"Waiting for marriage!" People snort derisively, "Wouldn't buy a car without test driving it first, would ya?!?"

I have heard this often over the years, and never really had an answer ready. I would merely shrug, happy in my own choices and standards.

I waited until marriage, and so did my husband, Michael. We are the blessed in the fact that we have a wonderful marriage, love life, and ongoing relationship. We didn't have a 'test drive' first in the sense of sleeping together- a few kisses were enough to let us know that we were passionately compatible!

And this morning, after ten and one half glorious years of marriage, the answer came to me in the shadows of pre-dawn- we didn't even need a test drive.

Sure, if you're going to the car lot to buy a used Saturn station wagon you may want to find out what you are getting. But if you have a Father, a really cool dad for whom money is not an object, you may have a different situation.

Imagine waking up one morning and looking out your bedroom window. Sitting in the driveway is a neon blue Ferrari Tessarosa. With your name on it. All yours, free and clear.

Are you going to whine about a test drive?? No! You're going to run out the door, barely remembering to thank your Dad, grab the keys, and start that baby up! It's been lovingly custom made, months of work and engineering and painting and tiny details, all for you. It's been handpicked by Someone who knows you the best, and although it will require maintenance, it is free. And yours. Forever.

When I bought my first car, I saved and worked and saved and worked. I walked into Weidner Motors one cloudy afternoon and plunked down $3,500 of my own sweat-stained money for a Ford Taurus station wagon. It was a great car, but within a few years I had outgrown my need for it. I sold it to a lovely Mexican lady in Tucson, and moments later had to chase her through the mall parking lot when I remembered my U2 tape was still in the deck! I have a few photos of that car, and some fond memories, but it was just a phase in my life.

When Michael entered my life, it was like finding that perfect match. His ragged edges fit my ragged edges and we completed each other. We didn't need to experiment to know that we were right for each other- we knew that we had been hand-picked by Someone who loved and knew us more than we ourselves knew us!

Our marriage has required maintenance- regular fill-ups of encouragement, costly date nights, inexpensive date nights, teary 'discussions' about everything from finances to why he can't seem to remember that I hate yellow roses, and the occasional spontaneous burst of love in a letter or song.

Unlike that Taurus wagon, I haven't outgrown my need for Michael. I still curl to his back at night, until my body heat spikes and the comforter becomes a raging inferno (anybody else have this problem? I need an ice-pack nightgown). Somehow, in the early morning gloaming, when the house is cooler and the blankets have made their way almost to the bathroom, our hands find each others and, mid-sleep, we once again snuggle together as tightly as we can fit. I have my heavenly Father to thank for the perfect match, the ultimate, custom-made mate that I will never need to upgrade or replace.

And I don't think he'll depreciate, either.

Labels: career, celibacy, experiment, love, marriage, sex, test-drive, virginity, waiting

I've heard some obnoxious radio ad for a book or program or something called "Your best Life NOW!"
I've never kept the radio on long enough to know what this travesty really is, because the person speaking sounds like a mental case. It's possible they took the gig just to make enough cash to get their next fix.

I don't need someone telling me how to have my best life now.

Sitting in my just-right-for-a-short-person chair, which also happens to be my favorite color, I can hear Michael's voice from the next room as he reads The Chronicles of Narnia to the kids for bedtime. His voice is reassuring, gentle, pleasant. I always wanted to marry a man with a pleasant voice, it was on my 'list'. His is the voice of one who will always be there for me.

In my stomach is an excellent meal, in my lap sits a finely-tuned piece of equipment on which to type drivel, and by my side is a candle flickering softly. Kids come to exchange goodnight kisses, giggles are shared beneath mismatched sheets and blankets. The furnace kicks on, warming us against the lingering Michigan winter. When the house is asleep, I'll wander downstairs and nibble on my kids' Easter bunnies.

Life is good.

Not perfect, but very, very good. Sure, my house is a mess and I'm late on my car payment and I could stand to lose some weight and I struggle with acne at the ridiculous age of thirty, but those all pale in comparison to the facts: I have a good life.
I am safe, for now.
I am provided for.
I have a good job and a pleasant work environment.
I have a car- missing a side mirror and a bit too small for my family of five- but it runs consistently and has AC and a radio. And a sunroof.
I have a home. The rent is a bit high, the toilet still doesn't want to flush, I have to endure a ceiling fan in the kitchen if I want light, and its a long haul to the backyard during barbeque season, but there's a roof over my head. With a skylight!
I live in a country that may have its issues, but allows me to freely worship where and when I please, go into business for myself, and cross state lines and buy oranges whenever I want and even read whatever book I choose. For now.
I have a family that tolerates my mistakes and weaknesses, loves me despite them all, and encourages me always to be a better person.
I have a mother-in-law that is just as close as another sister. And she hems my pants.
I have an Italian immigrant grandmother (nonna) with stories of the war and clear plastic on her couch and garlic in her fridge. She is failing rapidly, but still made sure I got a flower for Easter this year. When I look in the mirror I see her face and sturdy frame and I am not sure if I am honored or terrified to be so much like her.
I have three (count 'em, three!) daughters who love to be princesses just as much as they love to be Obi-Wan Kenobe. They are intelligent and articulate and beautiful, and even if they weren't I would love them with all of my heart.
I have a spouse, a partner, a lover in my husband of ten years. He spars with me, for which I respect him, and he protects me, for which I revere him. He never lets me accept second best from myself, and he takes the trash out faithfully. Sometimes... on a full moon, he even washes the dishes. I'm not sharing him, get your own.

So for all of the self-fulfillment books and tapes and pills and herbal concoctions out there: stop trying to sell me blather that I don't need!
And for all of you grasping for happiness- through money, love, or power- you won't find it if you don't have it! Take an evening to look around you, drink in the wonderful things you have been surrounded with, and learn to be fulfilled with your life. Build a piece of your own contentment. Be brave enough to experience and even drown in love. Eat a good steak. Read a good book (ahem, I can recommend one, if you need).

This is the best life you could have, today. Let tomorrow worry about itself. Let yesterday be yesterday.

Labels: best, book, career, chair, content, fulfilled, fulfillment, happiness, happy, kids, life, marriage, read, self-help, steak, writing

I bring my three-year old to work with me most days. This is, of course, slightly stressful for both myself and her, but somehow it works.
She has two little play stations in the jewelry store, with bins of LEGO blocks, books, toys, and crayons. I spend my lunch breaks reading books to her, and the other employees hang out with her as they can. Michael works with me, so the burden of childcare is seldom on my shoulders alone.
One or two days a week, Michael works from home, and Kid #3 stays with him, with the full run of the house until her sisters come tromping in from school. Soon I will be working from home one day a week as well, so Kid #3 will spend a maximum of 3-4 days in the store.
She's only three, so I don't really know if she is old enough to resent me for this. She seems happy enough, if a bit cooped up sometimes. She is a typical child for her age: energetic and imaginative, pushing her disciplinary boundaries and asserting her independence. She loves me to death, and I am giving her the best childhood that I can at this point in time.

So it came as a crushing blow to me the other day when someone said to me,
"I feel sorry for her."
This came from someone who has it pretty much together in the 'mom' department, and I look up to her. I spent the next couple of hours obsessing about my parenting choices, dealing with the inevitable guilt that comes when one feels like an incompetent mother.

But am I really an incompetent mother? Who writes the rules here? My children are loved, well-fed, clothed (more or less), and are getting a good education. They have periods of boredom: after school some days, odd times when they are stuck in the car or at work. But it isn't terminal. Boredom stretches the imagination and teaches patience and creativity. They invent games, dream up entire fantasy lands in their heads, and learn to occupy themselves.

Throughout history, children have played in fields while their parents plowed and gleaned, they have sat quietly through four-hour Puritan church sermons, and they have huddled in the dank underbellies of ships for months traveling to a refuge on foreign shores. Did this damage them beyond repair? No. In fact, some of our brightest contributors to the progress of the world have come from situations such as these.
Are we to bow to the slightest whim and imagined need of our offspring in order that they might grow up sheltered and pampered? Does the idyllic childhood produce perfectly adjusted adults?
I think not.

I think that children are a product of not only their environment, but of the attitude around them as well.
For example, we have moved an awful lot, as I've mentioned in previous postings. I hate doing this to our children, as well as myself, but it has always been to a better life, a brighter future for us all. On the times when my guilt really shows, the kids whine and get antsy. But on the times when Michael and I are excited, hopeful, positive- that attitude rubs off on the kids and they, in turn, are excited and positive. They have had more adventure than most kids their age, and it has grown their boundaries and broadened their horizons.

Kid #3 may not be in a structured pre-school with fingerpaints and primary colors all around her, but she learns the names of gemstones and helps me pull models out of silicon molds every Monday. She may not be with her peers, or safely tucked away in my living room, but she gets to talk to all sorts of people during the day. So, how is this going to harm her in the future? Now? As long as she gets an opportunity to run around now and then, as long as she is surrounded by love and intelligence and the ability to learn and think and grow- I think she will do just fine.

If our generation of parents continues to be enslaved to someone else's idea of how we are to raise our children, if we continue this trend of child-worship beyond practicality, we are headed for trouble.

The child who has had everything sacrificed for them their entire life will not know the value of his own sacrifice.

The child who has lived in a perfectly constructed and controlled environment will know only that which has surrounded her and will grow up stunted.

The child who rules the household will always rule. We are given our children to raise for eighteen years, and then they are on their own. Not that we cannot ever be a parent to them again, but they have to find their own way from there. Our culture is even now reaping the horrific consequences of a generation raised too self-centric: parents my own age are abandoning their children at an alarming rate while pursuing their own lives.

Tomorrow I'll get up and feed three kids, pack lunches, and drop the older two off at school. I'll drag Kid #3 into the store with me, try to keep her happy and occupied and fed and clean and out of trouble, carve some jewelry, wait on some customers, and somehow make it through the day.

Then I'll do it all over again on Thursday. And it's all going to be ok.

Labels: career, child rearing, children, guilt, life, mom, motherhood, work

There’s a cloth doll lying facedown on the laundry room floor, looking vaguely like a crime scene. I wonder briefly if I should draw a chalk line around the poor thing, but then think better of it. The kids wouldn’t get the joke, and Mike only notices things in his immediate range of vision.
The canning funnel isn’t in the laundry room, either. I’ve been searching for it for nearly two weeks now. You see, I haven’t been able to afford a decent canister or Tupperware set, so I save every spaghetti sauce jar, washing them out for reuse. They make excellent storage, but present a slight challenge to fill. The blue wide-mouth funnel would be perfect, but I haven’t seen it since canning season. I’ve been using a rolled up paper plate for dry goods, but that won’t work quite as well for wet, gloopy chili.

“Mommy!” my 3 year-old calls from the dining room, “I have a cut on my fingew fwom the bad, bad icicle thing outside and then I fell and it huwted weally, weally bad and can you kiss it please?” Her words come out in a tumble, her face full of the innocent consternation the young possess.

Tripping over the menagerie of toys, books and clothes, I locate a bandage and duly wrap and kiss the tiny affliction.

Now, what was I doing? Oh, yes, the chili. Its only ten minutes until I have to get to work, there’s no time to keep looking. The chili will have to find its way into the recycled jar and I’ll just rinse off the edge. Running towards the crockpot, I spy a dirty dish I somehow missed last night, holding scant remnants of yesterday’s curry. I run water in it and fling open the dishwasher, hoping there is room for just one more bowl.

Oh yes, the chili. I grab a Barilla jar from my top shelf, cursing once again the kitchen designers who must have been eight feet tall. One of these days, I remind myself, I’ll have a kitchen made for the five foot four that I really am.

The chili has been made with free-range beef, and resents the confines of the glass jar. What smelled so good cooking all night now churns my stomach as it spills over the edge of the jar and onto my hand.

“Mommy!” a tiny bandaged finger is waving at about the three-foot mark “It still huwts!”
“Oh, honey, I must not have kissed it enough. Come here.” Kid #3 advances for the proffered lips, then recoils from the chili on my fingers,
“But, you’we diwty, mommy!”

So I am. Conveniently enough, the kitchen faucet is still running, filling and overflowing yesterday’s overlooked bowl. The moving water has filled and rinsed the curry away, except in the one corner angled away from the water, where lentils still cling stubbornly to the earthenware. Sighing in frustration, I flip the bowl around, rinse my fingers, and remember to turn the water off. Kid #3 gets her finger kissed again, (“It’s all bettew now!”) and then requests something completely unintelligible.

Mike returns from dropping the kids off at school, but there’s a bit of a problem- he still has the kids. Our school called a snow day, again, and forgot to call us. This is why normal people use TVs and radios, I suppose. Now we have two choices: drag all three kids to work with us, or let Mike work at home, again, with the tinkle of children’s voices all around him. I can’t stay home today because I have customers coming in to see me, and my wonderful husband knows that without asking. He looks at the kids, who are gleefully stripping off all vestiges of the indignities of a school day.
“Guess I’m staying here.” He sighs, unwrapping his scarf.

I guess so. I finish stuffing chili through the mouth of the jar and dig through the drawer for a matching Barilla lid. There is not one. I have four empty Barilla jars and not one single lid, whereas I own three Classico lids and not one jar. I slam the drawer shut, setting off a chain of protest from Kid #3, and wrap the jar opening in Press’n’Seal.
The dishwasher is ready to run, the dishwasher gel makes fart noises as it escapes the plastic container. My kids are just old enough to be completely devastated by this and fall over themselves in laughter,
“It farted!”
I grimace, but keep my mouth shut, remembering the days when I would torment my own mother with similar crudity. The dishwasher must be propped open with the spare table leg; otherwise it fills up and stops.
“Stupid rental house,” I mutter to myself, “one of these days, I’m going to own my own house, and then-“

And then what? Would I have had the extra money to replace or repair the dishwasher? Probably not. I un-curse the wretched machine and house, and realize that I have one minute now to get to work, and I’m not even all the way dressed- work slacks but a dirty tee-shirt. I trip over someone’s backpack on my mad dash to the stairs, then keep vigilantly to the right on my way up, because we have that silly habit of putting ‘things to go upstairs’ on the left, and they never quite make it up.
Upstairs, there is a mountain of clean laundry. I have been meaning to get it ALL put away for about five months now, but there is always something better to do- work, cook, play with the kids, run errands, write stories. Every time I get almost to the bottom, another 3 loads seem to get washed simultaneously, and the pile never ends! Somewhere on the bottom is probably that one black knee sock I’ve been missing since autumn.

Frustration with the perpetual mess boils over inside of me, and I storm downstairs, haranguing the kids with promises of money if laundry is folded, threats of death if it isn’t. With choices like these, I’m sure their childhood will turn out just fine, no?

Dressed, packed, car started finally, I kiss everyone goodbye and dash out the door, almost ready to wait on a never ending succession of people who need their watch batteries changed, their rings sized, or their junk jewelry ‘appraised’. Maybe, if we have a lucky day, we’ll sell something!
I glance back at my children, waving at me through the living room window. They are standing in the scattered detritus of a life lived fully. I didn’t want to raise my children in a messy house or a mad-dash life like this. I didn’t want to have this daily struggle over money, the never-ending march of errands and chores and juggling.

But they’re happy kids, and we all chose this lifestyle. In the end, I can either say I’ve had a clean house for fifty years, or I can have a body of literary work, a gallery of jewelry designs, and three children and a husband who are happy and well-fed.

I think I’ll pick the latter. It’s a good life.

Labels: career, children, cooking, housework, kids, laundry, life, motherhood, work