lately i have been thinking about women’s progress and the gifts each generation of women has shared to improve life for the next. what do i have to offer? in a recent post i wrote for the fabulous liberated life blog, i admitted that

“the contents of my work and family life are tightly crammed into a metaphorical (and very disorganized) closet. the pacifiers and burp cloths live next to my dusty grad school diploma and laptop, which are obscuring a bunch of unread papers about the upcoming “level II beach party” that my son brought home in his school bag. i live in fear that someone will open the door of this closet and instigate an avalanche of all things dear to me.”

there are so many opportunities available to modern women. but what will i contribute to the next generation when taking advantage of these opportunities tends to yield a disorganized mishmash of overwhelming stuff?

and then it hit me (an idea… not the avalanche). perhaps my generation is charged with the important and unglamorous work of telling the truth. we can help define the problem. progress is impossible without an honest look at the current state of things. the plethora of mom blogs and parental facebook confessions speaks to the notion that our generation simply wants the freedom to come clean about the complexities of modern motherhood.

“the truth hurts,” according to an old saying. but sometimes, the truth is hilarious! some friends of mine have recently posted pictures on facebook of their own disorganized mishmashes of overwhelming stuff. these scenes represent the new normal of modern motherhood where everything does not have its place.

many thanks to lane and stiles for contributing the above pictures to what i am titling “the reality project.” let’s say there is a half-eaten sucker stuck to your uncashed paycheck or a jock strap in your fruit bowl. let’s say you’ve been walking by these scenes in your home for three days without even noticing. snap a photo and send it to me! the truth is funny. we might as well laugh. and who knows… we could be doing the next generation a favor.

there are several smells that i associate with childhood. one is the combined aroma of broccoli and chicken that vented from the kitchen of my childhood home into the northern territory of our driveway basketball court. another is the “house smell,” of my friend lauren’s home that was two doors down from ours. this was not a bad smell, mind you. just a distinct smell. but perhaps the most jarring smell to my young nose was the ever-present odor of turpentine and other chemicals used to strip grime, paint, and varnish from old furniture.

i have visions of my parents working all day on a saturday to convert a cheap, ugly dining room table into an attractive gathering place for many thanksgiving and christmas dinners. i have memories of my dad walking without embarrassment from a neighbor’s trash pile with a rolled up rug over his shoulder. my parents’ garage, until a few years ago, was home to all manor of cool pine furniture and even a crystal chandelier, costing my family a sum total of zero dollars. all this is to say that i come from a long line of scavengers and makeshifters. we are proud (and even a little giddy) to be at the bottom of the furniture chain.

there is nothing that i enjoy more than discovering a perfectly lovely piece of furniture by the side of the road, schlepping it home (with the help of my very patient husband), and spending the next few days making it beautiful and interesting. the kids are now in on the hunt as they twist around in their carseats to peer down side streets. on friday, for example, the monkey made the mistake of saying, “look mommy, a treasure!” i stopped the car, flexed my muscles, hoisted this future headboard (old door) into the CRV, and off we went.

the kids and i stayed too late at barbecue fest just the night before, and though we were hurrying home to bed, we stopped for 45 minutes at the sight of this:

even though the kids were cheering me on as i tried to hoist this bad boy into the too-small trunk, my friend susan had to be called in for this job. thanks susan! with just a little sanding and waxing, the wood is now shiny and smooth, and the white paint circle (see above) is gone!

spring treasure season opened this year with a chest of drawers that i spotted while i was on a long run in east memphis. it took our entire family to load this 1950’s nursery centerpiece into andy’s suberu outback. andy removed his belt and used it to “secure” the furniture for a very tedious and risky 20-minute ride home. i wish i had a picture of the pre-makeover ugliness. you will have to use your imagination to envision the tarnished brass handles, the formica top, the off-white grungy glaze, and the cracked peeling lattice that was glued to the top drawers. but here she is in her current state:

until we can figure out exactly what to do with all of this stuff, the ever-patient andy has lost his parking space in the garage. this is a small price to pay, in my opinion, for the thrill of the hunt and the hilarity of my children’s participation in the search and fix up processes. who knows, we might just land a crystal chandelier to live amongst our tools, gardening equipment, and tricycles. then we really will have a treasure island!

i was in first grade when my teacher read the mrs. piggle-wiggle stories to our class after lunch every day.  i remember quite a few details about betty macdonald’s characters and their ailments. i also remember putting a band aid box in my teacher’s chair when she interrupted story time to fetch something from her desk. she returned to her chair and crushed the box as our class erupted with laughter. i ended up in the hall but it was worth it. clearly, i would have been a good candidate for one of mrs. piggle-wiggle’s cures!

but now that i am reading mrs. piggle-wiggle to the monkey, i am surprised at how much i do not remember about these little story gems. i do not, for example, remember this hilarious fossil of a conversation between mr. and mrs. russell:

mr. russell came whistling into breakfast. he said mildly, “oh, scrambled eggs again. i was hoping for sausages and buckwheat cakes.” mrs. russell said, “we had sausages and buckwheat cakes yesterday morning.” mr. russell said, “what about brook trout? bill smith has’em nearly every morning.” mrs. russell said crossly, “perhaps that is why he looks like a trout and his wife looks like a great big halibut” (mrs. piggle-wiggle, betty macdonald, 117).

mrs. russell exibited quite a bit of spunk and self-assurance for 1947, right?

but even more striking than the quick wit of mrs. russell are the phone conversations the mothers have with each other in every chapter. while the children’s bad behaviors and mrs. piggle-wiggle’s unorthodox cures delight the kids, surely these ridiculous phone chats were meant to entertain the mothers. for example, who has never been in an exchange such as this?

“hello, mrs. bags, this is hubert’s mother and i am so disappointed in hubert. he has such lovely toys — his grandfather sends them to him every christmas, you know — but he does not take care of them at all. he just leaves them all over his room for me to pick up every morning.” mrs. bags said, “well, i’m sorry, mrs. prentiss, but i can’t help you because you see, i think it’s too late.” “why, it’s only nine-thirty,” said hubert’s mother. “oh, i mean late in life,” said mrs. bags. “you see, we started ermintrude picking up her toys when she was six months old. ‘a place for everything and everything in its place,’ we have always told ermintrude. now, she is so neat that she becomes hysterical if she sees a crumb on the floor” (22).

in her phone-conversations-gone-wrong, bettty macdonald illuminates and exaggerates the miscommunication, judgement, and posturing that often come between mothers. every night, as i read the monkey his chapter of mrs. piggle-wiggle, i find myself laughing and rolling my eyes as i am reminded about something i have said to another mother or something another mother has said to me. the children in macdonald’s books are not the only ones behaving badly. they’re not the only ones being cured either.

perhaps this is why betty macdonald’s books have endured for over sixty years.  

spirea

two weeks ago, back when the world was new, the act of fetching the bird from school came with the added boost of accolades from his teachers about his “near perfect behavior.” in fact, i owe the bird a lot of credit for my easy transition into campus ministry in january. he surprised me with his instant comfort with school rituals, peers, and even group nap time.

that was before he grabbed a handful of the face of another child who was “using his outside voice inside.” there were no accolades that day, of course. just instructions to cut the bird’s fingernails and to insist upon good behavior at home.

red yucca

we’ve de-clawed our child, who now spends 87.5 percent of his life in time out for clocking his brother on the head with various objects. with every school pick-up, i hope for a report of improved behavior. but the bird is consistent in his resolve to fully embrace the “terrible twos.” it seems that in parenting, there are no immediate results.

purple heart

there are no immediate results in campus ministry either, as it turns out. i am wrapping up my first semester at the university of memphis, and my offerings of engaging programs and free food are not exactly wooing the masses. i was reporting this phenomenon to a member of my campus ministry board last week, and he encouraged me to think of my work as the act of planting seeds.

i burst into immediate laughter as i recalled what a friend had said to me just the day before. she was surveying my front yard, a space that was completely under construction two years ago due to a drainage issue. i, a novice gardener, researched what plants would be happiest in our wet soil and in full sun. i made dozens of trips to nurseries and googled the names of the foliage on the shelves. and then, much to the entertainment of friends, family, and neighbors, i made what several of them described as the beginning gardener’s classic mistake. i planted one of everything. (i really planted about three of everything but this fact didn’t seem to matter.)

yellow helenium daisies

as my friend was surveying my yard, which is now full of all sorts of interesting leaves and textures and colors, she said, “your yard looks great! it’s almost as if you knew what you were doing!”

i guess the same goes for all types of seed planting – parenting, campus ministry, et cetera. there are no immediate results. in the present, we just have to persist with near-knowledge and experimental expertise. then, if the sun shines just right, something beautiful will emerge.