughed outright (MawMaw) but saw our real penitence and sorrow for the sin we had committed and our accompnying physical distress, and soon sympathized and consoled and wanted to know all the details of the big, buck-toothed down-the-street neighbor pre-teen who brought out her parents' cigarettes just to tease and bully the little innocent children.  We were comforted and told it would make us sick, it was bad for us, we should never do it again (the story has never been too clear on my part in all this, but I am reported to have smoked too, but not to have been as forthright as Melisa. Surprised?)

Last night one of my dear ones came into my room with many tears and so much distress and passionately confessed a troubling error and sin which had been weighing on a little heart and soul...I didn't feel an urge to spring from my bed in alarm or cover a chuckle, but as I took that child in my arms to comfort that sorrow, I felt so many feelings... gratitude for a relationship of trust, sorrow for the pain we suffer as the consequence of mistakes, such great love for my beautiful children, my parents, my grandparents -  a whole ancestry of people watching over them , and I dare say fear for the future they will face, even the present they face each day.

They are strong, and they have so much courage that today I'm left to reflect on the integrity they are growing, and on my calling as their teacher here. This child's confession isn't an isolated incident, and while I'm taking a lifetime to develop the moral courage to face my faults and sins, my kids come to me regularly and tell me what they've done and thought and how they want to change.  They give each other advice and ask me not to do things they think are wrong.  Sometimes I am amused (sometimes saddened) at all they still have to teach me.  I should probably try a confessional with my children.

I think I'd feel better.

a FINE Maw Maw

My sisters, Melanie and Margaret, and I were chatting last night about our grandmother Peggy.  They don't remember much; she died when they were still young, and to be honest we haven't talked much about her in our family. I remember her as a loving force in my life.  She didn't have a maternal bone in her body.  I don't remember her ever telling me to brush my teeth, brush my hair, put on a sweater - I don't remember her ever checking to see whether or what I had eaten or concern herself with its nutritional content, but I remember that she loved me.

She passed away shortly after I turned 15.  Because of a series of tragedies leading up to her passing, these long years I have deprived myself of happy memories of her in what I thought was a show of solidarity to her sons.  I only just recently began pulling these treasures out of my locked box for consideration.

She wanted us around her, her grandbabies.  She would come and get us, if our parents wouldn't drive us, to San Antonio when we were very small, then to Dripping Springs when we were older.  She invited us to her house what seemed like every weekend, and she wanted us to spend all weekend with her.  She took us everywhere she went, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio... I have no idea now the nature of these trips; I have vague recollections of family members in some destinations, but I don't really know where we were going, just that we were with her.  I remember stops at countless Pizza Huts and Dairy Queens in small town Texas; I have snipptets of memories of dim restaurants seated next to my beautiful MawMaw laughing, her eyes sparkling.

She would get up on a Saturday morning and tell us we were going to KMart to shop - it was her favorite place for everything, like my Target.  She decided on one of these occasions she would have us sit for portraits at the KMart Photo Center.  I laugh outright at the photo result - me in stubby pigtails, Pippy-Longstocking style, directionally misaligned, one to the sky, one to the floor - I laugh in embarrassment and real gratitude to a Maw Maw who would take me looking like that to KMart and see in me a girl beautiful enough to sit for a portrait.  She always made me feel so ENJOYED.

These are my treasures, these memories.  In the short time I had with her, she never made me feel like she'd had enough of me or could use a break from me or had more important things to do.  In some ways, she was still a child herself, and certainly our teeth really would have "rotted out" and our eyes really would have "stuck that way" if we hadn't been forced to go home on Sunday afternoons, but... teeth can wait.

You lift my feet off the ground, you spin me around, you make me crazier...

Recall Aunt Mamie? She’s a brazen girl, shocking, full of life. She lives life out loud. At the age of three she shook her bootie through the house singing “I love rock & roll, put another dime in the juke box, baby…” at the top of her voice in a flashy, sequined bright blue tutu. She completely lacked self-consciousness. Her whole childhood was a hands on hips, spinning, dancing, singing affair, and she still lives life that way.

One snowy day in Colorado, my now 9 year-old Julia was about three, and she put her hands on her hips in a flashy sequined hot pink tutu and shook her bootie in the kitchen to ‘N Sync (“it ain’t no lie, baby, bye, bye, bye”) and I was struck with the truth of genetic fidelity in a family tree. She couldn’t possibly have known of her mimicry of her beloved Aunt, and yet there it was, full in my face, so funny and so familiar to me.

This morning I lay in bed while Julia performed Taylor Swifts’ “Crazier” for her daddy and me. She’s preparing for tonight’s talent show try-outs; she’s planning on singing for her entire school. Her little cherubic face, all freckled, red hair – she sang out with her whole heart, a real performer. And of course it brought back so many images of Mamie, the consummate performer herself, not the least performance of which was belting it out onstage at her own wedding reception…resplendent in her white gown… jazz ensemble behind her…love song to her new groom.

What brave girls, Julia and Mamie. I wish I could be like them, but my genes tend to the careful, watchful, thoughtful, and wary of what others think of me genes. How I admire Mamie, Julia, and obviously other ancestors in our family, living life out loud, not afraid to make people look at them and laugh, and sometimes even be brazen and shocking. They bring such joy.

Someone's in the kitchen with Hannah... and it's not me

It's a sweet afternoon to watch my 11 year-old's daddy teach her how to make alfredo pesto sauce.  She's working on meeting her goals for her Faith in God for Girls - one of which was to make dinner for the family - and has created the menu for this meal with much anticipation.  I don't remember ever being excited about learning to cook, but I do remember always being in the kitchen.  I just learned it by immersion, like a foreign language, seeping into my pores with the smell of garlic.

I'm guilty of not involving my girls in the cooking.  I'm afraid of nearly-lost finger tips (yes, that's me) and knife-in-toaster jolts of electricity (again, me).  I think they'll learn to cook... I hope they'll learn to cook... Will I have to send them to cooking school, like Mom had to send me to sewing school as a result of her childhood sewing injuries?  Just watching Hannah wield that knife makes my stomach turn.

She smartly sasses me with, "Aunt Mamie let me cut the vegetables when she was here."  I silently curse Aunt Mamie, and tell Hannah it's only because Aunt Mamie's precious perfect-fingered daughter is only 2.  "Just wait." I say.  I know it's true, too.  And so the brave Daddy will teach her to stir over a hot stovetop just like he teaches her to be safe and strong in so many other ways, and I will watch with gratitude... and pray.