Good Is Enough

We're "good enough" people. People who aren't inclined towards perfection. We have small ambitions. We're easily pleased with our efforts. 

Yesterday in the few moments after Tom came back from church and before I had to head to work, we worked outside, putting sections of the yard to bed for winter, letting Sena stoke a fire with damp leaves. Our goal was not lofty. We have no expectation that our yard will ever look like the visions I find myself pinning late at night when the house is still and quiet. But a few hours and a half dozen hands can make it look a little tidier, and that's all we ever really need. For things to be okay.

The mentality leaks into all facets of our lives. Our hobbies and parenting. The way we eat. The dinners I cook. The cleanliness of our home. Our finances. We aim for good enough, and it serves us well. Tom plays his homemade banjo knowing there are improvements he could make, seeing the flaws, but nevertheless, happily, proudly, often just a little too loudly. I post pictures that speak to my heart without concerning myself for long about their technical shortcomings. We are imprecise people.

This weekend I was talking to a friend about homeschooling. The past few weeks I have taken up a new mantra with old origins: "But first do no harm." Instead of worrying about all the things I'm not doing or about the myriad things I am doing badly, I'm concerned mostly that my children's love of learning is not dampened, that their happiness fills the crevices of their days. 

There will always be people out there doing things better than I do. People who stick with their plans, who abide by schedules and who make checklists that actually get completed. I am not one of them, and Tom isn't either. For better or worse, we seem to be raising children who follow in our non-competitive, unexacting footsteps.  I see it in the way Sena does math, the way Gus plays soccer.  It's a trait that will not always serve them well, but sometimes it will be just what they need. It will let them be content with what they have. To accept accept themselves for who they are. It will allow them the freedom to try and fail, or sometimes to try and quit. And they will be prepared to move on and try again. 

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Rainy Day Nostalgia

I've been spending too much time poking around the computer trying to find all photos that Tom assures me are backed up somewhere. My prodding and poking has not yielded all the fruits I had hoped for, but it certainly has reminded me what life used to be like. A family of four. The time of life when Tom and I were trying to figure out what being a grown up meant while raising two little people. It reminded me of the missteps and mistakes. The lessons. The happiness. 

It felt like a different family. A different mother and wife from the one I am now. For better. For worse.  

But those toothless smiles haunt me. They're gone forever. 

Their voices have changed. 

Their bodies have stretched. 

I will never get to hold those littler bodies ever again. And today as the wind blows and the sun fails to shine, it is more than this nostalgic heart can bear. 

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Too Many Feelings

Childhood is short and fleeting. Read the caption on any single mother's Instagram post on the birthday of her child and you are sure to be reminded that "it goes so fast."

I am certainly no stranger to such sentimentality. I suffer from the same fear of time. I, too,  am plagued by nostalgia.

It's a big responsibility, these brief, fragile days of youth we are entrusted with. We must make the most of them. There are times when I worry I am squandering them, allowing them to be wasted while my children plug in so I can attend to the business of running a house or find a few moments for myself. That guilt serves as a powerful motivator. The knowledge that there are a finite number of days that we will share together makes me pack up a picnic to be eaten after a morning full of dentist appointments. It takes me to a park so my kids can hang from monkey bars and roll down hills, find dandelions to make wishes on and push each other down slides.  I didn't really want to do it -- there were a dozen things I felt like I should do-- but we were already going to be out and dressed and on the move, so why not make it special?

Lately I have found myself afraid of dying, afraid of the time when I will leave this earth. I believe in Jesus and heaven and eternal life, and even still, I'm afraid of departing this earth, this life. I'm not afraid of an untimely death. I'm afraid that 100 years, should I be given them, would still not be enough. I know I can't give myself a single extra day, but I know that I can do the best I can with the ones I am given. Yesterday it meant taking my kids to Quiet Waters Park. Tomorrow it means visiting friends. Sunday it means celebrating with my family. Each day it means I need to find joy and give it.

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Watching and Waiting

I spend so much time staring at their backs, small backs with sloping shoulders that will transform one of these days. My sons' shoulders will broaden. My daughters' waists will narrow.

I spend so much time watching them lead the way as I trail behind. They crash into waves or wade into still water. They take off on their bikes or tumble down the neighborhood hills.  They are always leaving.

Sometimes, they turn around to see if I'm watching, following. Our eyes meet. Sometimes they are grateful to know I am there. Sometimes, they wish for me to turn around, to leave them to their adventures.

I think of all the times to come. I will watch their backs peeking from behind the driver's seat . I will watch their backs fade into anonymity at crowded airports. I will watch as they walk down the isle.


My back, however, will always remain a mystery to them. I will always be somewhere behind, waiting for their returns, which will one day turn to visits, waiting for our eyes to meet once again.

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Muddy Feet, Happy Heart

I've known plenty of moms who take pride in their children being spotlessly clean, women who change their children mid-play when their clothes get dirty, who are always at the ready with a wash cloth to swipe away the grime.

I take more pride in mine being dirty. There's something about their little sweaty heads smelling of copper pennies, their nails embedded with dirt, their jeans caked with mud that speaks to a life well lived.

I'm happy to get them shined and scrubbed before bed, but that night time bath is so much more rewarding when the day has been spent barefoot in the mud.  And when that bath doesn't happen, when they go to sleep with their dirty little soles poking out beneath once clean sheets, I'm pretty okay with that too.

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Four

Four is the smallest "big family" number. It's a whole human being over the idea of 2.5 children average. It feels like a crowd, a traveling party We've only all ventured out once so far- to Whole Foods to stock up on provisions. It was a bit of an ordeal which luckily ended with running into a friend as we checked out, a friend who generously helped me out to the car to unload (Thanks Christie!).  Sena expressed pride in our numbers, recognizing that we seem to stand out a little more than we did a few short weeks ago. And Sena is always happy to stand out.

Tom says four is our max, that he just can't handle the idea that there are any more people to be out in the world to be worried about, too many fragments of his heart living outside his body, in need of protection. And while I am not 100% ready to think that there are no more children destined to join our family, I do know what he means about worrying about all the pieces of you that are off living without you. Four such pieces does feel like a lot.

The days have mostly been remarkably peaceful and quiet, considering.  Some moments scattering the four kids across the house, other times finding them all in one place. We're trying to find our rhythm, balancing the needs to two homeschooled kids, a toddler and an infant. Sena and Gus have been quick to help. Sena frequently has Alamae filling her arms, and Gus has been taking Arlo outside to play when the little man requests it.

There have certainly been kinks and bumps, but we'll figure it out, establish a new normal or at least something as close to a normal as we are likely to ever experience.

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This Weekend We / Showered

Driving over to my mom's house on Saturday, I was trying to brace myself for disappointment. I was pretty sure that I was about to show up at my surprise baby shower, but the evidence in my favor was weak. Basically, I was putting all my hope on the fact that my mom declined my invitation to go grocery shopping with me Saturday morning. My mom always goes grocery shopping with me on weekends. I knew that I shouldn't be expecting a baby shower. This is, after all, my fourth baby, and not even a new gender. I had maintained my position that I should not be given a shower, despite the fact that I really was hoping that the people I loved would come together to celebrate the little girl about to enter our world. 

Thankfully, they ignored my false protests, and when I pulled up with my sister and Sena in front of my parents' house under the gusie of an afternoon thrift store date, I instantly saw my friends' cars, brought together through my sister Claire's doing.

My mom swears that  birth rooms are about to undergo a shift, that the men will leave them once again so that the women can come together to take care of each other. I, personally, want Tom there with me as we welcome our children, but I do agree with her that there is something powerful about pregnancy and birth that demands the interconnection of women. Baby showers, for all the corniness they can often entail, seem to hearken that spirit as women tell their tales. 

At my first baby shower for Sena, we crowded into my friend Lorien's farmhouse, a bunch of girls still in college or just recently graduated. Not a one of us had ever had a child. We had no idea what I was in store for, all of our limited information gleaned from stories from our own mothers and aunts, or things we had read in sociology text books. My friends all drank and drank from the ubiquitous box of wine. There were no discussions of birth plans or placentas or breastfeeding because none of us had begun to formulate opinions. I stumbled through my labor, delivery, and post-postpartum months without preconceived notions except to do things the way my mother had done them.

As the years mount, so too has our knowledge. Babies and older offspring celebrate with us now.  We discuss fluids and membranes with ease and experience. We have opinions about induction and pain medication, vaccines and the introduction of solid foods. I feel so far removed from the twenty year old girl I was sitting on Lorien's rocking chair opening presents that were as beautiful as they were impractical. That girl knew nothing about what was to come and no one could have possibly prepared her. Now my nearly ten year old daughter is here by my side, sharing in my excitement about what comes next.

On Saturday we ate food and made onsies. I opened presents both for her and for me. Alamae received sleepers and a Woody Guthrie album, diapers and colorful booties from Costa Rica. I was gifted a fermentation jar and an oil diffuser, earrings and candles. And it felt like in an instant, it was over, and I was hugging all of these women I love so much as they dispersed back into the great, wide world. The next time I will see many of them, the hard, roundness of my belly will be replaced with squish, my arms will be full of a little cooing girl. This time around, I know exactly what is about to happen to my heart. 

Even as I write this, I feel tears brimming, an overwhelming sense of gratitude-- so many people love me and my children. We are fortunate beyond words. 

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