Category Archives: family

family, Love

My mother’s tiny glass heart.

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It’s hard to be a child. School is challenging, scary, and often filled with awkward and unpleasant social encounters that eat away at the enjoyment of your day.  If you think about how tiny the wee people we send to school are, how thin the shielding around their easily wounded hearts can be, and the plethora of peer induced traumatic events awaiting them each day it’s no wonder they often fake illness to stay home.

When I was a little girl my mother, who has always considered herself a bear, would tell me there was a little bear on my shoulder, sitting next to me and giving me love and strength.  It worked wonders knowing that no matter what the more popular kid said to me or the angry kid did to me or who “accidentally” pushed me at recess my mother bear was there with me to help me stand up, brush myself off, and move on with the day.

Now my wee offspring are navigating the tumultuous waters of school, and while I tell them they have a little cat on their shoulder, which is the animal I identify with, it doesn’t work the same way it did with me.  (Perhaps because cats are capricious and don’t always want to do what you need them to do.)

So my mother gave them each a little glass heart:

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They carry her little heart along with them in their pocket during the day.  Oliver told me proudly that Nama was with him all day at school because her heart was in his pocket.  Marlena found herself comforted by gripping the tiny expression of unquestioning love when she was having a sad day.  Each day before they go to school, they make sure they have their little glass heart with them, just in case.  Each day they feel, tangibly, that someone who loves them with the unconditional fierceness of a grandmother is walking by their side as they deal with the myriad of problems that arise in their day.

I am not sure mom realizes what a huge difference her tiny glass hearts have made in the hearts of her grandchildren, but I know the benefit these small people get from her thoughtful gesture will be remembered forever.

family, home, Motherhood

An open letter to my daughter.

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My beautiful amazing young woman.  You are perfect, just as you are.  You are brave, smart, loving, fun, spontaneous, beautiful, and kind.  I am proud of you.  I love you.

I am terrified for you.

You are turning into a woman.  You will soon have more and more freedom in your life, and while I know you are smart and thoughtful and will do your best to make good choices, I also know you are kind and generous, and may be mislead by the people in your life.

I know that the world holds opportunities and pitfalls, heroes and villians, teddy bears and monsters.

I can no longer protect you from life.  I cannot wrap you in my arms and make it go away with a kiss and a chocolate.  Now you begin to face the real world.  You will begin to see the harshness in addition to the beauty, the pain in addition to the joy.

Now the growing pains begin in earnest.

There is no way for me to stop you from embracing life and all the bruises that follow.  All I can do is promise you this:

I will speak openly and honestly with you about topics that embarrass us both so I may better fit you with appropriate weapons for your future battles.  I will not let discomfort prevent me from sharing with you the knowledge I gained from my own encounters.  I will hand down my armor in the clearest way possible.

I will keep the lines of communication open.  I will let you know that nothing you share with me will ever make me stop loving you, and I will reinforce the fact that there is nothing you can’t tell me.  Tell me anything, tell me everything.  I would rather know it all and be in a position to help you through it, than blindly fumble in the dark while you suffer.

I will not judge you.  I will worry about you.  I will work hard to make you understand the difference.  I will listen to your troubles and talk with you to help you make the decision that is best for who you are, not who I am.  If I get angry or sad about what you tell me, I will let you know the source of that anger or sorrow, and I will not let it get in the way of helping you. I will continue to love you and to listen.

The world is full of sharp and dangerous places.  I can’t stop you from wandering into them.  My parents couldn’t stop me.  All they could do was listen.  All anyone can do is provide you with a soft place to land when the sharpness cuts too deeply.

Let me be your soft landing place.  Let me be the place you run to heal.

I love you.

family, Food, Just me, Just me, Motherhood

Type A Personality, meet motherhood.

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I try very hard not to go overboard on the whole motherhood thing.  Most of the time I do an excellent job.  I let the children watch too much t.v., play too many video games, eat too much candy, send them off to do their own thing without playing with them all the time. I do my own stuff, yell at them, make them do chores for their allowance.  I don’t always make them bathe before it becomes perfectly clear they really need to.

There are a few areas where I have a tendency to take things too far.  Lunches would be one of those areas.

It started simply enough.  Back in the day when Marlena started school she hated crusts on her sandwich.  I hated cutting the crusts off.  I discovered large cookie cutters are fabulous for cutting bread slices uniformly.  So I began sending her to school with sandwiches shaped like the largest cookie cutter I had, a turtle.

Then things spiraled quickly downhill.  I began to get more cookie cutters.  Holiday themed, heart shaped, dinosaur shaped, you name it.  Then I had to cut the fruit with smaller matching shapes.  Then I turned into that crazy mom who sent her kids to school with incredibly detailed shaped lunches.

In order to regain my sanity I stopped sending lunches all together.  The kid got a school lunch account and that was that.  Until Oliver began going to school, this year.

He struggles with school and with mornings. He would much rather be doing his own independent little thing at home than being in a big noisy building with too many kids.  He needs a soft personal touch.  I started sending him to school with notes.  Just cute little love notes on plain paper.

Then when he had come home complaining of a particularly bad day of bullying and teasing I thought perhaps he would make it through the next day more easily if his lunch contained a note from his favorite video game character, Luigi.  So I printed a color picture of Luigi and stuck it in his lunch with a little blurb about being an amazing kid.

He loved it.

He loved it so much that he wanted another the next day, and the next, and the next.

Soon I was printing the notes on two sides of the paper using a template I designed on my mac in order to turn the notes into top folding cards.  I had coloring pages on the inside and a full color picture and message on the outside.  I began sending crayons tucked into his napkin.  I looked up coloring printables for Sonic, Mario, TMNT, and anything else he liked.  I began rotating the subject of the notes.

Tonight, I spent an hour creating a maze for Sonic the Hedgehog to go through.

Now I am officially that crazy mother who sends her kid to school with hand designed activity packets and crayons in his lunch.

Oh and best of all, he hates having crusts on his sandwiches too.