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.

if the monkey were to plan a wedding, he would follow the lead of julia roberts in steel magnolias. in other words, “pink is his signature color.”

as the mom of this pink-loving fellow, i have enjoyed MANY a self-administered pats on the back for allowing the monkey to exist outside of society’s color rules for boys and girls. you should see me at the cupcake counter, for example, proudly presenting both boys with their requested pink “plain janes.” i love myself in those moments.

photo from http://liplickin.blogspot.com/

but last week while we in asheville, the pink craze got a little more complicated when i took the monkey to pick out this season’s “creek walking shoes.” from a lovely, multicolored bouquet of keen sandals, the monkey plucked these with great zeal:

he was as pleased as punch (pun intended). i, on the other hand, was faced with an unexpected choice. is it my job to protect my children from teasing, or is it my job to help them be their truest selves? i hated myself in that moment.

i texted andy the above picture along with the words, “HELP! what should i do?”

his sentiments were the same as my own. we both want to protect our children from teasing AND help them be their truest selves. meanwhile, the monkey commenced to skip around the store in the fabulous pink shoes.

i contemplated my next move and imagined the silent horror of the sweetly-smiling sales woman, observing my attempts to squelch my son’s spirit. should i explain to my four-year-old that kids are mean, and that in our more traditional town, kids are mean AND traditional? or should i just purchase the pink shoes and hope for the best?

i opted for plan C. we revisited the multicolored bouquet of keen sandals “just to check for any other colors we might like.” and lo and behold, there was another pair on the display that was calling the monkey’s name. the dark pink pair:

now this pair is much more pink in person than the above picture reveals, but i didn’t care. surely he could be his true self in these shoes AND avoid teasing. we bought the shoes, and i was off the hook.

but only temporarily. i’m convinced that time and again, i will be revisiting the questions i asked myself in the shoe store. ultimately, i believe that it’s healthy to be selective about when, where, and with whom we reveal the deepest parts of who we are. i want to teach my kids to be selective. unfortunately, nobody learns to be selective without being teased.

i’m not sure i did the right thing. i am not writing to defend my choice. i’m just saying that in parenting, everything is complicated. nothing is as simple as wanting my kids to feel the cool mountain stream washing over their hot summer feet.

list of things to do:

• potty train the bird
• wean the bird from his chew toy (pacifier)
• switch bird to a big-boy-bed
• eliminate (excuse the pun) the monkey’s night-time pull-up
• experience a miraculous and heretofore unprecedented boost in energy

my kids are ready to move forward, and i can foresee that life without diapers, chew toys, easily-scaled cribs, and pull-ups will be easier. but not without getting much more difficult first.

list of supplies needed:

• big boy pants
• wine
• elmo potty
• padded room (for all of us)
• screwdriver for crib disassembly
• marriage counseling
• big boy bed
• washer/dryer
• B12 shot
• sense of humor

wish us luck!

i used to wonder why middle school girls are so mean to each other. why the seismic shift of affections, the dramatic purchasing and demolishing of “best friend” necklaces, the endless note-passing and back-stabbing, and the constant labeling and striving for that which is popular?

yesterday, as my children were wailing (again) at the prospect of spending time with me while their daddy went out for a jog, it hit me: middle school misery is part of the preparation-for-motherhood process. only such a colossal test of self-esteem could come close to readying a gal for the sucker punch that comes when, apropos to nothing, she falls out of favor with her children.

when “the daddy phase” began a few months ago and my children began approximating time spent with me to sharing a cage with a hideous monster, i remained strong. i returned their unhappy scowls with hugs and kisses. when the monkey set aside an entire day to cry about the misfortune that his preferred parent has a full-time job, i remained calm. when i returned home from a two-day vacation last week to the monkey’s disappointment that “i didn’t stay away longer,” i made myself ignore these words. but yesterday’s pathetic chorus of daddy-wanting hysterics was just too much. if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. i starting crying myself.

so here i am, 34 going on 13, dissecting the anatomy of the popular parent. from my non-randomized qualitative study of one, i can conclude that popular parents are not preoccupied with cooking, cleaning, folding, and typing. popular parents are fun! they are like cruise directors, shuffling two kids to four fabulous locations all in the time that it would take me to locate and cram on the necessary shoes. never mind that popular parents just grab the first ill fitting shoes they see. everyone is having the time of their lives!

the next thing i know, i am also studying the anatomy of the unpopular parent by way of yet another non-randomized qualitative study of one. at its best, this “research” leads me to the conclusion that unpopular parents are simply not fun. at its worst, it is a bit like what anne lamott calls KFKD radio:

“out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on” (bird by bird).

i made it through  middle school in one piece. surely i can keep myself intact in the face of a couple of preschool boys. step one: find a new radio station.

my post today is an essay i wrote for a fabulous blog project called “a liberated life.” vanessa and sarah solicit and post essays wherein women of every age and stage chronicle their joys and concerns along the path toward liberation.

here’s an excerpt, but you’ll have to scurry over to “a liberated life” to read the rest:

Liberation, as it turns out, is not as simple as a dream job or a grad school diploma, or a positive pregnancy test, or a happy home. In fact, I cannot even begin to envision what a liberated life might look like for today’s mothers, whose souls brim with enough passion and opportunity to fill a warehouse full of moon bounces and inflatable slides. There is an anxiety that comes with motherhood that has far outgrown the widespread dreams for balance and the tired juggling metaphors. Scientists study it, and talk show hosts allude to it, but this anxiety, for the most part, remains undefined.

how would YOU define a liberated life?

when andy and i were pining away for children (in between jumbo margaritas at el porton or after the seventh consecutive episode of 24), we looked forward to things like playing outside with them, showing them our favorite mountains, and generally introducing them to all that is enjoyable and beautiful. even then, i knew that disciplining children would be my weakness. i looked upon the prospect of setting rules and enforcing time-outs as a dreadful necessity. and now that i am four years into parenthood, i would like to congratulate my twenty-something self for her accurate foresight. setting rules and enforcing time-outs is, in fact, a dreadful necessity.

the child experts say that children thrive under the presence of two equally present conditions: high nurture and high structure. the former is something that comes easily to me, and especially to andy. we try to mirror and help the kids name their feelings. we plan ahead for shared experiences that are enjoyable and beautiful. but when it comes to the latter, there is much less planning ahead. though the kids rely on a pretty steady routine and schedule, the discipline piece is often spur of the moment (and ineffective). in the grand game of parenting, i make up the rules as i go and announce them to the younger players, who return my half-hearted efforts with half-hearted compliance.

enter the wii.

after the second week of house arrest due to sub-arctic temperatures, andy and the kids braved the icy roads and returned home with a wii. it was fun for a while. there were family bowling tournaments and ridiculous collective attempts at nailing m.c. hammer’s dance moves. and then, without warning, the monkey stumbled into a deep, black, techy hole, and nobody has heard from his former self since. as recently as last week, he could be heard uttering heartbreaking phrases such as,

 “i don’t want to play outside in the warm sunshine. i want to play wii.” 

the wiihas brought the need for discipline and limit-setting in our home to a level that is far beyond the reaches of spur-of-moment-rule-making. so in a reluctant act of planning and plotting, andy and i discussed and created this chart to regulate wii time and create incentives for the monkey to act like a civilized human being.

though this is not the hand-held chart that the tech-crazed monkey requested, (he wanted one “like a smart phone”), it is actually becoming the key to pleasant life around here. the monkey earns stickers for being sweet and cooperative, and each sticker translates into ten minutes of wii time. he can earn up to an hour per day, and a strategically-placed timer above the wii lets him know when his time is up. i am utterly shocked that the monkey loves this new system. he loves rules. he loves structure. he now gets himself dressed, takes bottles to the recycling bin, makes his own breakfast, and quits playing the wii when asked, all for precious stickers and minutes spent clutching the white plastic control.

it turns out that my twenty-something self was only half right.  setting rules and enforcing time-outs is, in fact, a dreadful necessity. but the absence of structure and discipline is fifty times more dreadful. rules simply make life easier. and we can’t have all that is enjoyable and beautiful without them.

until six weeks ago, the monkey was a strict observer of naptime. to say that he was an “observer” of nap time is to say that he spent two hours per day holed up in his room. sometimes he slept, but most of the time he invented games for himself to play within his four walls.

for example, it was not uncommon for me to open his door after naptime to find a “puzzle piece room,” a carefully created state of affairs wherein the entire floor was covered in adjacent blankets, er, i mean “puzzle pieces.” other days were “sorting days,” and the monkey would spend the two hours organizing and cataloging his stuffed animals, game pieces, markers, and books. still other afternoons were spent “reading.” once, i walked in on this scene:

but times are different now. i gave in to the monkey’s complaints that he was bored in his room, and now, while his brother sleeps, he does things that require much less imagination (many of which involve the television and/or the wii). perhaps this is because i have not made the shift away from cooking dinner, folding laundry, and catching up on work between the hours of two o’clock and four o’clock. or perhaps it is because the monkey and i are both drawn to what is easier. for him, making a puzzle piece room takes more effort than wii bowling. and for me, extracting him from the tv takes more effort than cooking dinner in peace.

the problem with this scenario is that i don’t want to deprive the monkey of the gift of boredom. catherine newman, author of an essay entitled bored again, which appeared in the fall 2010 issue of brainchild magazine, defines boredom as “that agitated space between relaxation and action: dialed down, it can become a pleasant kind of inertia or a meditative stillness, where it feels good to sit quietly with your own thoughts; cranked up a notch, it can produce creative release.” newman goes on to write,

“i’m not trying to sound like one of those crafty-mama blogs that makes you want to kill yourself, the kind you bookmark one day because you think that putting out a wooden bowl of felt gnomes sounds like a good idea… and yet. you do have to learn boredom, learn to live with it, to manage it with the power of your own mind, without recourse to video games or bungee jumping or sniffing glue or starting a nuclear war or date raping your roommate’s girlfriend. the most dangerous people we know are the least able to sit still, to be inside an absence of motion.”

i definitely don’t want the monkey to become “a dangerous person,” but that’s not my main attraction to boredom. i simply think that boredom facilitates creativity and imagination, and these things are what ultimately make life beautiful.

our family spends significant periods of time away from our memphis routines and addictions to technology. our family camp weekends and julys in the north carolina mountains are hopefully deterrents from future glue-sniffing tendencies. but building boredom into our daily memphis routine, one that must also include my own significant accomplishments on the home and work fronts, is becoming increasingly difficult.

is there any way to give the monkey the gift of boredom (and creativity and imagination and beauty) without forcing him to play with a wooden bowl of felt gnomes?

our little bird is a picasso.

he will stack and climb bar stools and yoga blocks, tricycles and throw pillows to get his hands on a forbidden stash of markers. this child has an endless supply of paper AND a giant cardboard rocket ship opon which to illustrate his brilliance.

but alas… he prefers the walls.

there was a time when i would frantically scrub down the bird’s “canvases” with all manor of products guaranteed to erase even the most stubborn toddler doodles. but i got tired of my surroundings looking smudgy, like the back of that “soul-glow”-covered sofa in the movie coming to america:

so i no longer make any effort to eliminate the bird’s masterpieces. i even took a cue from my friend autumn, and i put a frame around this particularly nice mixed-media piece that the bird did with his cousins on thanksgiving:

pen, ink, marker, boogers, and eye pencil on flat latex

the bird knows that drawing on the walls comes with consequences. it is now common for him to fetch cleaning supplies himself or to retreat to his room for self-imposed time-outs. but to him, these are but small prices to pay for the thrill of making his very own mark on the world.

crayon on glass

to the bird, everything is an art supply. toothpaste is a turquoise sky. chocolate is a muddy swamp. and strawberries… well, who knows what they’re supposed to be.

strawberries on latex flat

i am seriously contemplating drawing on the walls myself. after all, we will already have to have the entire house re-painted in a few years (and possibly sanded first). why not follow the lead of virginia wolf and her friends, whose entire home in england is full of unconventionally placed art:

if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. 

monday was parent/teacher conference day at the monkey’s school. with his seize the clay shenanigans  still weighing heavily on my mind, i folded my limbs into a plastic preschool chair and sat across the table from the monkey’s teachers with but one defense: nothing they could say about this child would shock me. having been to the depths of disastrous public behavior with the monkey on more than one occasion, i am becoming immune to the natural embarrassment one feels when one’s four-year-old turns into a frat boy from the movie animal house. 

but i was wrong. the teachers’ words were shocking. apparently, if gandhi and mother teresa were to have a baby together, one blessed with every ounce of compassion, social awareness, and self direction possessed by his parents, that child would come close to behaving as well as the monkey behaves at school.

the teachers suggested that perhaps the monkey uses up every ounce of his self-control at school, and that home is a place that is comfortable enough for him to let loose. as much as i sometimes wish that the angelic behavior were reserved for me, perhaps it’s better this way. at school, he’s learning how to participate in the order of society and make positive contributions to the community. and at home (and unfortunately in public), he is free to examine the roaring undercurrent of emotions that sweeps through his and all of human experience.

as much as it feels like i am getting the raw end of the deal, i’m glad that the monkey seems to know deep down, that andy and i are the two people in this world who will love him fiercly no matter what.