Quite E-Musing

I lost my raincoat. I don’t know how in the world one loses a coat. But somehow I did.

My raincoat was to me what Linus’ blanket is to him. Kind of old, ragged, nothing special, but always there.

If it was the slightest bit chilly outside or inside, I just threw on my raincoat. If I was wearing a frumpy outfit and needed to go out, the raincoat covered all areas in question and hid my fashion-less clothing choices.

I’ve spent hours being miffed at myself for losing a large article of clothing, making a list in my mind of all possible locations where I could have left it, and making up elaborate stories of who might have been desperate enough to steal my raincoat. Not to mention the hours I’ve spent surfing the web trying to find a decent-priced replacement (who knew raincoats were so stinking expensive?)

Until Friday.

Fridays are Dan’s day off. Because we were sick this week and Dan had to come home mid-week to help out, he took Friday morning off, but headed out after lunch to play catch-up.

Until I heard him pull into the garage just a few short hours later. Puzzled, I went out to greet him in the garage (quietly as Taye was napping) and ask completely perplexedly, “are you home for the day?”

His answer–a very-proud-of-myself grin and an arm extended in my direction giving me a hanging bag from Nordstrom Rack.

Inside was a new raincoat. Not a practical mommy-looking raincoat, or a duck-yellow plasticky raincoat, but a name-brand designer raincoat that is actually trendy (and it has a hood and POCKETS!)

I was touched. I had no idea he could tell how this raincoat thing had really knocked me off kilter.

I would never have been so bold as to choose that coat for myself. I obviously don’t see myself the same way that Dan does. In the mirror I see tired, haggard, out-of-date and given up on myself “let’s just try to make it through the day” mommy.

According to the bright-colored Michael Kors raincoat hanging on my coat rack, Dan somehow still sees the youthful, professional, likes to look nice and should be proud of herself Jenna.

Just another reason why I love him so.

The setting: in the kitchen

The time: naptime for Taye

The players: Jenna & her cell phone

…and action!

As Jenna is taking three plump pork chops out of their wrapper, her cell phone, which she has purposely set to vibrate during naptime, begins to buzz. She glances at the number, careful not to touch the phone with her raw-pork-riddled hands. Not recognizing the number and afraid the sound of her voice might wake the newly-asleep toddler, she watches as the phone call drops.

A few seconds later, the phone buzzes again signaling a voice message. After filling pocketed pork chops with homemade apple, cheddar, onion & cranberry stuffing, Jenna thoroughly washes her hands (while silently humming the ABC’s to ensure she has washed long enough to rid her hands of all germs).

Stealthily, she lifts the cell phone to her ear to listen to the mysterious message. What she hears brings unforeseen tears to her eyes.

“Hi, Jenna, this is J. B___ over at (Liam’s school). I love your message. It really made me smile. So does your son. He’s a wonderful boy. And I just wanted to let you know what a pleasure he is to teach each day. He’s made some really good adjustments and I’m just really proud of him.

When you see him tonight, tell him Mr. B___ thinks he’s the greatest thing since pencils.

I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.”

Seriously folks. I was a teacher once. The only phone calls I ever made home were of the nature of phone call no teacher ever wants to make, no parent ever wants to receive, and every student dreads.

It’s been hard sending Liam to all-day school this year. He’s my right-hand man-child. But getting a phone call like this not only solidifies that he’s right where he’s supposed to be, but that he’s with a very caring teacher. One that (we found out on the down-low thanks to some neighbors up the street) is a believer making a difference in kids’ lives by teaching in the public school system.

This curious and unexpected interchange got me to thinking. I never would have made calls like this when I was a teacher. Do I ever offer encouraging words like these as a parent? As a person? As a wife? Or do I save my breath for reactions, scoldings, and negativity? Shouldn’t I be preventing the need for correction and words I usually regret saying in tones of voice I hate hearing myself use by doing what this sage teacher is doing? Building up his students by bragging about them to their parents, creating trust with a few words of positivity, drawing attention to the good things he sees happening.

What about you? How could a  few intentional phrases change the life of someone close to you for the better? I know I’m thinking hard to figure out how I can use my words to “pay it forward”, because that phone call just did something to my spirit that is beyond words.

Today I was hurrying to try and get a serving dish down from the top shelf of the cabinet. A stack of three Wedgewood coffee cups started to bobble.

My calculator-brain immediately computed the risk. I KNEW dropping the serving bowl would break it, and that it is more expensive to replace and would be much more missed than a single coffee cup. I gripped the dish and tried to block the falling triplet. Let’s just say my calculated risk paid off (in the negative sense) and we now have one coffee cup’s worth of extra cabinet space.

My kids watched the fiasco with rapt attention from their chairs at the kitchen table.

After the great clatter died down and last shard of glass stopped spinning, I shouted, “stay there. Nobody move. I need to clean up the glass.”

My kids had a million really relevant and helpful questions. Like, “why did those fall? Why didn’t you have daddy get that dish down for you?”

I found myself replying in a “not very nice” voice that, “daddy is at work a lot, so I have to do things by myself a lot. Sometimes I have to try do things I’m not strong enough to do or reach things I’m not tall enough to reach because daddy isn’t here.”

Immediately, I started hearing what I was saying how the kids were probably hearing me. I sounded like a spoiled, bratty child who makes excuses and is unwilling to admit when she messes up. I could have slowed down, gotten a chair, and gotten the dish down safely. But I was hurrying. I do everything like there is a fire lit under it, and one bigger than that lit under me.

“Was that the first one broken [from the set]“, Liam asked. Insightful 6 year old.

I had to think. No, a bowl with a hairline crack in it succumbed to the dishwasher about 6 months ago. There’s a knife that went missing during one of the years my brother lived with us (I still have hope that it’s in the trunk of his car).

The pieces are extremely expensive to replace. They were wedding presents. The set is discontinued. High end china and silver. Most people keep them packed away. We, however, choose to use and enjoy them as much as possible.

All this taking inventory of our dishes and silverware somehow translated as a metaphor for our marriage. There’s a piece missing here or there, but we’re still a set. Still breathtakingly beautiful. Something to be proud of. Maybe a bit more scratched and a little less shiny than when brand spanking new out of the packaging, but still thoroughly useful and meant to be together.

More than ten years ago, Dan and I chose our dishes and flatware as we registered for wedding presents. We had/have very different tastes, but found something we could both agree on. And I’ve never, ever gotten sick of our pattern. It hasn’t aged, even though we have.

Most importantly, I am still absolutely in love with and enamored by my husband. I know just how lucky I am and bask in the knowledge that even though Dan is gone during the day, he cannot wait to be headed home to us–even if knows he’s coming home to a broken coffee cup.

A little ditty I remember my fifth grade teacher singing to us:

Make new friends, but keep the old
some are silver, and the others gold

I have been surfing the waves of nostalgia lately. The smallest things will bring to mind an old friend, an old place, a fuzzy memory. Some of these memories are precious; they waft through my mind as welcome as the steam from a mug of hot cocoa and curl my lips up in a secretive smile remembering a happenstance from years gone by. Others give me pangs of ill as I’m reminded of situations that brought me to tears or relationships gone awry.

~*~

The smell of Lily of the Valley flowers that grow in the corner of my backyard instantly transported me back to a big, old white house in Haddon Heights, NJ where I spent most of my elementary years. I remembered picking clutches of the tiny, sweet-smelling flowers and begging my mom to let us put them in colored water so we could watch them get striped. I checked the scar on my knee to see if it’s still there from the day I was late and running to catch the bus, tripping, and splitting it open on one of the granite stones on the pathway of the Christian Science Church’s gateway that we lived next door to.

~*~

I ate a cucumber today, but just one slice. It tasted so horrible in my mouth because it reminded me of a friendship that ended so strangely and un-amicably. How two people could fail so badly at trying to be friends still has me stumped and stymied. And I thanked God for the many, many miles of safety and silence between us.

~*~

Memorial Day found me pining for the seagull screech and toxic-hot sun of Ocean City, NJ. Memorial Day weekend was never-fail for bumping into an old school chum–yes, even the one who turned out to be a model and is so stunningly beautiful that she makes me feel bad about myself. Or a dear church family–meeting kids I used to babysit who are now way taller than I am. Missing Grandpop, who mostly sat in the rocking chair and presided over the TV clicker, but never failed to throw out a firecracker of a comment every here and there to keep us all on our toes and laughing ’til we hurt with both thumbs up.

~*~

As I struggled through “craft time” with my girls, I thought back to college how my roommate was blessed with the gift of art. She would doodle works of brilliance. My favorite piece was my name spelled out with each letter representing something significant to me–like the “f” shaped like a sprouting bean plant because she called me “bean”, or the “n” spotted like a cow because she knew my dad and I had a bevvy of bovine jokes constantly running like mad cow disease between the two of us. How my best piece of writing in college was simply describing an outing the two of us took one afternoon on some borrowed bikes.

~*~

I glanced at an article in the NY Times–something about wristwatches still being totally en vogue despite hard economic times. It made me wonder if the watch I gave that old high school beau really got “stolen by the plumber”, or if he just really didn’t like it (or me?) and decided to ditch it.

~*~

When a family member asked if my son was having a “kindergarten graduation”, that really took me back. I remember mine so clearly. I was determined to wear a long and beautiful dress (my daughters DO come by it honestly!), I sang “Only God Can Count the Apples in a Single Seed”, and took a bonnet to slip on my head before my trio. I was SURE I needed to sing a song about God and apples wearing a bonnet. I will never forget Mrs. Rinker, and many of my classmates, whom I graduated 8th grade with before being launched into the oh-so-tumultuous high school years.

~*~

After a message from an old college friend, I shuddered thinking back to my senior year living arrangements. Where I secretly hammered a nail in the window frame to try to keep a housemate’s boyfriend from sneaking in the front window into her room at night–it was easier to hammer a nail than confront the situation.

~*~

A lady who shopped our recent garage sale mentioned that her daughter is struggling with MS. It reminded me of a Jen I was schoolmates with whose mom had MS. How when I went to her house to play, I always found her life so intriguing. My parents prepped me so that I wouldn’t say or ask anything about her father because, apparently, he wasn’t married to her mother any more or at least didn’t live in that house. There were decorative plates hanging all along the wall–the kind you order off TV or from an ad in a magazine. Her mom used a “Water Pic” to brush her teeth and quirkily always measured 1/4 cup of grape juice into a tall glass of water before she drank it. Most vivid to me, though, was that this Jen had over 100 bottles of nail polish.

~*~

My brothers always accuse me of “making up memories”. I have so many stories of our childhood that I remember so vividly that they have not one shred of memory about. So whether or not any of these vignettes are even true, I guess you will never know.

The end of the year snuck up on me. OK, so that’s the most lame excuse ever. The calendar never changes and I’ve known the end of the schoolyear was coming since the day it started and I got a honking stack of paperwork full of dates and calendars.

At Elli’s preschool, parents were taking up collections to buy the teachers gift certificates as a thank you for the year. They didn’t ask me to contribute, and for that I am grateful. I guess they realize that people working in ministry and in the middle of an international adoption probably aren’t teeming with extra cash. Last year I made each teacher pizza bread and gave them a loaf or two with a little note of appreciation for the year. This year, I just really didn’t have the time. I totally missed the window for making a thoughtful and homemade thank you edible for Elli’s preschool teachers. Fail.

I did, however, realize that since preschool ends two weeks earlier than Kindergarten, I still had time to do something for Liam’s teacher.

I sat down during naptime with a flowery writing set I was given about 5 years ago and wrote exactly what I felt in my heart to Liam’s kindergarten teacher.

I told her that we were initially disappointed when Liam’s name was #26 on the waiting list after the lottery to get into the Spanish immersion program and we had to go with our plan B school. That Liam’s preschool teachers recommended we find an “out of the box” and “newfangled” type of teacher to meld with his learning style. I honestly penned that when I asked about her and found out that she ran a “very rigid classroom”, I was a bit panicked. But after just a few weeks at school, I knew that Liam was meant to be her student because she was just the right teacher for him.

Having watched him love to go to school, be faced with challenging “friend” situations at school and making beyond-his-years-wise choices every single time, growing in his confidence, ability to use his logic and reasoning skills, shocking me with his reading and writing skills, singing AND doing motions in music class (anyone remember the Penguin situation at the Christmas musical?) and emulating teaching his little sisters at home, I could not have asked for a more solid first year of learning for Liam.

I wrote in permanent pen that “I didn’t really care if he learned to read or write this year, I just wanted him to be comfortable going to school, to love learning, and to be a good person. He’s got 12 more  years to learn all the facts and figures, but if he didn’t like school from the get-go, then we would be in big trouble”.

I told her, sincerely, that I hoped if she were teaching for enough more years that she would get to harbor this wonderful learning environment for Liam’s 3 upcoming siblings.

Of course I wish I could do something sensational to show her how much I have appreciated her from 12:30-3pm every day this school year. Like shelling out hundreds of dollars or being able to present her with a very special gift. She has been so instrumental in Liam’s first learning experience and setting a strong foundation for his schooling to come.

But all I have to give is words.

So last week I sat down and penned my best for her, and sent the letter in with Liam today.

I got a lovely e-mail in response already.

“Thank you so much for your most beautiful and very touching comments in your letter.  I guess you have seen first hand how much I love the children I teach.  Children grow and bloom with kindness and love that is what I offer to them. I keep my expectations high, so they float to the surface like cream. Liam is a treasure.  You are both wonderful parents.  Positive and constructive learning is what I strive for….. so each child will reach his full potential. It has been a wonderful year all the way around.  The children are reading, writing, drawing and know how to be a friend. They have learned how to make positive choices.  Thank you once again from the bottom of my heart.  You made my day.”

During my first pregnancy, my biggest craving was anything with melted cheese on it. Mexican food–spicy, Spanishy, burritos, chips w/ cheese, chicken with cheese melted over the top, etc. And I remember a day I drank almost an entire 2 liter of grape soda while at work.

The doctor stopped weighing us after I had gained 54 pounds by the 38th week of the pregnancy.

Due to toxemia AND my being strep B positive AND having family so far away, my doctor scheduled my induction for May 5–about a week before my due date.  I had a fantastic birth experience–love hospitals with heated sheets, cold popsicles, and staff paid to make a big fuss over me while I’m there.

Not knowing whether our baby was a boy or girl, we went to the hospital with a short list of names. (We mailed out cards with lists of possible boy names, possible girl names, and some blank lines for write-ins to get some family & friend suggestions to help the out-of-townness of everyone feel a little less far).

When we found out that we had a boy, we looked at our boy name list and  had Nicholas (Cole for short), Aidan, and Liam on the short list. Our little guy was definitely not red and fiery, so Aidan got struck, he just didn’t look like a Nicholas to me and so Liam it was. We had a different middle name chosen (which I forget, Dan, do you remember?) but in the hospital I really wanted Liam to be named after his father. So says the Jenna, thus it was done. (Not too much fight put up by a very proud, albeit tired of writing a seminary paper in the hospital using a flip-open keyboard with his PDA, father)

This little dude turned my world nether. For a career-oriented gal in the midst of her MA in Management, I was totally blindsided by the motherly instincts that kicked in after Liam was born. And thus began this crazy adventure into being a mom. Being good at it, being bad at it, being OK with it, being not OK with it, but from that day on being a mom

Liam, thanks for making me who I am today. I have loved being a mom because of you. Despite your sleeping in our bed with us for practically the entire first year of your life. Despite always having to be held, and generally not being a happy kid until you learned to walk and could go, go, go. Despite knocking out your two front teeth at the tender age of 2 and some change. (We’re still waiting for the new ones to grow in…I don’t think I’ll recognize my son with teeth when that does happen) Despite battles of your strong will, night-owlery, and inordinate amount of independence.

I am amazed at who Liam is today, but not surprised. As soon as they laid him on my stomach after delivery, he lifted his little head up–looking like a pale, wrinkly turtle–to look around. He’s still like that. Pale, not so wrinkly, but super observant. He didn’t cry right away or make a fuss, and that’s how he is today. He takes everything in stride and is a very low-key and laid back guy.

Don’t get me wrong, if someone so much as thinks about crossing a line, he is the first to cry “foul”. And we jokingly call him our little pharisee because all rules apply to everyone else except him, and he has a gift for pointing out everyone else’s faults without (yet) being able to recognize his own. (I freely admit that this comes from me, myself, and I. I’ve had 32 years to recognize and work on it…and still am…let’s hope I can re-direct that “gifting” by having been “stretched” through it for so much of my life.)

This is the first year I have had to give up total and complete creative liberty and execution of the birthday cake. That is both an exciting and I-need-to-have-my-hands-tied-behind-my-back kind of feeling. We collaborated on his Scooby-Doo cake and it turned out a masterpiece. In his mind. It tasted good and hopefully was what he envisioned and I have to be OK with that.

Liam, your heart is so good. I can’t imagine how much gooder it will be when you decide to ask Jesus into it. Maybe 6 will be the year? fI know faith is hard for you. You need to see and touch and feel to trust. I’ll just keep praying that something or someone will be able to demonstrate or communicate the wonderful truth of Jesus into your life, and that we can celebrate the day you ask him into your life. I’m loving trying to figure you out and directing you to play to your strengths without trampling others in the process, and coaching you to persevere through things that challenge you or don’t come easily to you (which ain’t much, lucky kid)

I say it all the time, and for now you still let me.

I love you, bugaboo!

Happy Birthday to my burrito baby on this Cinco de Mayo. (I like to tell him, there will always be a party on your birthday!)

Around Christmatime, when Dan told me he was asked to speak at the ‘09 Orange conference, he mentioned that he’d love to see if we could figure out a way for me to come along and experience it with him. I got lucky, because we worked it out.

Knowing my kids were being totally loved by their out-of-town grandmothers, I was able to leave. Really leave. Not worry. Relax. Know that my kids were not someone else’s hassle or responsibility, but Grandma and Lou’s daily joys.

Being joined at the hip to my husband was almost awkward (simply because it hasn’t happened since we birthed our first child almost 6 years).  And it was blissful. I used to make fun of couples who hold hands while eating lunch, and still would if given the chance, but not of being able to sit so close that our knees touched while we ate a meal from START to FINISH! Staring into each others’ eyes over pasta salad with feta in the speaker’s lounge…ok, well, let’s get back to the subject at hand…

Yes, I had to wear an orange T-shirt (not my best shade, but I must admit that I OWNED it thanks to a hand-beaded necklace from MCF, Kenya), hand out hand-outs for breakout sessions, build signage using a small tool (hee-hee, sorry Brad, couldn’t help myself!), give directions in a building I’ve never been in before, drink some gosh-awful coffee (and some totally amazing “Land of a Thousand Hills” coffee–yum!), and suffer for Jesus eating Chic Fil A, Cheesecake Factory, and PF Changs a few times over.

At first, I felt out of place. Tag-along.  Out of context and not needed. But Re-Think staff seriously treated me like royalty. Even though I have no name, no paid staff position, church-cred, and probably had no reason whatsoever to be at Orange, they were so excited to have me there. And because I am a PARENT, I belonged. That was hugely affirming to me.

Being able to worship with authentic leaders standing next to my loud-singing American Idol, grab a piece of floor and listen to amazing giants of faith share about their highs, lows, journeys of failure and faith, the importance of parents and intentional parenting, community and church poured into my soul, filling what I never even realized was desperately empty.

I needed to be there. Paradoxical because I had no business being there.

Although I probably will not wear anything consisting of the color orange for at least the next 6 months, you can believe that it’s giving purple a run for it’s money as my new favorite color. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I <3 Orange.

I was sent this book before it was even released in order to read it, review it, and help create buzz for it’s release on Tuesday.

I started the book and have to admit to being intrigued by the concept. A wanderer, named Jones (not Mr. Jones, just “Jones”), seems to know a lot of people, and a lot about people, but they know nothing about him. He seems to appear in times of crisis and bring context and insight and clarity into people’s lives.

If you’ve never read a book before, you’ll be wowed by this book. Unfortunately, for this devourer of books I found the dialogue to be quite cumbersome and unnatural. The situations are unbelievable and disconnected.

What is such a shame is that there is a lot of fantastic wisdom, truth, and great insight about life contained in between the lines of the tale being spun.

This book reads like a third draft. It’s just not quite finished and polished. And it makes me sad to have to give it a sub-par review because there’s are many great nuggets of truth. Sadly, the small glimmers of truth get lost in the overzealous elements the author attempted in the telling of the story.

This weekend we decorated eggs at the cabin. I bought egg decorating kits a week after Easter last year, so they were like 90% off–37 cents per box to be exact. (Not to mention the Cadbury caramel eggs that were 15 cents each…just thinking about them makes my teeth ache…in a good way)

Usually I want my eggs to be beautiful, but this year I just decided to keep it real and low key and enjoy watching my kids make memories.

SO, being the perfect mommy that I am, I chose the cracked egg that no one else wanted to decorate.

Here’s the result.

Oh no, it’s not beautiful. I wasn’t able to take a cracked egg and work it into Fabergé-ean brilliance. This isn’t the fairy tale story by any means.

It’s more like my story. The story of someone seeing the cracked egg that no one else wanted and seeing potential in it. Even if it means using a little bit of creativity to bring some color and adding a tiny yellow mesh bag (usually for a slice of lemon to squeeze over fish while dis-allowing the seeds to be squeezed onto the food) to bring a smile–or even a sigh of pity–to the mind of the beholder.

Even if it was just laugh potential rather than rock-star styling, this poor yolk was still given a reason, a context, and a meaning rather than just pitched from the get-go.

Today I tried to try. Although I feel stuck in a shell of misery at being stuck in freezing cold, snowy Michigan while Dan plods off to work like every other week of the year and (even though it’s totally not true and just feels like) everyone else is on their Caribbean cruise for spring break, I am making an effort to make the week special for the kids.

Today I printed off Easter egg coloring pages and made a basket out of an old shirt box. I taped the basket on the wall and invited my kids to cut out and tape up their decorated eggs.

Which was working great until Addison decided to draw an egg on the wall and color it there with brown marker (TYL that they were washable).

OK, so my great plan was starting to go a little off course. To try to redeem it, I got the great idea to draw, decorate, and cut out the characters and setting of the Easter story.

I used a brown paper bag to make a big cross. Liam drew a donkey, Jesus, and a guard. Elli was drawing an angel with a halo while I was working on cutting out a tomb (how ironic, huh?). All of a sudden I realized it was silent in the room. Silence is not golden in my house. It is indicative of severe disobedience or maleficence afoot.

I looked up and spotted Elli wielding scissors, a guilty look on her face, and a mullet-esque haircut.

I jumped out of my seat like it was charged with 1,000 volts of electricity. Liam said, “what did she do?” as I dropped to the floor to confirm my suspicions.

I screamed, “she cut her hair!”, then got my voice under control and at a rational decibel level firmly told Elli to put down the scissors (immediately!) and proceed to her room (“for your own safety, because mommy is very upset that you would do this AGAIN”).

Then, I sat down, looked at the brown paper bag cross hanging directly above me on the wall and breathed.

I’m waving the white flag. I give up. You have beaten me. I cannot do this alone. (Cue music: Jesus Take the Wheel)

I didn’t want to commit or have to confess a sin. I needed some space to work through the disappointment (mainly in myself that I somehow didn’t see my daughter cutting her own hair as she literally sat across the table from me) and figure out how not to lecture, guilt, yell, or do anything to make the situation any worse.

A whimpering Elli came out a few minutes later and said, “I’m sorry mommy, for cutting my hair.” To which I replied, “I’m sorry too because I know how you’ve been trying to grow it long and now we’re going to have to cut it short and start over again.”

After finishing our Easter decorations and scenery, we cleaned up snipped bits of paper and hair and proceeded with a bath and the haircut.

E. J. handled it well despite the fact that it will probably be a good year before we can do braids (poor thing, her hair grows SO slowly) in her hair again. The next time we wash her hair I’ll need to clean it up a bit. Her hair is so fine it is very hard to cut.

Not to mention she can’t sit still, my scissors are practically safety scissors they are so dull, and I have no training in hair-cutting besides the dinky DVD from 1989 that came with the hair clipper set.

As of this writing, I have eaten a 6 x 6 inch Butterfinger brownie, the sun is starting to come out, the neighbors brought over the newspaper (coupons, comics, grocery ads–oh happy day!), the mail just got delivered and the kids are having some nap/quiet time in their rooms. I’m in the home stretch for day 1 of spring break/leading up to Easter weekend.

It’s getting brighter…