"Look Mom, you made maxi-pad ears!"

Could it be any better than this?
My cherubic Aidan circa 2003 with his blankee,
his train set, his dairy reminder, and his tiger bed.
(One of the pics we found tonight.)

Most hours of most days I'm working, cooking, driving, sleeping (attempting), lecturing (my kids), shopping (for food), or otherwise thinking of all the things I wish I were accomplishing.

Or I'm sitting at a desk with my head in the computer, researching, writing, researching, editing, researching, researching, researching. All for the sake of funding non-profit programs. (Aka, bleeding heart.)

Lather, rinse, repeat. You get the picture.

Today I found out that a classmate was accepted to teach English on the Peace Boat. The Peace Boat! It's a big ship that floats around the world and teaches about love and understanding. (She's a great writer, you can read about it here.) She writes about her struggle to find her own way while living in Japan due her husband's military job: ". . . a little teaching here, a little editing there. But I was still on the hunt for something more. Then late one night in February, I found it. I don’t even know what search terms I used -- Japan, teaching, NGO – that helped me stumble upon the webpage, but I knew instantly, the way my heart warmed, and everything slowed, that this was it: a humanitarian NGO that runs peace and social justice advocacy voyages around the world looking for volunteer English teachers? Yes, please!"

Yes, while her husband is on a war ship, she'll be on a peace boat. That's how she ends her post. I love it.

I want to go on a peace boat. To be honest I kind of felt jealous -- in the one minute or so that I had today to read her post and consider a vast ocean and a big sky and the whole world ahead. But feeling jealous is silly, I know. I've got kids, for one thing. I've got my life. I'm not floating around the globe, but I've got my little wonders of joy at home.

I forgot about the peace boat and proceeded with my evening -- driving, cooking, etc, etc. Somehow I ended up looking at old family pictures (if you call ten years ago old) that Amanda has collected. As for myself, I'm terrible at organizing family pictures because of all the things mentioned in the first paragraph in this post. However, evidently, my child has been secretly collating pictures into boxes, piles, and photo albums. She wanted me to look at them with her tonight. It was the night I had designated to re-initiate my yoga practise -- but when your 16-year-old daughter wants to relive old family pictures, what choice is there?

The picture that really got to us was the time I created a horrific sheep costume for her for some occasion, maybe it was school or church. It was probably supposed to look like a sweet little lamb, but instead the brown paper sack with black permanent marker eyes and whiskers looks like a serial killer lamb. White cotton balls made up the skull of the mask -- terrifying. I have no idea what I was thinking. Psycho mom. But the thing that made us laugh were the ears.

"Look Mom, you made maxi-pad ears!" exclaimed Amanda. I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen the evidence in a real photograph. I pulled the snapshot close to my bespeckled eyes. Sure enough. There they were -- lambs ears made of Kotex panty liners. I did that for my kid. Usually, I do not laugh. I am sorely short in my laughter. I am far too serious and really need to figure out how to see the funny side of things. But tonight, I forgot about my yearning for the peace boat and laughed like I'd hadn't for years. I laughed at that ridiculous lamb mask I made with the maxi-pad ears. The girl and I both laughed. The girl was in shock that I was laughing. She laughed because I laughed.

As children are lost under the rubbish in Oklahoma, my teenage daughter and I laughed until sound did not come out of our mouths. As a community in Iowa searches for a kidnapped little girl, my teenage daughter and I laughed until our guts rumbled. As parents grieve all over this planet for every reason you can't imagine, my teenage daughter and I laughed until our eyes watered.

"Mom, I don't think I've ever seen you laugh like that," said my teenage daughter. She's right. I haven't laughed like that for a very long time. But I should. I'm not on the peace boat, but I've got my babies and they are charmed and charming and cherubic and here with me. What else could I want? Seriously, what else?

Thanks for coming over to my blog.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

The church according to dirt

Black gold

Team Garden planted today in our backyard. In their honor, I'm re-posting this reflection about their work to grow food and reap satisfaction.

I know most people think of Iowa as a monolithic cornfield, a state full of dirt. But we live in a mid-size metropolitan area, the capital city of Des Moines. We hardly ever venture into the countryside. Our home is inside the city limits yet it’s an old farm house that survived suburban sprawl. Our yard is one-full-acre in size, a bumpy, horse pasture remnant that perseveres whilst landscaped, chemically treated lawns surround it for miles in each direction. Six years ago when the real estate agent showed us this place, my husband, Bob, and I had different points of view:

Being from the Midwest, I said, “That’s a lot of work.”

Being from New York City, Bob said, “That’s a lot of freedom.”

Freedom won out on this marital difference.

In addition to the large yard came an industrial-sized driveway, which better resembles a parking lot, topped off with two (2) garages that fit in total five (5) vehicles counting the tractor lawn mower. This property was custom-made for Bob, who had been deprived this magnitude of motor storage capacity his whole previous life. >>read more

This was originally posted at Living Lutheran, with thanks to my generous editor, Jan Rizzo, and her talented team. 

Peace, love and road trip

Hello lovely readers and thank you for coming over to my blog, where we are kicking off road trip season with a shameless reposting of my Facebook status update from February 11, 2013. My road trips come hard these days, this one squeezed in-between $15.2 million dollars worth of deadlines (which I'm pleased to say have mostly paid off by now). On February 11, I had an opportunity to spend four hours and 17 miles to discover the highways and byways of this great country. It was awesome. Here goes:
 
Terri Mork Speirs, Facebook Status Update, February 11, 2013 -- You never know what will happen when you indulge in four hours of vacation time. This morning I pre-planned the morning away from work so I could take my daughter to get her driver's license. (Done.) To avoid the long lines we went to a courthouse in a sleepy little town outside of Des Moines, a quaint farm town called Adel. (I can't believe how few times we go into the countryside and we in Iowa for land sakes.)

Anyway, it felt so roadtripping-free to drive westward, even if it was only 17 miles. At the license bureau, a tiny multipurpose room with three clients waiting in line, we were both surprised that the clerk was a distinguished Latino with a whiff of gray hair. He was servicing clients in English while training in another clerk (who looked kind of Irish to me) in Spanish.

This is rural Iowa, friends.

I know some of you may be saying "why should a clerk speak Spanish" but I say why not? It was the most civilized drivers license bureau I've experienced. Anyway, afterwards we found a bookstore cafe a few blocks away and shared a homemade buttermilk biscuit and farm fresh eggs; tasted pretty much out of this world. And then, a book practically leaped off the shelf and into our breakfast table (see pic). To top it off, there was enough change on the bottom of my purse to buy it.

Congratulations to my lovely daughter, light of my life, for getting her license. Now back to work because, whoa boy, do I have deadlines. First, I'll read a poem while the girl drives us back to reality.

Below is the poem I read aloud (but not nearly as well as Alfre Woodard) with Teengirl at the wheel. More road trip posts to come. Where have you gone lately?

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

A loaded mother's day

Me with another one of my winning hair-dos, and the kiddos
circa 2007 in one of our favorite postures, reading in bed.
Please note my slit throat, which provided
a rare instance to feel badass.

The first time I got pregnant I was 33 years old, my husband Bob was 43. We were on the back end of our biological clocks (or at least I was), but we may as well have been teenagers. We were so excited and so naïve. We didn’t know about the caution to keep it quiet for the first trimester due to all the unknowns.

When we went in for our initial appointment, they gave us an ultrasound, which in hindsight was probably not necessary but evidently that’s what they did in the late 90s in downtown Brooklyn. (I would get many more ultrasounds in the next few years.) The six week ultrasound confirmed I was pregnant. It also discovered twins growing in my uterus. Twins! Bob and I were thrilled beyond belief. We had waited so long -- not by choice but more by circumstance, and now we were having twins.

It was worse than keeping a Christmas secret. We were having twins! We told my family, Bob’s family, my workplace, Bob’s colleagues, our church, our neighbors, people at the diner, people on the subway (kidding on the last one). We pretty much told everyone. We would have taken out a billboard had we thought of it.

You know where this is going.

I started bleeding approximately one week later. It was Memorial Day weekend 1995. When I realized the bleeding wasn’t going to stop, I posed a compromise to my body. You dispose of one twin, I’ll keep the other. I’d accept one baby. I’d be grateful for one baby. I begged for one baby. The universe could take the other, just give me one. But no, I kept bleeding. I can’t remember but I’m sure we must have called the doctor. I’m sure the doctor was not surprised and I’m sure the doctor said to just bear it out and come in first thing after the weekend. The doctor knew that up to 20 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage during the first weeks of pregnancy. They call it spontaneous abortion and there’s nothing fancy western healthcare can do. After two days of hemorrhaging I conceded that both babies were lost. There were no twins.

It was a sunny day when Bob and went to the follow up appointment. It was pretty routine. My health was fine. The babies were gone. Bob and I held hands as we walked away from the clinic. I would have liked it to be over starting exactly that moment, but dang, we told everyone we were having twins. Which meant we had to tell everyone that I had miscarried the twins. There was no way around it. I had wished so badly that we had kept our mouths shut because I wanted it to be over. 

The next day I went in to the office and I felt funny. I was barren and everyone thought I was carrying twins. I didn’t know what to do so I went straight to my HR director and blurted out to her that I’d miscarried. I cried and told her I didn’t want to repeat the story over and over. That awesome HR director knew exactly what to say, offered her complete sympathy, and said she’d take care of it. (Thank you Ann, if you’re out there.) She discretely informed everyone at the office of the situation. As the day drew on, I couldn’t believe how many people, both men and women, came up to me quietly to confide that the same thing had happened to themselves or their wives.

This kept happening.

I wouldn’t have chosen to tell everyone I had miscarried, but hearing other people’s stories brought much healing.

I’ll never say that “it was God’s plan” or anything like that, because I can’t believe that any kind of divine power would intentionally take twin babies, or even one baby. But still, at this point I can’t imagine it any other way than having my Amanda and my Aidan. My heart goes out to all the mothers who couldn’t have children, who are separated from their children, who lost their children, or who have fallen out of relationship with their children. Same goes the other way. My heart is full for those who have lost their mothers.

Mother’s Day is loaded.

Mom and me 2012.

And so even as I give thanks for my kids, for my beautiful mother, and my dear mother-in-law, I commend these communities of mothers, in case any one of them might be useful for you:

Babies, Infertility, and Mother’s Day, a powerful blog post and resources from a fabulously talented seminary friend, Rev. Jodi Houge.

Motherless Daughters, a website, a book, and a worldwide movement, launched by Hope Edelman, a writer and teacher who I was honored to be mentored by for a year.

Little Seal, a blog turned book (“Still Point of a Turning World”) about the loss of a child, by Emily Rapp, another writing teacher I was privileged to learn from.

Thanks for coming by my blog. I wish you all -- whoever you are, and where ever you are with your motherhood -- a lovely weekend.  

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

See this film

Sokha was a Cambodian child of the dump:
orphaned and forced to pick through garbage to survive.
But, through a series of miracles, Sokha finds her way to school –
and, like a phoenix, she has risen to become a star student on the brink of
a brilliant and once unimaginable future.

Hello friends, 

If you're like me, you feel a mixture of horror and hope about the emerging story of the rescued women and the little girl in Cleveland. If so, may I encourage you to see this film, "Girl Rising." 

Bring the kids, bring your partner, bring a friend, bring your parents, or just go. Check out when it's showing in your community and go. (With thanks to Megan Clausen who introduced it to me. And with thanks to a group of lovely women who I was able to join for the showing.)

I hope to go again, this time with Bob and the kids, if it returns to Des Moines. The website including a movie trailer is here. 

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

Sisterhood

Margaret on the occasion of her ordination July 15, 2012.
I love this picture, it's all Margaret. "It's not for someone to take this away,"
she wrote about female genital mutilation, in a very personal
essay printed in The Lutheran magazine in 2005.
Margaret's advice basically consists of two things: don't mess with me
and don't let no one mess with you. As mentioned in
this blog post for Kibira Films International, she was a pastor
long before her ordination.

I stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes at my friend Margaret’s apartment. Curtains closed, the place was dark and quiet. 

A slab of freshly butchered goat meat waited in the refrigerator, splayed across an entire shelf. 

Margaret worried it would go bad, as it had been sitting there for a few days. It needed to be cut up for the freezer, but there was a crisis at hand. Margaret’s teenage son had been put into a medically induced coma the night before.


We had lived together in student housing at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., a few years prior to this emergency. My family moved on; Margaret’s was still there. 

When I heard about Margaret’s son, my kids and I pretty much jumped in the car and drove four hours due north. Margaret had been a key source of support for us (in the year of our liver failure, thyroid cancer, and open heart surgery). Margaret was like a liver-whisperer, knowing what to do and say when not even the Mayo Clinic doctors did. 

I couldn't think of anything else I’d rather do at that moment but wash her dishes and consider the fate of the goat meat in the fridge.  >>full post here

(Please continue to Living Lutheran for full post. With thanks to my wonderful editor, Jan Rizzo, and all the lovely people at Living Lutheran.)