I Am a Child of God

Just a little good cheer, since I'm not doing so well at writing it lately.  This says it better than I can. :)

M.I.A.

Dear Blog,

I'm still here.  I still love you.  Just hang in there...

Love,
Caitlin

Afternoon Nap

Usually, she won't fall back to sleep for me.  Most often, I'll pick her up, out of her bed, and she'll look about tearfully until the sleepiness wears off.  Naps are shorter and shorter, these days.

But today, when I come to rescue her, she rests her sleepy head on my shoulder, and no sooner have I lowered us into the rocking chair than her whimpers subside.  Had I known, had I expected this, I might have grabbed a book or a magazine on the way in, but she's a paper-thin sleeper in the daytime, and I don't dare disturb this moment by standing up.

In front of me, the blinds are closed, and I can only see through an oblong, rectangular hole, from which she has bent and broken the flimsy slats in nap-times past.  I see bare branches and a blue sky, little else.  From behind me, the west-facing window is beginning to leak sunlight, marking our passage from afternoon to evening.

I've read that small children don't sleep as deeply when rocking or riding in a car, and I try to sit still, but the effort causes my muscles to tense. Beneath her head, my bicep twitches.  Her steady breathing quickens, ever so slightly, so I begin to rock again.  Her little hands - not so little as they once were, I'm all too aware - stir slightly, resting across her chest.

I begin to string words together in my mind, unravel them, and begin again.  I call up other fond memories.  I am deliberately building this moment into the continuum of peace that stitches my life to unbending, unchanging reason.  Part of me still wishes for something to read, but I am willing that this nap should last as long as it may.  There are already so few like it left to me, in her lifetime.

Eventually, she stirs.  Her eyelids flicker, sleepily, blinking, drooping, and blinking.  She sighs a time or two.  Instead of her typical, tearful awakening, the little strawberry lips begin to form sweet, nonsense words, and I talk back.

Now, she is seizing a toy and scrambling, as best she can, across the floor, with a mischievous laugh, ready to be chased down and tickled.  Our moment of stillness is over, and once again, she's growing up.

Quirks

For years, I've held conversations in my head.  Mostly, I talk with people I don't know too well, though friends sometimes show up in my mental dialogues.  It's almost never my husband or my mom, to whom I talk daily or almost daily.  Usually, the things I say are much bolder, more articulate, and sometimes much more offensive than those that make it to my mouth.  I guess that might be true of everyone, or of a lot of people.  Of course, I win the all of the arguments - well, most of them.  Some people are very convincing, even when I'm the one ultimately deciding what they'll say.  Is it cause for concern when someone in your head can stump you?

Only recently, did I decide to wonder how accurate my internal conversations were.  I'm concluding that they are not, by and large, because they 1. not everyone has the same brain that I do, 2. unfortunately, I think that I have an insufficient imagination to perfectly imitate another person's brain, 3. the real world isn't much like Hollywood makes it out to be; people don't usually react in certain ways just for dramatic effect, and 4. I'm never bold enough (thank goodness!) to actually voice the things that I often imagine myself saying - so they can't ignite the response I imagine.  I promise I'm not a cruel or terribly caustic person in my head.  I'm just extremely frank, outspoken, and, of course, very sure that I''m always right.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this post.  This isn't the only time I've written about my own little oddities.  Maybe something in the back of my head it whispering, "tell the world how weird you sometimes are.  One of two things will happen - they'll put you in a mental facility...or you'll find out that everyone else is just as crazy."  I'm guessing the latter.

Running from Goals

In the hectic transitions, from Christmas season craziness to vacationing at home with our families, to jumping back into real day-to-day life here, I've hardly had time to recognize that I'm letting yet another annual tradition slide.  Ever since realizing that I haven't taken time to set my resolutions for 2014, I've been avoiding it, guiltily discarding that thought whenever it comes to me, like those reminder cards I get from the dentist.  I don't like having that gritty, over-sweetened polish in my mouth and as for my goals...well, I don't want to set them until I'm ready.

No worries, though.  I will set some worthy resolutions, just like I will go to the dentist.  I'm just not ready to do the former yet.  The problem is that, in all the busyness of the past month and a half, I haven't taken the time that I know I owe myself, to examine where I am, how I am doing, and where I would like to be.  For many years, I've known that I'm a poor goal-doer, particularly when it comes to my January resolutions.  Something about seeing them written down in front of me, even when broken down into daily, weekly, and monthly tasks, is intimidating.

I want this year to be different, though, which is why I've been putting the whole process off.  So, for now, my goal is...to set goals.  Lame?  Maybe, but on the other hand, I've got the entire world wide web to hold me accountable for it now.

Two-Sock Life

Folding laundry the other day, I came across an all-too-familiar problem.  I think we've all encountered matchless socks in our baskets.  When I was growing up in a house full of siblings, they covered the bottom of the basket, several inches deep.  To sort through them was at once mundane and daunting.  Even though there are only three of us at my house and the single socks are only a handful after the folding has been done, it's always a vague source of frustration in the back of my mind.  If there are so few of us and it's so clear whose socks are whose and we all wear two socks every day, how do we come up short?

Perhaps the most maddening thing about it is that, as I put the unpaired few on my dryer, planning to keep a keen eye out for their matches, I know that their opposites are very likely somewhere else - in a drawer, on a shelf, or under a bed, likewise, waiting.  Disorganized as I am, I will probably never be able to round up all of those single, waiting socks, to fold them neatly together and say that my life is in order.

It's rather like my daily struggle to juggle my time just right - to read the best books, to continually learn  new skills, to keep my house clean, to provide healthy meals, to play with my daughter when she wants my attention, to actively participate in my community and in church functions, to plan and execute fun family activities, and to do a hundred other things that really ought to happen daily.  It's like the pieces of my life, which I can never quite get to fall into place the way I think the should.  It's like the woman I know I should be by now, rather than the one I meet in the mirror.  I often feel like I'll never get it together - my socks, myself, or my family.

But do you know what the funny thing is?  No matter how scattered I feel, I wake up every morning to a home that, if not tidy, is pleasant and sanitary.  Regardless of the time I never mean to waste doing mediocre activities, we always eat well.  In spite of my struggles to plan creative and memorable activities, my family rarely wants for quality time to spend together and we laugh often.  And although my laundry always comes up short of a sock or two, all of us have matching (or pretty nearly matching) socks to wear every day.

I was never good at juggling.  Others have tried to teach me and I have tried to teach myself, but even with the light, airy scarves, that take their time coming down, I could never keep all three in the air for long.  Through those misfit, lonely socks, I have found another little bit of inspiration to keep on trying.  Life is a longitudinal effort, an exercise in endurance.  I can hardly expect to wake up tomorrow as the with-it, together woman I often want to be, and to keep on being her every day and every moment, as long as I live.  I can hope and try to progress, just a little bit farther today, though, knowing that the more I strive for balance, the more the scales will be tipped in my favor.  And meanwhile, partially through my own efforts and partially through the heavenly help that I will always have and never deserve, I can trust that I and mine will always have two warm socks to wear. 

How to Hold Your Ukulele

Since we were out of town for almost two weeks and took scads of pictures during that time (OK, not scads, but...), and since I've turned out to be pretty negligent when it comes to posting pics, I feel like a picture post is about due.  Most of these are actually from just after we got back home, but they'll give you a little glimpse of what our life is like with an impish one-year-old.

This isn't exactly how Dad holds this thing, but she's pretty sure
it's the correct way.

 We pulled out the ukulele for family night, and she was all too willing to help us figure out what to do with it.  Every time she picked it up, it went over her shoulder like this.  It was too funny.

...I'm going to Alabama with my ukulele on my knee...

 Of course, when she realized she was being photographed, she was willing to try all sorts of new  poses for us.

Recently, she's discovered her baby rocker and it has become the new center for her acrobatics.  When Mom turned on the vibrate, she didn't know what to think, but for a rare moment, she sat still, trying to figure it out.

Story time!

And finally, this is how we celebrated the new year.  The party going on downstairs woke her up, and in an attempt to calm her down, we all sort of passed out.  I woke up just after 1:00 and had to document it.  Hopefully this won't be a precedent for the rest of our year.

I think those pajamas make her look like a little elf. :)
Please forgive the poor lighting.  I had to be stealthy.

And there you have it.  Our little even-more-important-than-pecans.  Our life's work in the making.  There really aren't words to sum up what she means to us, but my mom often coos to her, "are you what life's all about?"  And we all know the answer.

Yes.  Yes, she is.

Indoor Gardening

It all started at the grocery store, as most stories do.  It was early October and I was browsing through the produce section when I came upon the squash bin.  Unlike most grocery stores, in which I only ever notice butternut squash, spaghetti squash, and acorn squash, this one held varieties I had never seen before.  Enthusiastically, I dug through and found, to my delight, one that looked quite familiar.

Last year, thanks to the generosity of our neighbor, Ben and I feasted all winter on squat little green Japanese pumpkins known as kabocha, and we loved the sweet, almost melon-y flavor of them.  Sitting before me, in the squash bin, appeared to be one of these beauties.  I scooped it into my cart without a second thought.  At home, after examining it more carefully (a.k.a. reading the sticker), I found that it was a buttercup squash, a cousin to kabocha.  We found that it had a pleasant taste, not as sweet or as moist of the kabocha's, but definitely worth going back for more.  By that time, however, the only squash left at the store was old and mooshy and smelled its age.

Then, I had a brilliant idea, remembering my eighth grade science class, in which we spent weeks experimenting with radish seeds.  Again and again, we got them to sprout, just be placing them on damp paper towels.  Lacking the patience to wait till the temperatures outside were rising, rather than falling, I folded a paper towel into the bottom of a plastic container, and drizzled it with warm water to make a bed for the buttercup seeds.  There they sat, unchanged for weeks, until finally - a sprout!  They grew quickly, from then on, rising to push the plastic wrap covering out of their way, until we went out of town for a couple days.  We let the house get cold, and I accidentally left the precious seeds on the cold, cold windowsill.  When we came back, our would-be squash plants were withered and dry.

I guess they were probably doomed from the start, since we had no pot nor soil in which to house them.  Still, it was a sad moment.  But I haven't given up!  Here's my latest crop:

Joys of Warm Bread

I know you're all wondering and yes!  It was a very, very good idea to put pecans in the bread dough yesterday.  But even better than the nutty taste of the bread itself was my companion in tasting it.  As soon as she heard the electric blade, cutting the first slice, Addie abandoned her toys and scurried over to me as quickly as she could manage.

I picked her up so that she was on my right hip and the steaming slice in my left hand.  Knowing that she has little patience when it comes to food, I pinched off a little piece for her before she could dive across my body for it.  She glanced at the bit I offered her, then at the rest of the slice in my other hand, then look at me like, "Really, Mom?"

Because I'm a floor-sitting type of gal, we settled down on the living room linoleum, next to a heater vent, of course, to enjoy our snack.  It was a happy-sad moment as I realized that even this is something I won't always get to enjoy.  This girl will not always come running to sit on my lap for something as simple as warm bread.  She won't always propel herself across the floor on shiny plastic toys or crawl lopsidedly from one place to another while toting her own baby doll under one arm.

While I was home for the holidays, I glanced at my teenage siblings and told my mom that my child was more fun than hers.  Nothing against my brothers and sisters.  They're wonderful people and really incredibly pleasant teenagers.  As a disclaimer here, I should add that I think teenagers really don't deserve the bad reputation they are usually given, collectively speaking.  Nevertheless, I always find myself glancing at my own little girl and thinking, I don't want her to change.  This, while at the same time, happily anticipating her first words and first steps.

I guess that's why we only grow one day at a time.  Maybe that's why progression must be so slow and so final.  When she's sixteen, I might miss the tiny girl who babbled and sang to the blank television and did her best to disappear into the heater vents - but I'll be able to say, 'Look what she understands!' and I'll rejoice, not only in the baby she was, but in the girl she is and in the woman she's becoming.  And I will always treasure the memories I'll have of the moments when we shared an apple, a popsicle, or a slice of freshly baked bread.

A Little Taste of the Meaning of Life

When my mom was about twelve, her family moved to a lovely piece of property in the southwest.  Behind the house, there was a small pecan orchard.  Every December, as I understand it, my grandpa would hire someone to have the trees shaken so that he and his family could harvest the nuts.  My grandparents lived in that house until I was about ten years old and I spent many a Christmas wandering that backyard and finding many a nut on the ground.  Along with a fondness for my grandparents' small town home, I came to love pecans.

For Thanksgiving, Ben and I trekked back down that town, where many of my Dad's family still reside.  As we sat at the crowded table, and I raised my fork to dig into a slice of pecan pie, I turned to Ben, gestured to the pie, and said (tongue in cheek, of course), "This right here is the meaning of life."

"What?  Pecan pie?"

I shrugged.  "Or just pecans," I replied.  Since then, Ben has wondered aloud whether pecans were the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden.  It's unlikely, but the thought makes me smile.

Anyhow - the following month, as Christmas approached and I tried to answer the questions my husband and family posed about what I wanted to find under the tree, I found myself at a loss.  Finally, I told my mom, "All I want this year are some pecans.  And maybe some honey."  I guess that means that I'm either a very content person (in spite of my constant whining from beginning to end of the Christmas season...hmm, that doesn't add up) or that I'm lacking in creativity.  If I'm going to be completely honest, I'll have to admit that it was probably the latter.

However - after arriving home with the not one, but two bags of pecans I received for Christmas, I decided, this morning, to knead a handful into one of my loaves of bread.  While doing so I popped a couple in my mouth and do you know what?  I don't regret my request one bit.  They taste just like the meaning of life.

Pizza for Dinner

So...  Today, I went to the grocery store, alone.  That doesn't happen often.  Usually, I either go on a weekday while Ben is at work and, of course, have Addie with me, or we all go as a family on the weekend - mostly so that I can have moral support.  Today I went all by myself and found that the experience was somewhat reminiscent of my pre-motherhood days.  I had forgotten how, when no one is trying to escape the shopping cart or fussing for something to eat or trying to attract attention from every other person in the store, I can get distracted.  Rather than rushing to mark everything off of my list, I could saunter through the aisles at my pleasure (foolishly, I know), just waiting for something to tempt me.

This time, it was a pizza.  I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but it was fifty percent off!  Who can ignore that?  Well, actually there are probably a LOT of sensible people who can.  Today, I wasn't one of them.  Naturally, I had to stand there beside my cart, looking at the pizza box from every possible angle, analyzing every imaginable pro and con to making it my dinner.  When that wasn't enough to justify a little splurge, I had to text my husband to get his opinion.  Let it be on his conscience, not mine.  I know that sounds selfish, but he doesn't seek out and entertain guilt as easily as I do.

His response was simple and exactly what I wanted to hear - "I do like pizza..."   By the time I got the text, I had moved on to the produce department, so I told myself that I would finish getting the things on my list and then, if the pizza was still there when I got back to the dairy aisle, I would do it.  Sure enough, there it was, waiting for me in its discounted splendor.

As I picked it up, the battle began.  From one side of my mind came the guilt - you just got back from vacation with your family.  You just told yourself you were going to get back to healthy eating.  You haven't had a bad enough day to deserve this.  You had RAMEN for lunch!  And from the other end, I rationalized - It's not like we do this a lot.  We didn't have pizza the whole time we were on vacation (almost true, as I think about it now...).  It's half off.  So went my pathetic inner storm as I plopped the box into the cart and made for the check-out.

I tried not to think about the little delicacy as the cashier scanned my items, though someone was screaming at me from inside my head that I was making a huge mistake, that it couldn't possibly be right to buy a pizza just out of the blue.  No, never.  I would have to think it over for at least half an hour first.  Nevertheless, I kept my cool.  I paid for my groceries, took my cart and steered back out of the store and into the parking lot.

Only after loading everything into the car, returning the cart, and dropping with a sigh into the driver's seat, did I come upon the ridiculously obvious thought I had been waiting for.  Caitlin, it said, $4.50 is not going to kill anyone.  And I thought, oh.  OK, then.

And I got home, and we baked the pizza.  And do you know what?  It tasted very good.  Not at all like guilt.

Coming Back to Me

Hello?  Anybody there?

Whether or not I meant to be, I've been more or less unplugged for the past couple of weeks, ever since we came home for the holidays.     Not only have I taken a vacation from my kitchen, my usually-messy house, the sights and sounds and wind of home, my habits and daily routine - I have inadvertently taken a vacation from myself.  I find that, at my parents' house, a strange and rather undesirable thing happens to me.  I tend to regress into the person I was when I lived here.  If, in any posts in the near future, I seem to be channeling an up-tight teenager, you'll know why.  By the way, I'm also apologizing now for any spelling errors or incoherent wording in this post.  I'm not completely in my right mind at the moment. :)

Every time I make the trip to my parents' home, full of anticipation and idealistic expectations, I am convinced that I've finally left my past self behind.  That teenage girl won't haunt me this time.  Yet, every time, it takes only a matter of time, and then the adolescent angst, irritation, and the all-around sensation of being lost inside my own head set in.

It's given me something to think about, in those mature moments right around going to bed and waking up.  I believe very strongly in a person's ability to change - and not just externally, but really an sincerely, through and through; yet after years of approaching and re-approaching this rut, after cumulative hours of meditation and prolonged, determined efforts to leave it behind, I find myself here once again.

The answer, or the best one I can come up with at the moment is that change is simply difficult - and that is a profound understatement.  I wonder if that's why so many people doubt that character can actually change?  Willpower is a difficult power to harness because it's so closely linked to desire.  And finally, there's the fact that no amount of willpower can bring about all the changes that are necessary, even for one person, to be really and ultimately happy.  To be truly Christian is to believe resolutely in the possibility of change, to hope for it unfailingly, but also to acknowledge that we need help.  It is to give one hundred percent, or as near as we can muster, but in the end to trust in a Savior who can do what none of us can.  It is to believe in a God of second chances.

I haven't set my New Year's resolutions yet, partially because I'm notoriously bad at keeping them, and partially because I'm waiting until I know that I'm in my right mind.  While I wait, though, I'm learning, probably for the millionth time, how to get back up, dust myself off, and move forward to a goal no less glorious for my having fallen in its pursuit.