I think this pregnancy it’s worse. Before I would dream that he had died in a horrible car accident, the kind of waking nightmare you have when your husband is twenty minutes late coming home from work and you’re stirring dinner on the stove and the kids are wild in the background and you wonder how you’d ever cope since he’s surely dead on the highway because he isn’t answering his phone and he hasn’t called to explain that he just had to finish that one application before he could leave his desk.

This time it’s always divorce, and it’s always much worse, and I wake up feeling so sick at heart. I feel, in fact, just like I felt in March two years ago when my mom called me before church and told me that Marcy’s husband had left her. Then, nothing we could say was any comfort. We all agreed it would’ve been easier if he had died, loving her.

Now, my sister is getting married this summer. She is different: stronger, not emotionally insecure. She’s not a doormat anymore, she can tell a guy to take a hike if he isn’t good enough for her, if he doesn’t love her and respect her as she now knows she deserves.

Her fiance is a very nice man. He’s divorced, also, with three kids, also, and they have lots of other things in common, including exes who make very nice villains of their separate pieces. I have seen him with Marcy’s kids, and he is as good with Marcy’s kids as my husband is with ours, or almost; some of that just takes time. He and Marcy are more alike in the ways that matter than she and her first husband were. I think, in general, that they will have a good marriage, if anyone wanted my opinion on it.

At Thanksgiving (the first time I met him and his kids) Marcy told me she had given him one of my posts to read (the one about how blended families can be beautiful), and she said she liked my most recent post (the one about the snowy day), because it had my usual blend of frustration with motherhood ending in acceptance and [joy].

And then she said that her fiance (who is the residential parent) used his wife’s blog against her in the custody hearings. I quickly joked that Dick wouldn’t ever have to do that — he knows if he ever left, I wouldn’t dream of fighting him for custody.

But I can’t forget that conversation, at 4:18 in the morning when I’ve woken with the copper residue of fear in my mouth and the tearful certainty that in reality my husband would never, ever leave me, and more, if he ever did, that he would never take these words of mine, these words that I have labored so strenuously to deliver, honestly, onto the page.

Because there have been times when I resent my children, when I resent motherhood, when I think what could have been if I’d pursued my other dreams instead. And if I thought my husband, my Tom, who in our first year of marriage, ever since that tender beginning, labored beside me our final year of college, when we holed up, side-by-side, stopping only to eat and drink and talk, once in a while, to share the questions and answers we were so elegantly, passionately weaving into our papers and essays, if he were to belittle and demean the offerings of my heart, however so pitiful and inadequate they are once sprung from my short fingers, I would never be able to forgive him. I would know, finally, that he didn’t understand, that he never would, never had, never wanted to, and how could you ever stay married to someone like that?

Of course divorce is always betrayal, and it’s a better betrayal than the betrayal of self or of the children one swears on one’s life to love and protect, and the question of who betrayed whom first is one that only God and the families of the first-betrayed really care about anymore. And sometimes it is a betrayal forced though the first-betrayed would have forgiven anything if only the betrayer would reconsider.

I remember thinking, right before Tom and I were married, that marriage wouldn’t be such a significant, and potentially joy-giving institution, if it weren’t also such an unfathomable risk. The more of yourself you commit, the more you stand to lose if you are betrayed; if you commit less, there is less to be betrayed, but also much less to make the marriage worth desiring. Total giving of self, of merging of dreams and hopes and plans and subduing of extraneous, give-up-able wants, is vulnerability defined, and also the only hope for making a marriage so good, so life-sustaining, that the thought of losing it, fueled by raging fetus hormones, is enough to make one wish it were morning and no longer night.

My AP English class a couple years later was a million times better, and worth the price of admission to public school. Mr. Olsen stood at the front of the class, strumming his guitar and reciting poetry. We read books and wrote essays. I learned how to argue a point with evidence from the text, and to love poetry even if I did recognize the rhyme and meter. He was a Dead Poet’s Society-type of teacher, without the Robin Williams creepiness.

But was it worth suffering through two years of Mrs. Dart’s “honors” to get one year of Mr. Olsen’s sublime rendering of the William Carlos Williams verse?

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I still remember the tune he wrote to accompany it. I can’t recite the poem without singing it the way he did. His favorites were Dylan Thomas, John Donne, and Bob Dylan. I loved books before him, but all of my appreciation of poetry comes from those first fifteen minutes of class every day when we read our way through the anthology of poetry and discovered The Silken Tent, and Emily Dickinson. I did my college thesis on Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

We went to Sally’s parent-teacher conference last night. Mrs. W. loves Sally, and Sally loves her. Sally is helpful, cheerful, bright, blah blah blah. Sally’s grades were all A’s and B+’s. Dick and I being who we are, and one of those B+’s being in reading, we wanted to know why. Sally didn’t read at age three or anything, but once she did start reading (at seven-ish), she caught up right quick. In the past month she’s read A Wrinkle in Time, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and the second Percy Jackson book.

Mrs. W. pulled out Sally’s DRA form and showed us where she’s at a fifth grade level for fluency, speed, and vocabulary, but lost points on comprehension, summary, and reflection. Fair enough. Those are important things, only it turns out the lack is in her comprehension of the test, not the text. I pointed out that the questions were poorly worded (asking for a “list” but expecting “list and describe”) and that a summary by definition means that you do not include every single detail. As for reflection, I am beginning to think that she is even more literal than I am, because she answered the question accurately, concisely, but apparently not reflectively enough to satisfy the district rubric.

Much worse though, when we were discussing this and Sally protested that she likes to read fast to find out what happens next, Mrs. W. said that the point of all this is to get you ahead, so that when you’re in fourth grade they don’t knock you back from a level 34 reader to a level 28. And I said:

HOLD THE (expletive, but only in my mind) TRUCK, lady, the point of all this is for you to enjoy reading a book.

I was pretty outraged. I know I probably started it by expressing concern over a B+, and probably lulled her teacher into thinking I cared what freaking reading level the district rubric assigned to my daughter (as if that matters in any way), but really, she can read whatever-the-heck she wants, and I only want to know if she’s really having a problem understanding what she reads — which, as far as I can tell from her re-tellings at home of the books she reads and her reasons for liking and disliking them, she doesn’t.

There are two things here, and I explained to Sally last night that knowing how to read and enjoying and understanding a book are one thing, and deciding to play the game of testing and school is another. If you’re going to play the game and take tests and go to school, you have to learn not what the best answer is, but what the test answer is. You can read for fun, but then you’ll have to go back and look for the details that will prove that you have read it. Eventually you will train your mind to pick up the kinds of details that teachers (and districts) like to ask about to easily and superficially gauge comprehension.

It’s fine. I reconciled myself long ago to the discrepancy between knowing something and testing well. And, if I may say so, I can teach her how to test well. And I will, because I want her to enjoy school and college and a profession of some sort.

But something in me rebels. I don’t like explaining to my nine-year old that her teacher at school cares more about how her answer on a poorly-written worksheet compares with the unstated and murky expectations of a central office than about whether or not she is enjoying herself reading books.

It’s not really a last-straw type of thing for homeschooling, but last night it felt like it.

I responded by draining our bank accounts (didn’t take long), getting cash advances on our credit cards (also didn’t take long), dropping off the kids at school, and flying to Europe. (I called my mom from the airport to ask her to pick up the girls). Why I thought slumming around Europe was a good idea with a severely troubled tummy, I don’t know. And really I’d never do that. This time of year I’d fly to New Zealand, not Europe.

When I was pregnant with Sally, I dreamt that I gave birth to a seahorse, and as I breastfed her she got smaller and smaller. Another time it was that I was able to take my babies out and look at them, only they were graham crackers, and I lined them up on the floor of my mom’s old minivan, and then I had to yell at Brad for trying to eat my babies.

Anyone else think it’s crazy that on top of peeing four times a night you have to dream about serial abandonment?

Then I told her all about Penelope’s discussion of The Pioneer Woman, because we both love The Pioneer Woman. (Who doesn’t?) Poor Chrysanthemum probably gets a little tired of my telling her stuff during our walks. But the juxtaposition of Pioneer Woman and Penelope Trunk is absolutely fascinating. Pioneer Woman lives on a ranch, has kids, writes a popular (understatement) blog. Penelope Trunk lives now on a farm, has kids, writes a popular blog. They’re similar in age and superficial candor and charm in their writing. Penelope writes about more hard things, more sad things, than Pioneer Woman, or maybe she just writes about them more darkly.

Penelope’s post about the Pioneer Woman pointed out several things that Pioneer Woman does on her blog that make her so likeable (presumably in contrast to Penelope’s more abrasive, though equally appealing persona). Pioneer Woman never “disrespects her guy” and she’s optimistic. The difference between the two blogs boils down to this: “that [Penelope is] drawn to writing about the fights, and the Pioneer Woman is drawn to writing about pies, and feeding the Marlboro Man.”

The women differ in other areas: Penelope works more than full-time at her fancy career and Pioneer Woman homeschools her four children (though surely she also has a lot of household help, and spends plenty of time working on her blog and recipe book business). But the thing I think they differ in most is that Penelope is so unhappy much of the time and Pioneer Woman is not only happy but content and satisfied (though never smug, which would be unforgivable). If I thought their blogs were mirror images of themselves and their lives, I’d want to talk to Penelope every day, but I’d want to be Pioneer Woman.

(I’m really not a blog stalker. I just take my fictional characters very seriously. If I could choose anyone to be, it’d be Anne, or Valancy, or maybe even Emily, though she was monumentally too proud. Probably Valancy. Because of all that money.)

Reading Penelope I always think of how I want to do this little or big thing differently. Even though, like her, I am drawn to writing about the hard things. Of course I love and appreciate my husband. Since he doesn’t wear chaps and I don’t know how to work my camera, and because of course I love and appreciate him, what interests me is the things he does that make my otherwise-fairytale life frustrating in the extreme. Like, he won’t take a class to learn how to finish our basement even though our fourth kid will be squished in our current 1600 square feet.

But I want to be happy, like Pioneer Woman. Somehow I want to retain my critical, curious thinking like Penelope but gain a joie de vivre over every little thing like PW. Because what I like about Pioneer Woman most, maybe, is that even though she’s obviously rich and lucky (and talented), I still don’t hate her. Somehow she has me convinced that even if she were stuck in a dingy tenement with four rickets babies, she’d still be making a beautiful life.

So I have a goal to disrespect my guy less. Beginning with three things recently that made me glad to be once again bearing his child. (Here, if I were Pioneer Woman, I’d say something about my ovaries singing, or something.)

His touch: I have been less-than-not-interested in anything relating to connubial bliss for the past month. He brushes against me in the hall and my tummy quivers, and not in the good way. Then last week, as we lay in bed, him on the laptop, me reading a book, I reached for his hand and just felt his palm. His skin was warm and pleasantly dry. A little rough from work, but smooth and tingly. I rubbed it for a couple minutes and then turned back to my book. He laughed: “That’s enough holding hands, huh?”

His little women: Of course we want a boy this time around. Of course. But now that I know how different each child is, that we won’t be repeating ourselves with another little girl, I am eager either way. Tom said last Sunday morning that he’d had a dream we had our baby, and she was old enough to be crawling around, and she was so cute. When we think of names, at the dinner table, he says silly things like Zeus and Wolf, and then he says he really likes Mia too.

His devotion: Lucy had croup Saturday night, and Tom was up with her several times, wrapping her in a blanket and sticking her head in the freezer. She breathed easier downstairs (where it’s always cooler), and he wanted to be sure he heard her if she needed him, so they slept on the living room couch. Then he got up early and took the other kids to church.

(These are old pictures, but there’s something about snow that makes my camera not work.)

It reminded me of other events that I’ve gone to in the past year even though my initial inclination is to stay home with a book even when I’m not gestating. Whenever I do get out and see new things, hear new people, take the opportunity to think differently or more about anything, I feel better, even if the event isn’t overtly “inspirational.”

This is not a stunning insight, I know, but I think I’m a bit of an all-or-nothing thinker when it comes to new things. Tom and I spent years moving to new places — Japan, New York City, Cairo, Florida — and every day in those places was an overload of “new,” a sensory and intellectual feast of “different.” Here in Utah, where I am glad to be settled (at least for now) I forget that there is so much to experience right in this familiar place.

One of my favorite things last year was the Moms Who Make It (MWMI) conference, though I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. “Entrepreneur” has always seemed like a vaguely dirty word to me, from my days idolizing Thoreau to seeing the shady side of my ex-brother-in-law. But MWMI was amazing. Tonight we were having FHE/scripture study with the girls, and discussing Moses 8, and I got choked up explaining to my daughter that we need to keep journals, and this is one reason I blog, so that my life as a woman is recorded, because sometimes the scriptures we have are really lacking when it comes to talking about women’s lives, about our hopes and motives and fears.

Listening to the amazing women who spoke and taught at MWMI, courageous women from different faiths and life circumstances, was awe-inspiring. I don’t throw superlatives around: it really was wonderful. It made me want to work harder in my roles as mother and wife, and also to pursue more diligently those talents and interests I have. And to be grateful, for all that I am and can imagine being in the future. I’m so glad to live in a time and place when we have opportunities, where we can gather in public any time we want without worrying about acid being thrown in our faces or about how we’ll feed our children tonight (though several of the women, who make “entrepreneur” look G-O-O-D, began their businesses as a way to provide).

I don’t know if there’ll be another Moms Who Make It conference, but if you get the chance to attend something organized by Quinn Curtis, go for it! (I was also especially impressed with Raw Melissa, Cari Greer,and Pam Baumeister.)

Anyway. That’s old history, but it’s why I’m excited about the Wasatch Woman of the Year lunch this Friday. It’s the kind of thing that I’m initially inclined to roll my eyes about or feel awkward about playing dress-up to attend (since I still usually feel like a little kid pretending to be grown up, especially around such accomplished women). It also takes some negotiating to leave the kids in the middle of the day; I don’t ask my husband to come home early from work unless it’s really important.

And this — celebrating women who are great mothers, great leaders in our community, great wives and sisters and daughters (and hopefully being inspired to be the same myself) — is important. You can come too (I think they even let men in ).

Five months before that, I had gone in at seven weeks because I was bleeding, and we saw a potato-shaped lump in there, but no heartbeat.

This time there was nothing. No pole, no body, no heartbeat. I wondered aloud if I was having one of those psychological pregnancies, or if I’d read the home test wrong, after all (I felt heartbroken, and also foolish). We did a urine test, which was positive, and figured my body could have already resorbed the embryo (the “products of conception”) or maybe it was ectopic, or something.

Thirty-two hours later I was at the hospital for a fancy ultrasound. I told the tech, as she led me back, that I wasn’t expecting good news, that we hadn’t seen anything on the machine at my doctor’s office, that this would be my third miscarriage, and that I was okay with it, really.

She turned on the machine, squirted me with the cold jelly, pressed on my belly, and said, “I don’t know what to tell you pumpkin, but there’s something in there, and it’s got a heartbeat.”

A heartbeat of 152, in fact, and confirmation that I was seven weeks and four days along.

(I have a very retroverted uterus, which I knew, but didn’t think of, and also, turns out that you cannot emphasize enough how important a full bladder is for ultrasound imaging.)

Since then I’ve been miserably, gloriously nauseated. Well, more miserably, but I’ll say gloriously for the purposes of posterity. It’s certainly better to be nauseated and pregnant than nauseated and not-pregnant. During the thirty-hours I thought I had miscarried again, I was so angry to be still nauseated. Luckily I didn’t turn to drink or start smoking crack, but I did refuse to take my prenatal vitamin that night. Sorry, baby.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about my desires for a more natural labor this time around. I’ve had three children, three epidurals, two inductions, and until a couple years ago, I thought my labors and deliveries were just about ideal. There were no major complications, no forceps or vacuums or c-sections (and my babies were all healthy, no small consideration).

But my epidurals were never wholly satisfactory. Though I usually started with a “walking” epidural, I have a small scoliosis in my spine that makes the numbness affect only the left side of my body until second and third doses are given and I lie on my right side and end up flat on my back, afraid to so much as shift or I’ll fall off the bed, I’m so numb. This makes for awkward laboring.

I’ve been thinking, since following Rixa’s and Heather’s blogs (and even Dooce’s), and researching more about the effects of medical intervention on labor, that I would love to have a a less-interventioned birth. More importantly — a more prepared, educated birth, a more aware-of-my-options and in-tune-with-my-body birth.

My two ultrasounds at seven weeks are so metaphoric (illustrative?) in this context. The second, more invasive (including a vaginal wand) ultrasound (intervention) was even more unnecessary than the first ultrasound/intervention, and yet, once I had had the first, I could not forgo the second. I was glad after the first, I told my mom, that at least I had found out early, and that we could do something about it instead of suffering severe nausea and delusional happy baby daydreaming for no reason. And I was even gladder for the second, for obvious reasons.

But I can’t say that I honestly wish I hadn’t had the first ultrasound, or that I would not have an (early) ultrasound with another pregnancy. My previous miscarriages make me unwilling to “trust nature” or “trust birth” to the extent of not needing (emotionally) — medical proof that there is a tiny heart beating away in my belly.

In thinking of my previous labors and births, I have felt ashamed that I took so little responsibility for or control over what happened. That I took as much initiative in childbirth as I did in going for a appendectomy at age fourteen. Why wasn’t I more curious to learn about the actual process, more empowered, more determined to experience, more eager to do it well? Why was I so passive? (I am not a passive person usually.)

So I had a stack of books to read and grand plans to see if I could find a midwife (preferably one who would know of a woman who would let me observe her birth — despite being delivered of three babies myself, I really have no idea what a natural birth would look/be like). Or maybe I would just watch Ricki Lake’s documentary and listen to Hypnobabies.

But I have been so sick and snappish, so despairing and disgruntled and unhappy, I have not read a single book or written a single line in my birth plan.

Perhaps I am merely lazy. Thinking of this concentratedly enough to write about it, I remember my former passion to make this birth special, but when 3 pm (or 11 am, lately) rolls around, and with it, the turbulent esophagus, unsettle-able stomach, and general misery, I am sure of two things: that I just want this to be over, and that maybe I should be easier on my pre-enlightened self. Maybe she just wanted to lay down and rest, too. (And who could blame her?)

So we were talking about pregnancy last night, because I wanted an early start monopolizing the conversation. I am sicker this time than ever before, and I weigh a lot more. I weigh more at the beginning of this pregnancy than I did at the end of my first pregnancy nine years ago. Though I am only 8 1/2 weeks along, I feel encumbered when I bend over, out of breath when I climb the stairs, and nauseated beyond belief at food that smelled good an hour ago.

My body image/contentment is at an all-time low, especially as I know how important good health and activity are to my labor/delivery/recovery and mental well-being.

Also, I just feel fat and ugly, and it makes me sad.

I mentioned my friend Beth who is suffering the hemorrhoids at the end of her pregnancy, and how she can’t understand how some women love being pregnant. I love feeling the baby move, hearing the heartbeat, and thinking about the new baby, but I do not enjoy being pregnant.

So my friend who is staying here told me that she liked being pregnant because it was the one time she was proud of her body. She’s pretty happy with her legs and arms in general, but her middle has always been a trouble section, with dips and rolls and when she is pregnant and that’s all smoothed out by the baby bump, she is happy with her body. She feels beautiful.

She is in awe that her body can work so well to grow a beautiful baby, and she just feels happy and proud, Look What I Can Do!

Good point, I thought. It will sound even better in the morning, when I am on the other side of this nocturnal barfiness.

About an hour later Chrysanthemum was here to watch Fringe with us, and we came across a post inviting shocked! outrage! over these Cotton Mother Dolls that Rixa highlighted (very favorably) a year ago.

My friend obliged, saying there was something wrong about that, the dolls are gross, and why would you want your kids to see that? My initial reaction to Rixa’s post was that the dolls were a little scary, but that was a year ago, and I am always ready to disagree, even with myself.

Because life is not as neat as a blog post, I stumbled around, settling with: “Would you rather your daughters played with Cheerleader Barbie who’ll teach them anorexia?”

These dolls are graphic, anatomically correct; they’re probably not for everyday play, though it’s hard for me to articulate why. Certainly they’re better than boob-job, impossibly-long-legged Barbie. Would it harm my daughters in some way to see and hold a realistic representation of a mother giving birth, on hands and knees, to a baby? Or to play with a doll that models breastfeeding?

Why don’t I worry about it when they worship everything princess, sparkly, and fake? Why don’t I cringe when we pass mannequins at the mall with Victoria’s Secret bodies and push-ups?

If pregnancy is the one time you’re proud of your body, shouldn’t that be an image to cherish?

I understand if modesty is the main concern, the feeling that the body (and its form) is too sacred to be played with on the living room carpet by cheerful, irreverent toddlers. But I hate to tell you: our Barbies are more often naked than clothed. And my girls just really don’t need to be seeing that.

And I remembered, after several years in primary, why it is often simpler to save my questions for later, if one does not want to be treated like a . . . well, like a faith-deficient troublemaker. (When in fact one is merely curious and intrigued by inconsistencies.)

Anyway, by the time Relief Society rolled around, I was properly chastised. Chrysanthemum, having taken Dick’s spot, may have heard mutterings, but mostly I was good.

Our lesson was a discussion of New Year’s resolutions, based on the three goals in the Introduction to Relief Society: increase faith, strengthen families and homes, and serve the Lord and His children. So far, so worthy a list of endeavors.

With each goal there is a quote from last year’s Ensign or Church News. The quote under “strengthen families and homes” is:

Although parenting is hard work, it is made a little easier with the gospel, said Joselyn Akana . . . from Hawaii. ‘It helps me when I have the gospel to anchor me in the caring of my family,’ she said it is important in mothering to consider what a mother should look and sound like. The key to motherhood, she said, is having patience and relying on the gospel for guidance” (Lisa Christensen, “Convert Says Gospel Helps with Parenting,” Church News, June 13, 2009, 15). [sic]

I agree with a lot of this. Parenting is hard work, and the gospel makes it easier by infusing it with eternal significance and providing both interesting examples of parenting and the desire to be a good parent. And I believe whole-heartedly that the key to motherhood is patience. What dominated our discussion, though, was the middle part, that:

it is important in mothering to consider what a mother should look and sound like.

If you have read this website for any amount of time, you know that I am rather preoccupied with what a mother should sound like, or rather, my regret over too often not sounding like what I think a mother should sound like.

But, no. We discussed what a mother should look like. The teacher (also our great Relief Society president who I personally love not only because she drives Sally to school every morning) started by saying her mother always got up 30 minutes before the rest of the family, no matter how early that turned out to be, even on camping trips, to do her hair and have full makeup on before anyone saw her. And (this is why I love her) she said that that always seemed like a huge waste of time to her, and that she is personally much lazier, etc, but now (and this is where things took a downturn) she thinks she maybe  should definitely be doing this.

Several sisters shared similar stories and proclaimed the virtues of treating motherhood like any other job (you’d get dressed up for a real job, right?) and having lots of mirrors in your house so you could check your hair and lipstick and your shirt to make sure you looked good all day, especially if your husband is retired and can see you anytime.

The 15-minute to one-hour power session of cleaning the house, grooming the children, and having dinner on the table right before dad comes home was extolled, and the testimonial given that if we only cared for our appearance we’d feel better about ourselves, and don’t our children (and husbands) deserve to see us looking our best?

I think about this a lot. I think about what my children, my daughters see when they look at me. I think about what they deserve, what they need, what will equip them best for life as they look at me. Especially when Susan makes some statement of discovery and description in the car about how being a doctor like grandpa or a writer like daddy are boy jobs and being a mom is a girl job.

Of course, being a mom is a girl job, and in some ways I do it it the traditional girliest manner possible. But I want Susan to know that girls can be doctors or writers too, and sometimes I worry about how I can ever really teach that to my daughters if all they see me doing is being a mom. On the other hand, I want them to see that I value them and our family enough to devote so much of my time and energy to being a mother. If this is the girl job I choose to show them, then what a mother should look like becomes fraught with meaning.

What should a mother look like?

Should a mother look like a clean home and dinner on the table and clean-faced toddlers and Mary Kay cosmetics?

In some ways (surprisingly), yes:

A clean house is worth pursuing because the cleaner and more organized things are, the easier it is for kids to play, create, and feed themselves, which leads, of course, to a messy house, but it’s a worthwhile cycle because the more the kids can do for themselves, the more I can do (and the more they are learning and growing), not because with a clean house I can be “unafraid to open the door if someone drops in.”

A table set for dinner when Dick arrives home and happy smiling children is worth working towards because it means the girls have learned to cheerfully help in the kitchen and that we have successfully worked together to create something we will all enjoy, not because it means I’ve worked behind the scenes to set a pretty stage.

Three daughters groomed for church or school (or dad’s homecoming) is a triumph when it means I have exchanged meaningful words with them while the hairbrush was in my hand, not when it means I’ve harped impatiently for them to JUST HOLD STILL.

And the Mary Kay cosmetics? Few things feel better than a hot shower after a hard workout or hours spent languishing with the morning sickness in bed.

Some things do, though. There are days, too infrequent, when Dick comes home and I look up from the book I’m reading or the story I’m writing, and I see the clock says 6:30 pm, and there are legos and Barbies on the carpet, paint and glitter glue on the table, clementine peels and yogurt containers all over the kitchen. Perhaps wet snow clothes are draped over chairs and I am smelly and muzzy from forgetting I even have a body. Dick is unperturbed (I chose well), and I wonder if I look then as a mother should — lost in thought.

I think I do.

I couldn’t honestly remember whether I’d had a period in November, but I do remember one occasion when Dick convinced me to leave things to chance. On Saturday I impatiently bought another box of tests, figuring that the leftover sticks in my medicine cabinet were maybe expired. Turns out it’s helpful to read the instructions, even after many years and five (now six) pregnancies. In case you ever need to know, on the Equate brand pregnancy test, just one line in the test window is a positive.

I am terrified. Weepy, excited, wary, passing regretful for the three-kids-getting-older routine we have. I don’t know if I can handle another miscarriage.

And I have proven (to myself) that morning all-day sickness is mostly psychological. This is the latest that I have ever discovered a pregnancy (not very late: 9 weeks at most, and probably less), and as soon as I did, mild, all-encompassing nausea descended. Smells are smellier, and I am so tired. I feel like lying in bed, abdomen motionless, for the next seven to nine months.

I want to thank you in advance for understanding if I don’t respond to comments or emails as regularly as I would like in the coming months. I have a feeling that my mixed emotions/ambitions for blogging will get even mixed-er this year, but my appreciation for your friendship and your encouraging words are one thing I am not at all mixed about: they mean a great deal to me.

*Movie trivia. Big smacking kiss and restoring of my faith in humanity if you know that movie. (And my family doesn’t count, since we watched it on Christmas Eve.)

(What should we have for dinner? Spaghetti? I should plan next year so that I have no shopping, even grocery shopping, to do the last week before Christmas. Why did Hillary Clinton promise climate change aid to countries like China when we have a huge trade deficit with them, and surely this has already been discussed and pointed out online, or could I write a post and be brilliant? I really need some caffeine today, better grab a fountain coke here after I get my membership card replaced. Why have I not had a period in two months and yet I’m not pregnant? Early menopause? I wonder what the samples are today. Maybe we won’t be able to do any shopping besides the prints and churros, to make it in time to pick up Sally.)

A lady in a blue minivan shouted, not terribly unkindly, “Ma’am!” and I stopped. “I almost hit your daughter. She was out in front of me and I would have felt terrible (hand on her heart) if anything had happened.” I was struck a little bit dumb by this, as I often am when suddenly confronted by a stranger in public. I turned at the first sound of her voice and saw Susan a couple feet behind me, angled closer to the moving cars than Spot and I were. I guess I didn’t react with enough visible horror, because the woman turned to Susan as I moved to take her hand. “Little girl, you have to stay right by mommy because I can’t see you out my windshield and I could have run you right over. You have to be more careful.”

I thanked the lady, and marched on, impressing on Susan the seriousness of the near-accident once we were safely inside, making our way to the bathroom. I was glad, obviously, that the lady didn’t hit my kid, and though it irritated me a little that she would take it upon herself to instruct my kid in front of me, insinuating that I wouldn’t have done the same once we were away from an audience, I might have done the exact same thing, especially with the rush of adrenaline that such a close call often floods the body with.

I really couldn’t tell you the number of times my children have been lucky enough to cheat death. We have forgotten to fasten seat belts or car seats, turned our backs on full tubs of water, left electrical outlets unprotected, crossed the street without benefit of a crosswalk, read a book while children played freely at the park, looked over the precipice at the Grand Canyon, and flown in airplanes.

I think most mothers (if they’re honest) could relate similar terrifying near-miss stories. But sometimes children die as a result of accidental, temporary parental inattention or distraction. Like the recent drowning of Military Mom’s two-year old in the family pool. Shellie Ross was vilified online for having tweeted right before her son was found in the pool, and then again later asking for prayers as she waited in the hospital.

The saddest instance of accidental, preventable death I’ve ever heard of happened in my sister’s old neighborhood. A family with six small children came home from church, and the kids played in the family room while mom prepared dinner just a few feet away in the kitchen. The baby, a six-week-old, was in her baby carrier car seat on the couch while a toddler played nearby. Somehow the car seat got knocked off the couch, and the baby strangled in the unfastened straps.

I think it’s easy to assign blame or fault in these cases, just as if Susan had been struck and killed by the car in the parking lot two days ago, it would have been my fault.

It clearly would have been, because I was distracted, I was not holding her hand, I was thinking  my own thoughts. I don’t think I would ever get over the guilt of such a death. Ever. I don’t imagine that the censure of others would even have an impact because my own sense of shame would be overwhelming.

And yet, it hurts me to think of Shellie Ross or my sister’s neighbor feeling the shame that I project myself feeling. It seems grossly unfair and mysogynistic that anyone would blame them for making a mistake, for being inattentive, for having the audacity to entertain a thought outside her children for the few seconds it takes for death to snatch a child.

Is it even possible to focus and concentrate a mother’s every thought on the safety of her children? And if it were possible, is that what we require of a mother? That she have no thought or concern or desire outside her children’s every breath, waking and sleeping?

Is that what God requires?

Motherhood is hard for me because I feel tugged, most moments of the day, between what I want to do, what I need to do, and what my children need, what my children want from me. Accidental death of a child is an extreme example of this, but in every moment, I choose (unconsciously or not) whether to entertain my own thoughts or subsume them in service of a childish plea. Even many of my own thoughts are about my children (or about being about my children!).

If and when we criticize a mother who has lost her child as a result of momentary distraction, we deny her a human right more inalienable than anything the Founders ever codified: that of having her own thoughts.

Perhaps that is just the rhythm of childhood. Vacation — Christmas break, summer vacation, a trip in the middle of the year — is exciting, special, different. School is everyday, normal, routine, boring at times by definition.

But as I’ve been thinking about homeschooling, I wonder if it is more than that. Rixa commented on my initial homeschooling post that she would love a charter school with a half-day program. The day I read her comment there were two articles in the New York Times in intriguing juxtaposition. The first was about Forest Kindergarten, where kids 3 1/2 to 6 years old spend three hours a day outside in a 325-acre nature reserve, every day, regardless of weather (in New York State, where the weather is a factor). They explore and play, with no formal academic curriculum until first grade. I assume (hope) that even in the upper grades, outdoor exploration/play is emphasized.

The other article was a story of parents with children in Chicago’s public elementary schools trying to raise money to add an hour to the school day, which is currently 5 hours and 8 minutes long. “By comparison, students in New York City go for 6 hours 30 minutes. In Boston, they spend 6 hours in class, and in Los Angeles, most students are there 5 hours 19 minutes.”

I have long had an unarticulated feeling that I wish Sally could go to school, but just not so long every day. She’s at a school with early and late tracks, so her day is 8-2:15, while half of the kids go 9:15-3:30.  (That’s a 6 hour, 15 minute day). I think this schedule might be okay if three hours of it were spent outside, but I think her play time (and not on a nature preserve, but rather a limited schoolyard, is much less than an hour).

The parents (and educators quoted in the article) in the Chicago area are convinced that a longer school day, week, and year is the answer to making their children competitive. Chicago-area charter and contract schools are in session up to two hours longer than the regular schools (that would be over 7 hours in school each day!).

Interestingly, the parents in both articles are relatively well-off (as the Waldorf Schools are private, and one presumes, pricey, and in the Chicago area parents are wanting to spend more money in addition to their property taxes, etc). Often when there is talk of extending the school day, including moving from half-day to full-day kindergarten, and to adding pre-kindergarten, etc, legislators and advocates point out that households with two parents working need the extended child-care that a longer day would provide.

The economic and other logistics of homeschooling are fascinating to me. Homeschooling requires that a family be well-enough off to have a full-time parent, and/or modest enough in their wants and needs to accept the priority of homeschooling over the desire/need for a second income and/or that parent’s willingness to sacrifice temporarily some of their own ambitions.

When I think of Sally going to a half-day of formal education, or the wish to shorten her school day by even an hour (as she could if she attended the middle of the day and neither early or late track), and even when I am vehemently against homework, it is all in the service of providing her with more time in the day to play, preferably outside. This is even more urgent in the winter months, when it gets dark at 5 pm, and yet my three kids are outside in their snow clothes, long past the time when the sun’s rays provided meager warmth.

This again could be simply the rhythm of life in a four-season climate. Summers are for spending outdoors, for gardening, biking, jumping on the trampoline, swimming, running through the sprinklers, and winters are for quietly reading by the fire (or . . . doing homework or sitting in class).

But given what we know about dirt being good for kids, and active play improving sleep, and finally — how excited my kids are by the prospect of a week and a half off to sled, cook with mom, build snowmen and snow forts, and swim in the indoor pool with the big bucket and water slides, I am worried it will be impossibly hard to sentence Sally back to a desk come January.

It was selfish. My dad was in a Navy residency program back in the draconian doctor days, and he needed his sleep. I don’t even remember how often we had to be quiet, how often the need to be quiet impinged on what I wanted to do, or even being punished for being loud instead of being quiet. I just remember having to be quiet. I don’t know why I hated it, because my favorite thing to do as a child was to read, but my second favorite thing to do was a sedate sort of interaction with my brother and sister that led my parents to say “If you must kill each other, please, do it quietly.”

Today the snow was beautiful: thick flurries whitewashing the dead brown lawn stubbles, plastering over the evidence of a procrastinated autumn fertilization.

Dick needed us to be quiet today. All day, it seemed like. He recorded screencasts for his latest freelance work. He sat at the table in my kitchen, recording his work, letting the girls watch him through the camera viewfinder, more exponentially patient than my dad ever was, and I ever am. During one of his breaks, I made special brownies, two small pans, one for now and one to freeze for later next week when the friend who was best man at our wedding stays with us as he moves cross-country.

I am jealous of Dick’s new ventures. I hate that he schedules extra, complicated things for December, that he says he has to because we need the money, that he asked us to be quiet, on Saturday, when all of us are home and all I wanted was to bask in the coziness of home while the perfect snow falls to cover the hard ground.

I hate that he is learning new things and being rewarded for learning new things when I feel desperate to paint some fresh new snow over my just-scabbed frustration. I know I should have fertilized in the fall, but couldn’t God take my rage without my walking back and forth?

I cut into the pan of brownies that is for us today, and covered the other with clingwrap. The loud, rustling layer of tinfoil had to wait as Dick started another screencast. I went upstairs.

The snow really was beautiful. My thin crust of pure patience had seams of scratchy, too-long grass poking through, but I nursed my caffeine indulgence, cleaned the girls’ room, and filled bags with broken games, worn-out clothes, and ratty stuffed animals for disposal at the DI. There is nothing more cathartic than pruning the stuff that flourishes like morning glory in the corners of my house.

Back downstairs Dick agreed that the girls could have a brownie; Sally cut herself one from the today pan. Susan and Spot took the wrap off the next-week pan and dug into the middle.

Dick said the screaming and raw, impotent fury was a bit of an overreaction. But it’s never about the brownies. It’s about the seething bedrock of never having just one thing stay perfect, stay finished. I wash the laundry: they change clothes again. I run the dishwasher: they need a seventh glass of water. I feed them: they poop it all away.

I respond kindly to ear-grating whining and mind-shredding fighting five times, but the sixth time a clump of crab grass breaks through the frozen powder, and minutes later I wonder who is that awful woman who can’t seem to remember that she is a mother, not a monster? Why can’t this one day be perfect?

I am busy patching back together my snowy crust of calm and superficial serenity, of soft voices and sympathetic arms; if only I can paper over this seam, coax that anger back to hibernation.

I helped the girls get snow pants, coats, boots, hats, and gloves on, earlier, before the brownie violation occurred. They ruined the snowscape. They churned it up till the backyard was half dead, brown grass and half clean, white snow. I loved that they did that, so freely, so exuberantly. I thought: this is a great metaphor. I’ll say: you think you want pristine panoramas of perfection. You think you want order, and quiet, and sheets tucked tidily under mattresses.

You think you want a life where precocious children would never put a finger in the middle of a covered pan of brownies. But then you realize that you can’t make snow angels without disturbing the drifts. You can’t have joy without the mess.

I should have captured it right there. Preserved it, polished it, added it to the loop of stuff I tell myself when I wander in my thoughts at stoplights and while being quiet during screencasts.

Instead I constructed the other metaphor, of snow as bandaid, as wood filler for a rotten stump. It’s not as sweetly affirming as the other image. There’ll never be enough snow to cure the grass beneath. And even if it was never about the brownies, even if it was about something true and validly infuriating, it was never worth evoking fear and shame.

So it’s easy to think of giving up. Walking away. I am never going to be the mother these children deserve. I am never going to be deep down the mirror core of the patchwork covering of snow I mostly enough maintain on the outside.

But in the spring the snow will melt, both the brown snow sick with dirt and salt and the last baptizing whiteout of the winter. And it will be time to fertilize again, another chance to soak into the roots.

I was folding towels when Dick responded to Spot’s overtired hysteria past her bedtime. Sally was reading in her room and Susan had been allowed to fall asleep in our bed because Spot was so disruptive. I climbed the stairs and changed her back into her pajamas. Patience came from somewhere, and a promise to snuggle with her for awhile. My hand on her chest, I felt her heartbeat in my fingertips. She had forgotten, or forgiven, enough that my being there was calming. She rubbed her eyes vigorously, then turned her face away, as she always does to sleep, and sighed, long and low.

This post tells such a radically different story than the first essay did. I feel horrified for everyone involved. I understand why they have given up for now on making the boy a part of their family, because it sounds impossibly complicated (maybe, simply, “impossible”). I applaud them for continuing to honor the father’s financial obligation.

But this brings up a slew of interesting writer-audience issues. I can’t apologize for reacting the way I did to the first essay, because my feelings were based not on conjecture or gossip or the writing of a critical reporter, but on the facts and feelings that one of the principal characters shared. In telling a story, the onus is on the writer to present relevant facts, to tell the story, and if things are misunderstood (especially by such large numbers of people), the fault is the writer’s, not the audience’s. If the claims made in the second post are true, then the mother/writer is either a very unreliable narrator, a poor writer, or an irresponsible attention-seeker.

The mother/writer in the first piece sounded shallow, image-conscious, and materialistic. Perhaps (hopefully) she’s not. But that’s how she herself presented herself.

It’s like if Shakespeare came along and said, “Wait! You think Romeo was foolish and short-sighted and impulsive to kill himself when he found Juliet lying on the tomb? He wasn’t! He gathered the top five doctors in Verona and each one pronounced her dead! He waited three days as her body decomposed and THEN he drove the dagger into his heart! DUH! You don’t know anything! You’re so quick to come to conclusions about somebody. … Oh? What? You say I FORGOT to put that in Act 5? Well, shucks, that story is so familiar to me, I thought EVERYBODY knew about the multiple autopsies and the mirror-breath test. You readers are so dumb and quick to judge.”

Except it’s even worse, because to really be a parallel case, it would have to be Romeo who wrote the play and then got hurt, defensive, and morally superior when people came to the inevitable conclusion that he was a big boob.

Another issue is Lisa Belkin’s responsibility in all this. As the writer of the Motherlode blog, she frequently has guest posters, and they often explicitly or implicitly ask for advice. Several times guest posters have been criticized for decisions they have made. Perhaps this is an ugly part of blogging, but it is also, in fact, an intrinsic part of blogging: reader response is the WHOLE POINT OF BLOGGING.

If you write a post on a blog with comments, you ask for and expect responses. If those responses do not include the fawning congratulation or commiseratory sympathy you thought your story deserved, you can’t then say, “How rude! I didn’t ask you to intrude on my private life! How dare you presume to comment!” Because when you posted to a public blog which asks people to “join the discussion,” you ASKED FOR COMMENTS.

I think Lisa Belkin’s editorial policy bears some of the burden here. Since it was not her story (so she presumably at least wasn’t “forgetting” important details), what was the motive for publishing such a damaging, one-sided initial account? Controversy? Link-baiting? In not urging her guest poster to dig deeper for and include these mitigating circumstances, I think she has betrayed the trust of a writer she should have mentored, in favor of the publicity-loving instincts of sensationalistic journalism.

And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

(Except to say that I hope things work out for the family and the boy. What a difficult situation with no easy answers.)

We’re not as consistent about reading scriptures as my family was when I was a kid. I tend to blame this on Dick because he is not a morning person, but since I’m not a morning person either, we’re kind of even. Last year I hoped that creating a Jesse Tree with special Christ-themed devotional readings would jump-start our daily scripture habit. It didn’t work. We enjoyed the stories and I used it for a sharing time in Primary, but by the second week in January we were back to our slothful ways.

But I’m optimistic, and I’m sure again this year that our Jesse Tree will be only the beginning of glorious yearlong testimony-building, although my memory is so fabulous that I spent several days getting the kids excited about starting our Joshua Tree.

The Jesse Tree is named for King David’s father Jesse, and the scripture in Isaiah that talks about the stem of Jesse, Jesus Christ.

For each devotional, we have an ornament for the tree, a picture from the Gospel Art Kit (GAK), and a few specific scriptures. With the kids so young, we tell each story in simple terms (referring to the GAK summaries if necessary). As the kids get older, we’ll read more and more directly from the scriptures. We could also read the stories from the children’s scripture books, but I like the storytelling give-and-take for keeping the kids’ attention. I have been pleasantly surprised by how excited the kids are about “doing our Jesse tree” each night. Sally drags a bar stool into the living room and sets the tree on top of it in the middle of the rug. Susan asks if we can “do Family Home Evening,” but I tell her it’s not Monday anymore so we’ll just be doing one story.

As time goes by, I might search for better pictures and ornaments for some of the devotionals, but the GAK is convenient, and the ornaments I’ve gathered (mostly wood cutouts from Hobby Lobby and odd craft materials) do the job. The stories might seem impossibly broad, but the focus is always on the witnesses and types of Christ in the story. I’ve listed them in rough chronological order, but, again to involve the kids, we’re letting them take turns picking an ornament, so we’re not worried about the order.

A Mormon Jesse Tree: Witnesses and Types of Christ

1) The Jesse Tree/Witnesses of Christ (book) GAK 326 (Isaiah 11:1-2, Jacob 4:4, 2 Nephi 25:26) All the prophets have known of Christ and had “a hope of him.”

2) Creation/The Council in Heaven (world) GAK 600, 100, 201 (Alma 30: 44, Moses 4:1-2) God created the world for us and promised that He would send a Savior for us.

3) Noah (rainbow) GAK 103 (Genesis 9:13, 15) God promised he would never again flood the world, and because He kept that promise, people knew to believe His promise about a Savior.

4) Abraham & Isaac (bundle of cinnamon sticks) GAK 105 (Genesis 22:2, Genesis 22:8, 11-12) Isaac as a type of Christ, Abraham as a loving father willing to sacrifice his much-loved son.

5) Moses (snake) GAK 123 (John 3:14-15, Helaman 8:14-15) This is one of my favorite symbols — If we would but look to Christ, we will live.

6) Ruth (wheat) GAK 124 (Ruth 1:16, Ruth 4:13-17) Ruth followed her mother-in-law because she was converted to the gospel. She was virtuous and became an ancestress of Jesus.

7) Esther (scepter) GAK 125 (Esther 4:14, Esther 7:3) Esther acted as an intercessor for her people, just as Christ is our intercessor.

Isaiah (lamb) GAK 113 (Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:6-7, Isaiah 53) Listen to Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.

9) Jonah (whale) still looking (Jonah 1:12-15, Luke 11:29-32) Jonah is in the great fish for three days, much like Christ is in the tomb for three days.

10) The Brother of Jared (stone) GAK 318 (Ether 3:8-15) Because of his faith, Ether saw that Christ would have a body like his, and learned that Jesus was “prepared before the foundation of the world.”

11) Lehi & Nephi (liahona) GAK 302 (1 Ne 16:28, Alma 37:45) Another great image — liahona as words of Christ.

12) Enos (bow & arrow) GAK 305 (Enos 1:8, 26) Enos bore a powerful witness even without seeing or hearing Jesus.

13) King Benjamin (tower) GAK 307 (Mosiah 3:2, 7-8, Mosiah 5:1-2) The people covenant to obey, take upon themselves the name of Christ, and experience a “mighty change.”

14) Alma the Younger (chains) GAK321 (Alma 7:10-13) Christ will loose the bands of death.

15) Samuel the Lamanite (wall) GAK314 (Helaman 14:1-8) Sing Samuel Tells of the Baby Jesus.

16) Nephi (star) GAK 200 (3 Nephi 1:8-14) My favorite advent story, and where we always begin our reading on Christmas Eve.

17) John the Baptist (sandal) GAK (Matthew 3:2-3, 11-17) John prepared the way, baptized Jesus, and restored the Aaronic priesthood.

18) Mary (heart) GAK 241 (Luke 1:28-33, 38) Mary was pure and loving. (Also, probably patient, kind, and willing to play Sorry all day long).

19) Joseph (hammer) GAK 206 (Matthew 1:18-25) Sing When Joseph Went to Bethlehem.

20) The Shepherds and the Wise Men (gift) GAK 202, 203 (Luke 2:15-16, Matthew 2:9-11) The Shepherds and the Wise Men went to find Jesus as quickly as they could, and worshiped Him. I point out to the kids that we might have been among the heavenly chorus singing of His birth.

21) The Atonement and Resurrection (cross) GAK 227 (Luke 22:41-44, John 11:25) Without the Atonement and Resurrection, Christmas would be meaningless.

22) Moroni (gold plates) GAK 320 (Moroni 10:4-7) The Holy Ghost testifies of Christ and the Book of Mormon.

23) Joseph Smith (temple) GAK 403 (D&C 76:22-24) Joseph Smith sealed his testimony of Jesus with his blood.

24) Rescuers of the Martin Handcart Company (quilt) GAK 415 (from the Ensign & President Hinckley video.) The young men acted as physical saviors of their people.

25) Modern Prophets (tie) GAK 520 (The Living Christ, from the Ensign,  President Monson video) I might see if I can find videos of each prophet’s final testimonies on youtube — they are all about Christ.

I think six years ago I could have read this post and thought, well, the boy has a stepfather and a family of his own. He gets $1000 a month from his biological father. Seems pretty good, actually. The biological father has taken financial responsibility, and the stepfather presumably provides emotional support.

Or maybe even six years ago I would be appalled that the family keeps the secret for fear of what others will think or say about their airbrushed “perfect” family, if only they knew. That the father never sees his son because it wasn’t his choice to continue the pregnancy. That the wife, whenever they argue, asks the father, again, How could you? (father a child out of wedlock).

But it is not six years ago, and it seems to me that anyone over the age of thirty should have lived enough by now to know that no family is perfect. And, even more importantly, that few people expect families to be perfect. And that if you are in some sort of social or religious or political group that expects people to never make mistakes, you should run, not walk, to a different social or religious or political group.

I’m not even sure what the lady means by perfect. She says outsiders looking at her family see “two towheaded children, one of each sex, an expensive red stroller, and often a dog, trotting along beside.”

If that is the only incarnation of a “perfect” family, then holy hell, people, could we get any shallower? Could we be that misguided in our judgment? That fearful of the judgment of others?* That’s the real problem in this case — the fear of judgment, the cowardice and dishonesty and supreme shallowness that denies a child’s existence because his life reminds us that his father was a stupid young kid once who acted as many stupid young kids act.

But the real reason this post appalled me is because I know a family who has almost the exact same circumstances as the family in the post. A husband and wife who have two young children, who have been happily married for five years. They have an illegitimate (do people still really use that word to describe children?), twelve-year-old son from a previous relationship of the father’s.

Except in this case, the father was involved with his son from birth. The son has always spent every weekend with his biological father. The son has lived with his father and his wife and their children.

This father, who was a stupid young kid once, took that mistake and turned it into one of the most loving, strong, and supportive (financial and otherwise) father-son relationships that I have ever seen. This son has a bedroom in his father’s house and the foods he likes to eat in his stepmother’s kitchen. He calls his half-sisters his sisters and his step-cousins his cousins. His father’s siblings and parents and his stepmother’s parents (all those grandparents and “step” grandparents and relatives and “step” relatives) — they all know him and love him and treat him just like their other nieces and nephews and grandchildren.

Their family isn’t perfect. There are frictions and jealousies, annoyances and inconveniences. But there is love, and honesty, and my life and family are better for knowing them.

Because they know what the family on the Motherlode blog hasn’t figured out yet: that the son isn’t the mistake. The son isn’t the dirty secret.  The mistake is fear and the dirty secret is the valuing of image over love.

—

* I edited those two sentences from the original, which was “Could we get any more judgmental, or fearful of judgment?” As I said in a comment below:

where the writer fears judgment for having an illegitimate step-son, I think this is wrong for two reasons — not because “judgment” is involved, but because:

A) I think she’s wrong about the possible judgment — I don’t think that sort of judgment exists to the extent that she thinks it does. That was my point when saying that no families are perfect.

and

B) Whether that judgment exists or not, it would be wrong to order one’s life according to the judgment of others, to do the wrong thing out of fear of judgment.

But now that Dick is involved with the Elder’s Quorum (church group for men ages 18-40ish), we’re putting our awkward selves forward and trying to fit in in this nice Utah congregation. It was always easier in our smaller branches. Here they don’t really need us, not like certain places we’ve lived, like Harlem, where, if we didn’t show up on Sunday, half of church wouldn’t happen. It’s harder here, where we need them more than they need us. (Although they probably didn’t need us that much in Harlem, either. Mormons are amazingly good at getting things done, following the regularly scheduled program.)

So last Saturday we got a babysitter and went to the EQ Christmas Party. There were too many people, too much high-calorie food, and very high (non-alcohol-fueled) spirits. It was great. I read somewhere that smaller rooms are better for parties than larger rooms, so it was okay that we were pretty crowded, and we played some fun taboo-charade type games with celebrity names suggested by the people there. You can tell a lot about a group of people by what celebrities they come up with when asked to write two names down. There were multiples of Hannah Montana, Bruce Lee, and Barack Obama (who — let’s just say my neighborhood is solidly Republican, which is fine, and solidly confident of shared disregard, which is really quite shortsighted but not actually mean-spirited (I think). (Or very wrong, even, in this case, I’m guessing).

In the midst of all this riotousness, three ladies nursed their babies. Right there. In the same room as the men. I sat on a small couch next to two of them. They used hooter-hiders and blankets, but considering that we were 33 people crammed in a tight space, it was amazing! Not one person asked for a mother’s room!

And then it was time for the white elephant gift exchange. Which sometimes is hilarious and sometimes is like an unsuccessful trip to DI. (DI, like any thrift store, can be the ultimate treasure hunting expedition, or seriously depressing, depending on your mood, what you’re searching for, and what kind of castoffs are available).

The two best gifts were:

and:

(Don’t worry, they sell Palin prophylactics, too.)

Someone joked at the end that we all needed to go home and repent, but I was so proud of my fellow Puritans. I think I might have cried on the way home.

So I love Thoreau and can’t imagine selling Scentsy, but things get more complicated when you have a sneaking fondness for Ayn Rand and a natural desire to feed your kids and maybe someday take them to Europe. (I should probably lie and say I daydream about distributing condoms in sub-Saharan Africa, but really I want to see the seven hills of Rome again).

Sean has his own business doing web-development stuff, and he’s a fantastic project-people manager. In kindergarten terms, he plays well with others, acts as a leader, and has a long attention span. He’s also good at making a profit. He knows how to value his time, his work, how to motivate others and how to sell what he orchestrates. He’s a good entrepreneur/businessman, in other words.

He’s also a good role model for my husband, who is strong on the substance but sometimes lacking in the confidence/valuing department. I would say that Dick is too good or above the selling necessary for sucessful freelance work, but then I think about Sean and how he combines the substance and the confidence and I think that Dick just needs to learn to charge more for his time, to shmooze his abilities just a bit more, and  then I won’t have to get frustrated every weekend when I’m sure that Dick is slaving over wordpress conversions for three dollars an hour instead of yelling at Spot to stop whacking her sister. Why do I have to do everything?

Sean’s company, HD Interactive, is experimenting with augmented reality, which is weird, and kind of cool, a cross between regular reality and virtual reality (not that I think we need more than one reality, but since we’re already there, might as well combine ‘em). With augmented reality, you print out special markers that your webcam recognizes and that prompt the program to incorporate whatever it is you’re holding up for the camera. Instead of interacting/directing your computer through the keyboard, you “talk” to your computer through the webcam. Kinda Star-Treky, huh?

If your kids are like mine (meaning they like to shove papers in your face if you don’t immediately pay them all the attention they crave), you should check out Sean’s We Can Play Hangman and I Can Learn My ABCs. In both games, kids direct the play by holding letters of the alphabet in front of the webcam. Kids really go for seeing themselves on the computer screen and telling the computer what to do next. Susan especially liked Hangman, she wanted to play again, but this time with a girl instead of a boy on the gallows. No separate but equal at our house.

Sean also has a new online chess application, Chessjam, though I’m embarrassed to say that I am probably not refined enough to appreciate the finer points of Chess. (I’m afraid UNO is more my speed). But if I did play chess, I would totally play it online with Sean’s new game, and I’m only half saying that because he paid me.

Finally, I am suggesting that Dick track his freelance project hours with Sean’s WorkWatch program, so we can finally settle the question of whether he would make more moonlighting at the local Wal-Mart.

]]> http://www.seagullfountain.com/2009/12/02/this-post-brought-to-you-by-my-favorite-brother-in-law/feed/ 3 http://www.seagullfountain.com/2009/12/02/you-dont-need-an-inner-city-to-have-a-ghetto/ http://www.seagullfountain.com/2009/12/02/you-dont-need-an-inner-city-to-have-a-ghetto/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:04:29 +0000 Jane http://www.seagullfountain.com/?p=4112 We spent a few hours tonight getting ready for our first Sunday in the new church building. It’s a fine building. Predictable, presentable facade, wide hallways, new carpet smell, pristine chalkboards. It’s only a street away from our house, surrounded by a lake of asphalt just waiting to be rollerskated on by happy children.

We organized our supplies in first one cabinet and then the right one. I trailed along as classrooms were assigned and hymn books were stacked. And then I saw a sign for “Restroom. Mother’s Room.” You walk through the restroom to get to the Mother’s Room. So all the stink is in one place, joked my friend. The place of eating has the place of pooping as an antechamber.

I’m not even nursing right now, don’t even know if I’ll have another baby. But as God is my witness, if He does send me another child to nourish and nurture, I will not be sitting in a small room off the bathroom to breastfeed.

Sally, age 8, uttered that phrase all parents wait for this week when she asked if she could read Twilight. “But all my friends are reading it,” she said, when I told her no. (The funny thing about that is that she knew to ask. She doesn’t ever ask if she can read Charlie Bone or Enola Holmes, though we did have discussions about the later Harry Potter books last July.)

I said no, in part, because after watching New Moon at midnight with Chrysanthemum, who was my midnight-Twilight buddy last year, and Sharla, I went home and made my husband very, very happy.

Not that New Moon is great; it’s actually not even as good as the first one (which itself wasn’t very good at all except as a fantasy made celluloid). Oh, the makeup’s a little better, and … well, to be honest the best thing about it is Jacob’s chest. The music (one of the highlights of the first) was horrible. Either totally unsuited to the mood of a scene or completely over-the-top. (I think I stole that line from Sharla, but I was thinking it!)

Bella’s personality and motivations, never very sympathetic or believable, take a turn to the maniacally-self-destructive-self-hating, which can’t be blamed on anything but Stephenie Meyer. But the worst part is Edward, who is okay, if whiny-emo, at the beginning, but after an hour or so of reveling in the (literal) warmth of Jacob’s friendship and muscles, Edward, at the climactic moment in Italy, stepping out into the sunlight, looks like an angel hair noodle with bits of pubic hair pepper stuck to him.

Not appealing, in other words. Emotionally, mentally, or physically. Three strikes and you’re out, baby!

I’ve never bought that romance (and I read a lot of romance) is emotional you-know-what for women. I’ll take my level-headed, laid-back, not-libido-driven, loving husband any day over any fictional character, no matter how sparkly. But as far as regular you-know-what, New Moon apparently delivers (ask Mr. Bennet).

Which is why Sally may never read the books or watch the movies. (She will, but not any time soon.)

As we stood in line for popcorn last night (the outing itself was great fun and something I should probably do more than once a year), we talked to a mom and her eight-year old daughter. The girl was really cute. Cute clothes, blonde hair in a grown-up cut, dangly earrings. She loves the books, and she will probably have a wonderful life. Sally next to her would look old-fashioned, young, and probably repressed by a censoring mother.

And to that I say: you’re welcome.

—-

For Sharla, here’s the post where I compared Stephenie Meyer and Shannon Hale.

*Image from Fanpop.

I’ll be the first to admit that all children can be quite problematic under the right circumstances (three hours of church being a prime example), but I took exception to three of the kids thusly labeled. All boys, they were also all willing and enthusiastic participants in the roadshow that Chrysanthemum directed and I scripted.

Have you ever been in charge of a church theatrical production? Turns out most people would rather postpone a desperately needed root canal (it’s the pain beforehand that slaughters sanity, not the root canal itself = never fear appropriate dental work) than sing and dance in a silly fifteen-minute patriotic skit that entails simples costumes, props, and the occasional rehearsal.

And while we’re on the subject of the roadshow as Mormon phenomenon, I’d like to point out that you can have either a family-friendly, low-key production that encourages comraderie and embodies the “wholesome recreational activities” thing, OR you can have a Broadway-ready American Idol-themed showpiece with imported dancers, expensive wardrobes and elaborate sets, and high-strung directors that inspire parents to withdraw their children, but not both. — And that if you as a stake activities committee ask for the former and then privately and posthumously wish that every ward had followed the latter’s example, you’re not going to make many friends. (But I’m not bitter.) (And American Idol is a great idea for a roadshow skit.)

Anyway, I stood up to my fellow church ladies of the primary with a “Don’t you bad talk my roadshow boys. Nobody puts baby in a corner.”

Then yesterday afternoon, a little boy from two houses down knocked on my door. We’ll call him Tommy, and note that he is apparently a bit of a challenge sometimes and that he also has gorgeous shocking blue eyes and those long eyelashes that always seem to go to the boys in the family. He’s seven. And he sang his heart out in our roadshow, bless his heart.

He knocked, holding a serious-looking shovel and an open bag of rock salt. He asked if he could shovel my driveway. I hesitated. He said he did a really good job on his own driveway, I could take a look at it, and he would like to shovel mine too. I asked him how much he charged and he looked surprised, confused.

Sally and Susan and Spot were huddled around me at the door. “What do you want to get paid for the job?” Blank stare. “How much do you want us to pay you for doing it?” “Oh,” he said, finally. Thought about it, considered. “Twenty cents?”

Sally said should give him more than that — like fifty cents at least. I was feeling generous, so after half an hour of hard work we slipped him a big one.