August 2005: Julie Mooney

On Saturday, August 27, a friend of mine died. Julie Mooney, 41, had breast cancer that metastasized to her bones. She was the mother of two boys — Quinn 10, who is in my son Jacob’s class at St. Monica, and Dylan, 13, an 8^th grader there.

            Her death was not a surprise. We all knew it was coming for quite awhile. The day before she died, I received a call letting me know she most likely had fewer than 24 hours. And the moment the phone rang at 6 a.m. that Saturday morning, I knew what the message would be. Yet, despite the fact I have nothing to be surprised about; despite the fact I knew about the chemotherapy and radiation and morphine; despite the fact that it was expected; part of me is still shocked. Part of me still looks at her age at death and thinks it’s unfair — that she only had half a life. She didn’t get to finish everything. She had to leave right in the middle of being a mom, when there are still lunches to be made and carpools to drive, hugs to give and birthday presents to wrap. She had to leave before she and her husband could celebrate any milestone anniversary like 20 or 25.  She had to leave too soon.

            But while part of me rails at the unfairness of it all, the other part understands that there are no guarantees — that while most people are older than 41 when they die, some are even younger. Before Julie’s breast cancer had metastasized to her bones in May of 2004, she had been cancer-free for the five previous years. The breast cancer that she had had when her boys were tiny was nowhere to be found for five years, and during that time, Julie had the chance to see her two little boys turn into bigger boys. She saw them learn to read and ride two-wheelers.  She coached their classes’ variety show numbers and volunteered in their school. She smiled her enormous smile thousands of times in those five years, and those of us fortunate enough to know her were able to enjoy her unbelievably positive personality.

            On the morning of her death, our family went to St. Monica for the morning daily Mass. After the opening song, the priest announced that the day was St. Monica’s feast day — St. Monica, patron saint of wives and mothers. My husband and I looked at one another, first stunned, then with that sense of “of course.” Of course God chose St. Monica’s feast day as the day for Julie to enter eternal life. Julie’s children and husband were her life. I saw her death on St. Monica’s feast day as recognition from God of the goodness of Julie’s devotion to her family. I also see the day as significant for another reason. While I believe Julie will continue her mothering from heaven, she is now unable to do the practical, day-to-day things that keep a household running. I see her death on St. Monica’s feast day as a call to the St. Monica community to help Julie with her parenting. I believe that Julie, with the help of the Holy Spirit, will inspire some of the mothers and fathers of the parish to know what her sons need. I believe she will put the right words in our mouths to give comfort to her boys, to help nourish them and guide them. The date of her death reminds us of our responsibility.

             Looking toward this coming year, I cannot imagine how difficult it will be for Julie’s family to go on without her. I find myself talking to St. Monica — mother of 3 — more than I used to. And I’m pretty sure St. Monica and Julie are talking to each other — discussing a plan to help Dylan and Quinn, and her husband, Dan.

 Two mothers, together in Heaven, working together.

August, 2005: Frozen Boys

My boys were playing freeze tag with some friends the other night and having finished the dinner dishes, I sat on the front porch and watched. Liam, 7, had only played the game a couple times before, and was taking the rule about being frozen very seriously. While his older brother, Jacob, 10, would stop and casually stand in one place when tagged, Liam held the exact position he had been in at the time of the tag. I watched with amusement as Liam struggled to balance on one foot, arms extended, not even blinking, until someone ran by to unfreeze him again.

            If I could, I would freeze the current ages of my two boys for a couple of extra years. At 7 and 10, they are full-throttle in the middle of childhood, and it’s my favorite stage so far. Their 3 ½-year age difference, which seemed like quite a gap when they were younger, has finally narrowed. They can play together well, and Jacob is kind enough to go easy on his little brother to keep Liam’s frustration at bay. They no longer need the constant supervision their 2-year-old sister requires. A nice mix of dependence and independence, they’re old enough to put their own pajamas on, but young enough to still want to be tucked in.

            Maybe it’s the former junior high teacher in me that wants to gently tap each of my boys and tell them they’re frozen at 7 and 10. I know about the attitudes that can come when kids turn 12 or 13, and I’m enjoying the absence of eye-rolling and talking back while I still can.

As far as I can tell, our boys are holding onto their childhood a little longer than some of their peers. Bill and I have limited their exposure to TV, movies and even popular songs. It has left them a little out of sync with pop culture, but I think it’s also kept them innocent longer. With no cable, no Game Boy, Game Cube and I-pod, there’s nothing for them to do but play and read. Nothing to do but be a kid.

But while I can keep them from growing up before their time, I can’t freeze them in mid-childhood forever. I can’t freeze them at 7 and 10 any more than I can hurry their sister through the unreasonable two’s and toward the more rational three-year-old stage. I can’t freeze them any more than I can freeze my own age. Time dictates its own pace.

What I’m hoping, though, is that I can learn from my current desire to hold onto the present. So often, as a parent, I’ve looked ahead or behind. When the boys were babies, I longed for the time when I could sleep through the night. When they started school, I looked back wistfully to our lazy mornings cuddling together. Now, rooted in the present, I’m (finally) appreciating them for the age they are. Fully enjoying my boys at their current age makes me wonder if what I’m looking for is not a forever 7- and 10-year-old, but rather, a spirit of enjoyment and wonder for my children, no matter what their age.  Maybe I’m looking for the grace to see the beauty in every age — even those ages that might seem more difficult, like two or thirteen.

I will pray that God will give me the grace to enjoy my children when they’re teens just as much as I enjoy them right now. And who knows, maybe when Jacob is 16 and Liam is 13, I’ll say it doesn’t get any better than this, only to be proven wrong again when they’re 24 and 21. I don’t know. I do know though, that 7 and 10 is wonderful. Scooters and soccer. Freeze tag and kickball. Popsicles and chapter books. I can’t freeze it, but I can savor it. I can drink it in. And I am. I certainly am.

July, 2005: A new house

We just moved. Bill and I bought our first house, on Eula Court, when Jacob was thirteen months old. He learned to walk in the dining room shortly after we moved in. Jacob is now ten. The people who owned the Eula house before us had a nine-year-old when they moved out.

            “It goes so fast,” Julie, the previous owner, told me at the closing. I smiled at her, not really believing. Nothing about babyhood seemed to go fast to me. At the time, I was still waiting for Jacob to start sleeping through the night. At the time, it felt like I would always be the mother of a baby. I would always be in my twenties. Thirty was still far off, and school-aged children, further still. 

            Shortly after we moved into Eula, I found a pair of little boy’s shoes in the basement. Julie must have forgotten them. They would fit Jacob at three or four, I decided, and packed them away to save. By the time I re-discovered them, Jacob had long outgrown them. I put them aside to save for Liam, and the same thing happened. I began to understand that Julie had had a point.

            Selling our Eula Court house was as much a milestone for me as any graduation ever was. While our toddler, Jamie, keeps me connected to the little-kid world I’ve come to know so well, Jacob is pulling me hard into the next phase of parenting. Selling our first house and moving to this one was an acknowledgement of growth. Two boys and a girl in one room was fine for awhile, but it wouldn’t have been for long. I can’t help but note that while all three of our kids learned to walk in our Eula Court house, they’ll likely learn to drive while living in this one. Our basement here still has plenty of Fischer Price toys in it, just as our last one did, but it also has a mini-pool table and a ping-pong table that show how our children’s play is changing.

            While I can quickly tick off a list of things the boys learned to do in our first house — from going on the potty to long division, it’s what Bill and I learned that makes me even more aware of the passage of time. Some things we learned on purpose, like when we checked out the book How to Build a Deck from the library, convinced that if we could read, we could build. Some things we learned by uncomfortable necessity, like when Bill suddenly lost his job, and I had to change my plan to be a stay-at-home mom and go to work full time for a while. Most things, we learned gradually. Gradually, we learned the rhythms of marriage; the endurance needed for parenthood, the ebb and the flow of life as a family — a family first of three, then four, then five. We moved into our current home knowing more than we could have imagined when we moved into our last — not just about plastering, plumbing and painting, but also about ourselves as a couple. We are quicker to laugh at ourselves than we were moving in to our first house. We are more confident in who we are as a partnership, who we are professionally, who we are as parents. We know more a little more about where we’re heading in life, yet we have also had enough unforeseen detours to know anything is possible — that derailment often happens when you’re chugging along quickly.  

Kari and Drew, the couple we sold our Eula Court home to, are so young and cute they look like they stepped off the top of a wedding cake. They are eager and excited and have a dog who loves the yard where Jacob threw a thousand football passes, where Liam spent hours making forts out of sticks, where both boys, two foster children, and then Jamie, learned the rule that no one is allowed to eat the sandbox sand, tasty as it might appear. To Drew and Kari, I’m sure that our mid-thirties life with three kids, homework, soccer practice and little time to worry about the towels on the bathroom floor, seems unbelievable far-off. I didn’t even try to explain that it’s closer than they might think.

Over the summer, as I waited for the closing dates for the two homes, I was torn between peering ahead and glancing back. I sat on my Eula Court porch and drank in the memories of our first home — the chubby baby cheeks, the mashed banana coated bibs, and the walks with the stroller that were a part of our days there. Swinging on the porch swing, I looked with wonderment at our future in our new home, taking a guess at what that future may be, but not knowing. Not really. Caught between two houses—between our past and our future — I was able only to blink back my tears and give thanks for all that had been, and pray for all that would be.

June, 2005 Summer vacation

On one of the first days of summer vacation, my sister called. She had known the boys had swimming lessons in the morning and was wondering what they did in the afternoon.

            “They bickered,” I said.

            “All afternoon?”

            “Pretty much.”

            Maureen found this funny, partly because she doesn’t have kids, partly because I made it sound like it was an actual activity. Time to swim, then lunchtime, followed by a period of incessant bickering.

            Now, a month later, we are in the middle of summer and while the boys still bicker occasionally, it doesn’t seem to be the full-time sport it was in early June.

            If the first week of school is takeoff, the first week of vacation after the school year is reentry. For astronauts, reentry is the most dangerous time. As they pass from space into the atmosphere, the temperature outside their spacecraft can reach three thousand degrees. Without the proper equipment and the correct maneuvers before and during reentry, they will perish.

            Summer vacation means reentry into the family. No longer is everything in the boys’ world set up exactly for their age and developmental level.  For six-year-old Liam, reentry heat is turned on as he tries to keep up with his brother, 3 years older. For Jacob, the heat comes through frustration with a little brother who asks too many questions and doesn’t always understand everything on the first try. And both of them need to deal with the thousand-degree toddler, who is apt to scribble on their pictures, take apart their Lego creations and generally pull away Mom and Dad’s attention.

            To avoid what felt like an inevitable crash and burn, I found myself giving my boys the equivalent of the ceramic tiles put on the outside of the spaceship to resist the heat. For the first part of the space age, scientists didn’t think reentry without burning was possible. Because of this, they didn’t even man the first flights. As they learned more about how to manage the reentry process, they developed spacecrafts that were better and better able to handle the heat. I’m sure each parent has developed his or her own “tiles” that help with reentry and cut down on bickering. My tiles can be boiled down to three sentences. The first week of vacation, I found myself saying each several times a day. Now, it seems that the boys actually internalized them somewhat, and I don’t need to say them as often:

            Tile 1: “Find something he’s saying that you agree with and talk about that.” This is especially aimed at 10-year-old Jacob. Too often, Liam would make a statement about something, and Jacob would find the one thing about it that was incorrect and point it out. To prevent a conversation from escalating to an argument over small points, Jacob needed to see that the object of conversing wasn’t to find every error in what Liam was saying. His job was to find Liam’s main point and build on that, rather than tear down a smaller point.

            Tile 2: “No one can talk until the next stop light.” When it seemed that every car ride was a trip to Bickerfest, I began instituting whole blocks of silence when I heard an argument was starting. At the stoplight, they could talk again, but if the talk goes back to the same old argument, then it’s more silence until another landmark. They soon learned that if they have any hope of doing anything in the car besides listening to NPR, they needed to talk civilly to each other.

            Tile 3: “You’re arguing over the computer? You’re lucky to have a computer.” This is my social justice tile. I noticed that a lot of the things the boys argued over wouldn’t even be available to the average kid in a third-world country. Early in the summer, I explained (and re-explained) why kids in another place would be so happy to take turns with whatever my boys both wanted to use at once. I found I could apply the lesson to just about any material thing. “Do you know how lucky you are to have a ___?” (basketball, turn to choose the TV show, bike.) I’m not sure if they now have internalized this message or just don’t want me to start the third-world lecture again, since it does tend to be long.  Regardless, they are not fighting as much over objects.

            I have been able to write this whole essay as the boys played whiffle ball in the front yard. The first week of summer, I wouldn’t have been able to get through the first paragraph.

The reentry is successful, Houston.

And I’m going to enjoy it until we need to once again prepare for takeoff.

June, 2005-- Bragging parents

No one likes to hear a mother bragging about her kids. While every parent has moments of thinking his or her child is the smartest, cutest, most athletic, kindest kid in the class (and perhaps the city or even the nation) we all know there are limits of how much others want to hear about our kids. I would like to brag as much as the next mother, but I hold myself back, and expect others to do the same.

The other night, we were at a fund-raising dinner for a local charity and were placed at a table with a couple we had never met. Their children were about the same age as ours, and we soon learned the mother was home schooling. She spent the first course of dinner going on about how brilliant these kids were because of her home schooling.

            “Our kindergartener just finished Treasure Island,” she gushed across the table.

            “Really,” I said, reaching for the rolls. “The real Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, or an abridged version?”

            “Well, an abridged version, but still, it had chapters,” she said.

            “It was 164 pages long,” her husband added.

            “Now that would be something, if he could read the actual Treasure Island, wouldn’t it?” I said.

            As a former teacher, I knew as well as anyone that it is a feat for any kindergartener to even be able to read the words “treasure” and “island,” let alone an abridged version of the classic novel. Truly, anything beyond Dick and Jane is considered quite advanced for kindergarten. Yet, somehow, I could not give this mother the satisfaction of an amazed reaction. I needed to downplay her son’s achievement.

            My husband teased me about it later on the car ride home.

            “The REAL Treasure Island?  Oh, just the abridged version. Well, then.”

            “I couldn’t help it,” I said. “It just popped out.”

            The desire to brag about our children is not all bad. In fact, when done to the right audience — the child’s other parent, grandparents, even aunts and uncles — it can be a wonderful thing. Some of my favorite conversations with Bill have been when the kids are gone for the weekend and we have a chance to catch up with each other and talk about great things they’ve done lately. (Of course, the fact that we are alone for the weekend always helps us think fondly of the kids.)  Grandparents never recognize parental bragging for what it is-- they call it “news” and soak it up. And aunts and uncles — especially childless ones — tend to be their nieces and nephews’ biggest fans.

            When kept within the confines of the family, or even within close friendships, telling of our children’s accomplishments helps us to appreciate them even more. One example of Liam’s creativity, told by me, often sparks his grandmother to think of another example, and soon we are basking in the glory of Liam-ness. It’s a nice place to be.

            The difference between boasting inside and outside the family circle has to do with how full a picture the listener has of your child. In the case of close friends and family, a proud parent’s comment about a child’s accomplishment is just one piece of the puzzle. Grandma heard about how Liam hit his sister yesterday, but today she’s hearing about the elaborate popsicle-stick crucifix he made at school. Both are parts of Liam. She sees the whole picture and delights in the good.  In the case of the Treasure Island reading kindergartener, though, that’s all I know about him. His mom is providing a one-sided view, and while I know it can’t be all that there is, I can’t very well ask, “Yes, but what are his bad points?” so I choose to diminish the one good point I do know about. Was it nice of me? Not really. But it did just pop out.

             Our vast parental love for our children propels us into wishing that everyone could love and appreciate our children as we do. Our mistake is thinking that if others could just know of our child’s gifts and strengths, they too, would love our child. The irony is the opposite is true. The people who love our children most are those who know their wobbles as well as their triumphs.

            Swapping stories of missteps-- whether our own or our children’s-- is an important part of telling the parenting story. It’s a way of making sure we don’t puff up with pride in our own accomplishments. Acknowledging imperfections keeps us grounded and true. It releases us from the fear that either our children or we need to be perfect in order to be loved. Telling of foibles as well as triumphs allows us to take one step further away from conditional love. At the same time, it brings us one step closer to love without condition — love even through faults and failings. And that brings us one step closer to loving as God does.