They say, I say

"Should my kid bring quarters for the laundry machines?"

"Are there printers in the dorm buildings?"

"Does the campus cafeteria serve food for special diets?"

"Should my daughter bring her own fridge or rent the campus fridge?"

"What is the cable/TV situation on campus?"

Such are the questions that parents of incoming freshman must answer (according to our parent's Facebook page, a closed site to which I belong).

Part of me thinks, oh lord, do these people have nothing better to do? Do these people live in upper middle class lives? Do these people not work nine to five? (Or eight to six with occasional nights and weekends.) Yes, I'm being judgmental. Pardon me.

Truthfully, I love these parents asking questions, because they are me.

But the funny thing is, I know the answers to all of these questions because Amanda has long ago researched them and informed me of the facts. I'm kind of feeling sorry for the moms and dads who must think through these conundrums on their own. Mostly, I'm impressed with my daughter for her interest in knowing the small stuff. (And I'm not holding my breath that this will happen with the second child, as an fyi -- and that's Ok, fist in mouth.)

Today her school books arrived in the mail. Chemistry. Economics. American Government. Writing. The Mental Health System. Your basic liberal arts selection. Because she somehow figured out that it's better to rent books from Amazon than to purchase from the school book store. Although, I told her to buy and keep the books for the subjects that bring her passion. (Still, whatever your interests, you can't take it with you, right?)

We are five days and counting for when the girl goes to Ohio. 10 hours away. A different state. Another time zone. She would have went farther if we could have figured logistics for how to do farther school visits. I understand. I appreciate the spirit of learning and adventure and thinking on your own. Still, as of today I have all the information I need to purchase her thanksgiving vacay airplane ticket (with my one last remaining frequent flyer mile accumulation).

Tonight, as I write this simple blog post, my girl is assembling her dorm room shelves in our family room. It's a trial run to see if she can do it on her own, with the mini tool kit she ordered for her college years. Bob is committed to not helping, to see if she can do it on her own first. She will then disassemble and re-box in preparation for move-in day. You see the university administrators design the move-in days so parents come for a few hours, unload boxes, and then leave asap. Parents are not encouraged to linger to do stuff like, miss their children or build cubical systems. In a way, I get it. I drove myself to college and I did just fine. On my move in day I was thrilled to find that my dorm window room looked on to a fraternity house, Phi Delta Theta. Par-tay.

Our daughter, of course, will not be fraternizing with . . . honestly, what will we know? We'll be 500 miles away. Anything could happen. I'll be focusing on the political science and all the lessons learned on church mission trips. That's all we have. Send up prayers.

It's a better deal to rent a fridge and microwave package from campus.

Quarters are not needed for laundry as the costs are included in board charges. TV/cable doesn't matter because kids watch Netflix. Other buildings on campus have printers, color printers. The cafeteria caters to special diets.

Thanks for coming over to my blog.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

P.S. The girl is discovering that IKEA shelves are not as easy to put together as it would seem. See, life lessons learned already.

Reflections on a "Mission" Trip

Don't just do something,
stand there.

A group of us stood in a circle at Snookies Ice Cream Shop in Des Moines, Iowa, slurping slurpies and lapping strawberry dipped vanilla soft serve when we were given a handout of stapled papers entitled, To Hell With Good Intentions. It was preparation for our senior high youth mission trip. I'm not partial to the word "mission," for all the loaded connotations. I like service trip, or do-gooder trip, or just trip. (Now you know where I'm headed with this post.) But for simplicity sakes, we call it a mission trip.

Our youth director handed out this article to the kids in preparation for their mission trip to Red Lake Indian Reservation, where they would travel and "serve" for a week. The article lays out all the cautions of volunteerism in another culture, another land, another place. I won't go into the article, but I've linked it here, so you can read it for yourself. I remember handing out that very same piece to people who would travel on international trips I used to organize in my former life. (They were educational trips, not "mission" trips. More about listening, not doing. But that is darn hard for those of us who are raised to make things happen.)

Three days after the ice cream shop gathering, my two teenagers boarded minivans along with a 10 or so other kids and two trusted adults. They headed north for adventure and to answer the call to help others. I'm told one van was silent in their own electronic devises. The other van was raucous in their group sings of One Direction songs. (British boy band famous for their song about being beautiful with a dominant drum beat.)

But helping others doesn't look the same to everyone, as they would find out. As it turns out, being a Christian doesn't look the same to everyone. From the outside, we might all look alike I suppose. From the inside, like with all groups, there are many MANY variations of belief and lifestyles.

Now, more than a week later from the sunny day at the ice cream shop, the trip is over and I've just spent about four hours listening to my two teens tell stories about their week. The trip wasn't what they expected it to be. (As always happens, right?) In summary, they were exposed to other pieties about sex, books, sexuality, homosexuality, investing in community, what it means to be a church, who is Jesus (did Jesus have a banned book list?),  joy, eating, poverty, and probably the biggest exposure. . .imposing one's values on others.

Breath that in. Or perhaps, go get yourself an ice cream cone and consider this with me.

My children (along with 12 or so others) just learned that other people who propose to be of the same religious faith as us -- are different. Really different.

My children learned that not everyone accepts everyone as a child of God, no strings attached.

My children learned that not everyone would march in a pride parade with their church.

My children learned that not everyone would allow books to be read, without scrutiny.

My children learned that not everyone approaches Christianity with an attitude of kindness, acceptance, and love.

My children leaned all these things, and more, with the careful guidance of awesome adults who could explain this to them; how hypocrisy works; how extremism forms; how contortion twists faith into conformity. How we are not superior or better, but how we look to grace and humility.

It took me so long to learn all these things, long into adulthood. And my kids learned it as teenagers, mediated by wise leaders to help them sort it all out. To me, that's the point of a so-called mission trip and I'm so grateful.

Thanks so much for coming over to my blog.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

Ghosts

It's so quiet, I only hear crickets.

In 18 years, the only time we ever left our two children both at the same time were four days in 2000 when Bob and I traveled to a conference in San Jose, California. 

Until today.

We were not the type of parents to take trips together without the kids. I didn't even like to do dinner and a movie without the kids, unless they were both together. I couldn't stand the idea of a kid at home alone. It ruined the potential fun to me. Before we went to San Jose, we wrote a living will with instructions on how to raise our children should we die on the trip. We have preferred to travel separately, ensuring that at least one of us would be available for the kids.

To be clear, we didn't leave our children but they left us. Presently, they are traveling to Red Lake Reservation in Northern Minnesota for a church do-gooder week. "Left" is too melodramatic -- they are together with friends and trusted adults, embarking on an incredible cross-cultural opportunity that will be mediated in a most excellent way by their leaders.

We are home alone in the quiet. To be honest, I feel like its the first time I've exhaled since 1996 when I stood in the shower gulping in sobs of grief, mourning the loss of freedom after Amanda was born. At the time, I was contemplating if in fact my new baby was an independent human being or an vile appendage of my own body. (Do not underestimate the power of postpartum depression.) My blood pressure feels normal.

Today, it's quiet.

Crickets chirp.

Distant jets roar.

Neighbor dogs bark.

But mostly, it's silent.

However the universe speaks. A baby arrives. At 7 a.m. this morning we received a telephone call to alert us our godson would be at our house shortly, because his mother was having contractions. We knew this was coming up, but today is two weeks early. Today, our first day sans children in 18 years, we played Thomas the Train, read "Where the Wild Things Are," served mac-n-cheese in Jake the Pirate dinnerware, went swimming in the shallow end, and played catch with baseball gloves and tennis balls.

Then we all went to the maternity ward and marveled at a brand new baby swaddled in a striped hospital blanket. "That child was inside your body just a few hours ago," I said to the mother, who looked far too beautiful and alert for just bearing a child. (My births were difficult, or maybe I was just difficult.) "I know!" she replied. It's such a miracle. You already know that, but still.

A short story by the fabulous Tobias Wolf tells about an irritated parent who drives his kid to military school, kind of hoping to get rid of him. The parent drops off the son, drives away, turns around to look back and the entire campus has vanished. I haven't read the story but I had the privilege of seeing Tobias Wolf in person talk about the story. It gave me chills. Of course it's a metaphor for parenting. One moment you're children are driving you crazy, the next moment they've disappeared. Poof. Magic. Dust. As if they never existed. I should probably dig that story up and read it.

Tonight, the ghosts of my children and I sit by the pool. The gnat catcher next to me is a hack devised by Amanda -- a glass of white wine and dish soap. I hear a younger Aidan echoing in the water, "Mom, watch me!" demanding eye contact all the time as he plays by himself. A dress of Amanda's still hangs with clothespins, blue with white polka dots. And for the first time in months, I blog. Is this not what I've always wanted to do?

The water is still. We will help with the baby tomorrow.

Thank you for coming over to my blog.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

Lunch hour

Need to pick up son’s wood-shop project before one oclock, but I’m at the office, submitting an online grant application. It’s due.

Submission fails. Question six 6 too long.

Fix. Submit again.

Submission fails. Question eight  too long.

Repeat four more times. Submission successful.

Rush to high school to pick up son’s woodshop project.

Woodshop project: side table. Looks good.

Son brings woodshop project to parking lot and loads into vehicle.

I depart.

Stop for sandwich to make it back to office for one o’clock webinar.

Webinar topic: database reports and dashboard panel.

Sandwich shop closed for remodeling.

Go next door and order Chinese take-out.

Worry about missing webinar, thus causing a costly fee to agency.

Veggie fried rice in hand, rush back to parked vehicle.

Daughter calls. She’s stuck in a parking garage with her three-year-old client.

40 cents short in her debit card to pay the fee to open the gate. No attendant. What to do?

I worry for my webinar, but who cares, what about the children?!!

Call Bob, who’s at a conference. Idea comes to mind.

Call daughter. She’s driving around parking garage calming the three-year-old by saying they can’t get out because they are “special.” She plays the Frozen soundtrack.

I forget about the webinar, the wood-shop project, and the fried rice. Instruct the daughter to go to pay machine and look for phone number. Standing under a tree by my vehicle, call that number. 

A live person answers. Halleluiah!

“My daughter and a small child are stuck in the garage. They are 40 cents short. Can you help?”

Yes, he’ll go there immediately to help. Shout out to Keck Parking. You guys rock.

It’s 90 degrees outside. Did I mention I don’t have my own car? I’m driving Bob’s rust bucket truck. It’s a big glug.

Head back to the office. Admire the wood-shop project riding shotgun. Imagine it next to my rocking chair. 

Wait, there’s a sprawling pen-mark on the front of the wood-shop project. It says “Stephen” in three inch letters. Stephen is not my son.

Bumble into my office. Five minutes late for the webinar. I’m logged in. My agency is not charged.

They say you should use the lunch hour to network.

I use it to parent teenagers. Life is beautiful.

On the occasion of our daughter's high school graduation

Tsunami

Daughter graduates.

Her wave is unstoppable.

I am riding it.

Daughter graduates.

Seventeen and leaving home.

I'll not be destroyed.

Daughter graduates.

She powers forward. I ride.

A baby born, gone.

(a built haiku, a work in progress)

Don't stop believing

Amanda's graduation pic, Roosevelt High School,
Des Moines, Iowa, Class of 2014,
courtesy of Megan Clausen Photography

A 17-year-old daughter is so beautiful to behold. Today at the office, I got an emergency telephone call (aka not a text) that went something like this:

Her: Mom, the neighbor is spray-painting their grass the color of green!

Me: They're re treating their lawn with chemicals.

Her: But you know what that means, right?! (To my writer friends, my lovely girl really does talk in exclamation points.)

Me: Their yard is going to look great?

Her: No, mom, it's Glee!

Me: (She's referring to the very first episode of Glee where the character of Finn [RIP] as a child watches his mother's latest loser boyfriend chemically treat the lawn while blasting a Journey song, Lovin, Touchin', Squeezin, which would stay with Finn until he gets into high school to help inspire the newly formed Glee club with another Journey Song.)

Me: Don't Stop Believing, honey.

Her: Don't Stop Believing, mommy.

End of call. Back to work.

Grow Something

I planted the colors green, yellow, red and orange.
The kids call my favorite eats "mom's tropical food."

Welcome to my vegetable garden!

As you may know, we live on one full acre. To Bob it's "a farm," a compensation from living 46 years in the inner city*. To me it's "another job," an overwhelming sensation from having very little liquid time. With all this land, you'd think we'd have planted a garden a long time ago but I didn't know where to start.

However, I found a solution.

It's "live globally, act apartmently." I ask myself what would I do if I lived in a little space. Suddenly things become very clear. I need to plant a container garden because that's what you would do if you didn't have a yard. (Note: in the background of this picture is the St. John's Faith Garden, an impressive expanse, which has been a nice proxy gardening experience. Yet, I still wanted my own kitchen garden.)

This is how we did it.