The End of Kitchen Widow

Matt's culinary school graduation, 2005.

All you spouses of night and weekend workers, you partners of those who keep the world running when bankers' hours end, you loved ones of nurses, bus drivers, store owners, and chefs: I see you.

I see you falling asleep next to an empty pillow and waking up early next to an exhausted dreamer. I see you squeezing in get-togethers and everything leisurely on Monday or Tuesday nights. I see you going to family functions alone. I see you carting kids to sports and classes and birthday parties, juggling backpacks and equipment while tossing cheeseburgers behind you to the cranky children strapped into car seats, because you had no time to make an actual meal.

I see you, and I understand you, because I'm one of you. For ten years, I have rolled over in my sleep five nights a week, reaching for my husband. This is all we have ever known; I became a kitchen widow before I even became a wife. And since the moment I realized that he was my match, I have fantasized -- sometimes silently, sometimes not -- about the day when our lives would swing the same way on the pendulum.

Today, I can see him coming toward me, the dissonance of our unmatched schedules fading. The time of Kitchen Widow, at least for now, is over.

It's relief as I've never known it. Maybe that makes me sound ungrateful. Chef Matt has faithfully supported our family, working sometimes inhuman hours, sacrificing time with his loved ones, and doing it with good humor and brilliant food. His love for cooking is the part of his soul that he wears on his sleeve. I love that he has spent the last 12 years so fully invested in work that he believes in.

But recently, he saw a past with so many nights and holidays spent apart, and a future with weekends drowning under the last-minute call-ins of employees. And he let it go. He was as courageous as I've ever seen him, releasing the life that was his dream for the life that fully embraced his family. He knew that no matter how many hours he worked, how many gorgeous dishes he produced, how many compliments he received, how far he rose in the culinary world, it would never compensate for the time lost with me and the kids.

Being a restaurant chef always sounds so glamorous, like he spends his days carefully assembling artistic plates of food assembled from perfect ingredients and then charmingly delivers these plates to adoring customers. "Oh, your husband is a chef? How lucky for you! Does he cook for you at home?" It's a reasonable question, but one that has always made me a little sad, because he has spent our marriage cooking for other people. And truly, I have loved telling everyone about his work.

We weren't under any delusion that opposite schedules and long hours would be easy, but I don't think we realized the toll it would ultimately take. Matt was a responsible and reliable chef, which meant that I was often on my own, running kids to all kinds of practices and appointments, and quietly cursing his job.

Our ships-in-the-night life tested my strength. I wanted these beautiful children, I wanted my full-time job, and I wanted Matt to share his gift with the world. And because these are what I wanted, I needed to straighten my shoulders and deal with it. Every time I sat on the floor next to the dishwasher and cried, or screamed at the kids for some tiny little annoyance, or stumbled unshowered into the grocery store with four wild animals running uncontrollably up and down the aisles because I just needed enough milk to get through the night, I felt weak. I was a person I didn't recognize. I didn't tell Matt about so many of these moments. The times I did, my heart broke when his shoulders fell.

So it was that he woke up one day and knew with certainty that restaurants are all the same life, wrapped in different packages. He told me that he wanted to be as good a husband and father as he is a chef. He was ready to move away from this addictive world of treading water in a thunderstorm while people sing hallelujahs in your name. The loss of the food and the camaraderie would leave a hole; as anyone who loves working in food service knows, it can have an epic we're-all-in-this-together aura. But he felt at peace with his decision, and suddenly, we are peering into a future where we will see each other more than 20 hours a week.

I feel positively giddy. Now I won't have to wrangle the children alone, battling our five-year-old over vegetables or our three-year-old over a reasonable bedtime. We can be lazy on Saturday afternoons, which sounds to me like the ultimate luxury. And most of all, she says selfishly, he will be with me.

I remember when we were first married, and he would leave for work in the late morning. I sat in the window of our apartment's living room and watched him walk down the street to his car, until I couldn't see him anymore. In our first house, I would finally relax when I heard him come in long after midnight. After we'd had four children, I would go to bed exhausted at 8:30 and barely open my eyes when he laid a hand on my hair late at night. All the while, I felt restless and short of breath without him. I would watch social media with jealousy, as my friends dated their husbands and went on adventures as a family. We sacrificed time spent in the same room to keep our kids' lives pleasant and to keep Matt in a restaurant, and it was hard.

Despite so many years with so few hours, I still get all weak in the knees when he walks into the room, and I think that has made all the difference. We're not starting out in this new reality trying to find each other in the dark; instead, we just get to share more of the same sunlight.

Kitchen widow life has shaped me and our marriage and our kids, and I am grateful for the lessons. I will always consider myself one of the legion of spouses whose love is, by choice or by necessity, operating in an opposite world. That life defined the first 10 years of our marriage, and I will gleefully hang it up next to his chef coat. Onward, with my man who can cook and now can do it for me.

Jackpot.

Down the Rabbit Hole Again

I suddenly feel surrounded with talk of mental health, mostly in impersonal forms, like Buzzfeed charts and other brief lists of how to recognize signs of depression. Then today, all the tributes to Robin Williams, a year after his suicide. All of this is conversation, which is good.

But the charts and the top-five lists feel like only part of a conversation, one told loudly to cover up the quiet, serious talk happening in the corner between people that you know. And while Robin Williams' tragic death opened a door to some frankness about depression, as often happens when celebrities have public struggles, I feel that the piece still missing in all of this is a willingness to be open, unembarrassed, and thoughtful about the mental health issues that affect a significant part of the population, including our neighbors and loved ones. If any silver lining is to be found after the powerful sadness of Robin Williams' death, it is that we can begin to see that depression exists where we didn't think possible.

It exists everywhere. We are startled at the suicides of people who are outwardly cohesive, and shocked at the mental illness of friends who are always smiling. There are so many people who feel crushed under depression and feel completely alone in their sadness; no one around them or in their social media feed seems to struggle with their mental health. Humanity seems absent, and the stigma is present, so there is silence. We don't want to be complainers. We don't want pity. We don't want to cause angst. We don't want to admit to what feels like weakness. We are strong and thus feel we can overcome anything. And so we are silent.

But silence feeds the darkness, so in the interest of the light, here's a story. Last year at this time, I wrote a blog post about my depression and overcoming it in my early twenties, something of which I've always been very proud. In the last few months, I have relapsed and am battling not only depression but a hyperactive anxiety that is often nothing short of crippling.

If you looked at me, what might you see? A mother to four beautiful kids, a wife to a wonderful man, a child of a loving home, an educator in a dream job. Happy, healthy, stable. But this is precisely the point. Depression doesn't always live where you expect it. For me, it crawled in, stealthy and disguised as exhaustion, and spilled out into the words that I say to my kids and the self-disgust that I could no longer control. It saw me, overwhelmed by life and doubting my abilities, and made its move, yelling words like "worthless" and "burden" and "nothing."

The anxiety rose at the same time my self-worth fell. If I'm in a social situation with you, I most likely had to talk myself into it, feel overwhelmed and nervous while it's happening, and in the days afterward, obsessively agonize over every ridiculous thing I said. Sometimes at work I can't breathe. Small talk makes me panic. That ugly combination of "I hate myself" and "You probably hate me too" has become a battleground in my head.

Here's the disconnect. To some people, what I'm describing sounds like over-sensitivity. Get happy, they say. Talk about the weather, they say. I say: You try to tell someone with the flu to stop throwing up.

Why is there shame attached to mental illness? Why am I reluctant to take medication to help me feel balanced and try to erase those scary whispers that promise a way out? Why am I sitting here writing this, worrying about the people who read it who might think, "boy, she just needs some attention"?

Because to admit to mental illness is to admit to failure. I know I'm not the only one out there who feels this. We read about people who call suicide "selfish" and hear people talk about anxiety like it's a bad mood. If you've never experienced depression, and your reaction is to say that people need to "get over it" or "try to think about your family," please go sit down and talk with someone you know who is struggling. Ask me. I'll tell you that sometimes the hole is so deep and dark, climbing out of it feels impossible, even when you can see your beloved family at the top.

Please can we talk about this? With each other, the people that we see every day, so we can normalize the conversation. So we can begin to see that depression doesn't always look like the methamphetamines "after" picture. I don't need sympathy or platitudes, just an assurance that what I'm battling is nothing to be ashamed of and that people won't think less of me for how little I think of myself.

I am getting help, but there are many more who need it and are scared to ask. Let's create a culture that offers help without judgment, help that always comes with the words, "I am here for you," and means it.

If I Were King of the Forest

There's been a lot of talk in the media lately about courage and what that word actually means. When in doubt, I say, the bloggers and Tweeters and news outlets of the world should just consult the dictionary. One definition is simply "bravery," which just about covers all manner of courageous action the media worlds have been hurling at each other.

A discussion of courage is particularly meaningful today, as the 71st anniversary of D-Day. I always imagine those young men, sitting in airplanes and boats, waiting to jump into the air or slosh onto a beach and knowing full well that they or their buddies might not see the dawn of June 7. I wonder if they were terrified, or numb, or excited. I wonder if they thought about their mothers. I wonder if they realized the implications of their actions or were just trying to make it to the next minute.

That, I think we can agree, was courage. But what is significant about courage -- just like love and fear and sadness and joy -- is that it is largely in the eye of the beholder. We can debate endlessly about the courageousness of someone's actions, and whether one person is braver than the next. Yet I think it is far more important to consider what that courageous act meant to the person performing it.

From the outside, you could say that the scale is off, that some things aren't inspirational or note-worthy or impressive or world-changing, but each of us has our own understanding of what we fear and exactly what it takes to look that fear in the eye. Recently, I've been trying to pay attention to the courage around me, and once I began to actively notice, I saw it everywhere.

My first-grader pulled her own teeth. The thought makes me squirm a little, deliberately yanking on something attached (albeit just barely) to my body. But she closed the bathroom door, firmly rejected my offers of help, and pulled until it came out. She was glowing with pride when she emerged, tooth in hand, fear dissolving visibly in the air behind her. It may not seem like much, but she's only seven, and I sure don't think I could have done it.

My brother did stand-up comedy for the first time a few weeks ago. I watched the live feed on my phone and absolutely couldn't believe his courage. I've heard from other funny people that doing stand-up can be frightening, that you're putting your whole self out there to an audience that is inclined to be critical. He did his set, got some little laughs and some big laughs, and left the stage with what can only be described as a strut.

Courage can mean so many things, and I think we need to be careful not to dismiss someone's bravery, especially when we would consider the act at hand to be terribly easy or no big deal. We don't know what's in someone's heart and head. We don't know how long they had to self-talk, or how many times they got to the edge and had to back up again, or what kind of outside support they were getting. I'm certainly guilty of looking sideways at someone's bravery and need to be better at embracing their courage; if they say it took guts, then it did.

I did something recently that took a lot of courage, for me. Although I won't go into the details here, I can say that it was certainly nothing that will inspire world peace or clever memes. But for me, it was a big deal, and I walked a little taller. If we pause and pay attention, we see small and large acts of courage every day. Whether someone is coming out to their family and friends, or starting school again after many years, or speaking in front of a crowd, or applying for a new job, or taking a school bus for the first time, or serving in a war zone, we need to appreciate the hill, or mountain, or Everest, they had to climb to get there.

I just asked my brave little tooth-puller when she thought she was courageous, and she said that she will be when she starts baseball next week. I asked her why, and she said; "Well, I don't know if they're going to throw the ball at me and hit me with it, but I'm just going to get up there and try to hit it anyway." As usual, the seven-year-old is succinct and wise. Here's a boost of confidence to all of us who are going to go up there and try to hit it anyway. May we all be King of the Forest.

I Am From

Yesterday at work, as part of an institutional initiative to strengthen our inclusion and community engagement, I watched a performance about race and identity and the small and large ways we hurt each other. I felt uncomfortable, which was the point. It's so hard for us to see outside of our little circle, to truly walk in someone else's perspective. It's much easier to judge.

I bring this up because the conversation is everywhere, and it often feels destructive and one-sided, as if we were all having an angry justification argument with ourselves. We have difficulty engaging and listening to those who think differently.

But yesterday, something became very clear, and I can't believe I didn't see it before. As a historian, I'm always considering other perspectives and trying to understand people's stories, because I will never meet the people I study. I have to step back and try to see the world through the lens of an immigrant farmer or a radical suffragette or a black man facing Northern segregation.

At one point in the performance, the actors delivered "I Am From" poems, sharing personal details about their own stories as if their background and experiences were geographic locations. I was struck by their perspectives, laid bare with such honesty. We all have a story to tell, and we all want to be heard and acknowledged and respected for that story. And if I can invest time in understanding people long dead, I should also invest time in listening to those sharing the world with me today.

I wrote my own "I Am From" poem, not because my life has been particularly interesting, but because I wanted to see what it would look like. My story doesn't feel very important, nor my impact on the world very meaningful, but that's not the point. If we are to start constructive conversations and replace anger with respect, let's start with what makes us unique, and then listen to how everyone else defines themselves. It's a place to begin, anyway.

I am from love and truthfulness.

I am from motivation, rolled in hard work, dipped in privilege.

I am from Catholic faith, conservative politics, a liberal education, and all the dissonance that creates.

I am from the past, where people I know and people I don’t live as if in Middle-Earth, a place familiar and strange, many languages and traditions existing in fragile alliances that matter more with every person who says it just doesn’t matter anymore.

I am from water, where I can be still and alone beneath and part of something bigger than myself on the surface.

I am from self-loathing and despair that can’t overpower me anymore but sometimes gets close.

I am from motherhood, blue eyes and brown eyes and little hands on my face, babies gone in a whisper while I always wonder if we should have had more.

I am from pride in my country, the granddaughter of those who served on ships and in jungles and at home.

I am from books, worlds that often seem so much better than my own, so I reach for Avonlea on summer mornings and Hogwarts on wintry afternoons and Austenland all other times.

I am from a family that is everything, they who made me and they who I made and he who I cannot live without.

Write one of your own; it's a little therapeutic to lay out the dots that connect you. Keep it to yourself, or better still, share it and then listen with an open heart to someone else's, especially someone not like you. We may still disagree, but at least we can do so in a spirit of wanting to understand. 

Into 2015 with Resolve and a Shorter List

Is anybody really good at New Year's resolutions? Every year when January 7 rolls around and I've mangled every single one, I remember that Lent is coming in two months and I have another chance, so I can give up again for a bit. I don't like to fail, but I fail spectacularly at these.

Mostly, I think it's the type of resolutions that I make. Exercise more. Spend less. Volunteer more. Yell less. They're generic and abstract and utterly unattainable when phrased like that.

So I've been rethinking resolutions, with a little help from my mid-30s and from my friend Heidi. My mid-30s have found me college-educated, employed in a job I love, married, mortgaged, and mommy-ed. Last week I found myself in a panic because there was no concrete milestone (that wasn't actually my kids' milestones) in sight except menopause. I've always looked ahead for the next "thing," and suddenly, I have no more "things." Vague "traveling" and "writing my novel" feel slippery and distant. I love my life, but for me, having a defined, achievable goal gives me balance and a tether in this tumultuous world.

And then my friend Heidi, ever the realist, told me that she had a New Year's resolution that was simply to finish "Moby-Dick" within the year. Nothing glamorous or abstract about such a resolution, but also not pressure, no competition, and no guilt. After all, it's just a book.

With these two disparate thoughts clanging around in my head as I sit here, drinking bad champagne and waiting for Chef Matt to come home so we can watch even worse TV, I think I've found a middle ground for 2015. And there are only three. Double-digit resolutions are the expressway to early-January failure.

1. Re-read a couple books from high school that I hated.

There weren't that many that I truly hated, but I can think of a few: "The Scarlet Letter," "The Invisible Man," and "The Old Man and the Sea" are ones that I haven't touched in 17 years. I can't even remember why I hated them, why I feel repulsed every time I see them on a "Greatest Novels Ever That Everyone Who Thinks They're Smart Should Read" list. So it's time for a revisit. I think sometimes we hang on to an opinion for so long that the original motivation for that opinion is completely lost. If it's in our power to do so, rethinking beliefs and ideas that are comfortable and part of us, even if we ultimately come to the same conclusion, is healthy and might make us more willing to hear what others have to say. I'll start with books (probably "The Old Man in the Sea," because Hemingway and I don't see eye-to-eye on anything) and see where that takes me.

2. Write something.

Vague and specific, best of both worlds. I love to write, to twirl the words around my fingers and release them on the page and feel exhilarated when they land in an exact expression of the thoughts in my head. A long time ago, someone told me that a writer is always writing, no matter what they're doing. and it's the truth. I write in my head almost all the time, but rarely does that writing ever end up in black and white. Time and energy: those are my excuses. and they're good ones. But what I've failed to embrace is that the words I write don't have to be brilliant or complete or for anyone but me, and that hesitation has cost me. So this year, I will write. It might be a Word document with a series of one-liners: "Today, I ....." Or it might be this sadly neglected blog. Or it might be one of my actual writing projects that I've crafted in my head over years of sitting in traffic. As the transcendent Maya Angelou said, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

3. Model positive self-image.

This one sounds like I pulled it straight from a suggested resolutions list. But it might be the most personal for me, so hear me out. My self-esteem and I are perpetually warring nations. Every time I think we've declared an armistice, it comes back with some mixture of new and old weapons that I just can't defeat. And it leaks out into my work and my health and my relationships, in particular the relationships with my kids. I don't want my kids to see what I see when I look in the mirror.  I want them to look in the mirror and see bright, thoughtful, inquisitive, silly people, but that confidence doesn't all come from within. They see the way I talk about myself and treat myself, and no matter how highly my husband might speak of me in front of them, the poor self-image will always break though, at least a little.

So it's baby steps here. It's saying, "thank you" to a compliment. It's fighting the urge to internally criticize every word I've said in a conversation. It encompasses those usual resolutions of eating better and exercising more, but with a mental component: do it to feel healthy and strong, not just to reach some arbitrary number. It's accepting that I've had four babies and all that comes with that physically. You can tell someone that it doesn't matter, because look at those gorgeous children that you created, but it's sometimes quite another thing to come honestly to terms with the fact that there might be mom jeans in my future. I know this all sounds very recycled; we've heard this a million times before, the person who struggles with nothing original. Maybe, but it's still a struggle. The end goal of all this for me is true, actual belief, which, when projected out at the world and my kids, feels sincere.

The moral of this story, I guess, is that I'm making a resolution to actually make resolutions, to be truthful about what I can accomplish and what needs a little TLC so I can better contribute to the world. A new year always feels a little lighter, as if you've left the cumulative weight of 365 days behind and are forging ahead with determination to be a better version of yourself. And maybe a determination to find better milestones to look forward to than menopause. We are all dreamers on New Year's Eve, right?

I Can See the Sunlight Ahead

My children wouldn't have been born.

That's the thought that haunts me when I think about a few terrifying days in the darkest hole of my depression. If I had acted on the notion that the world would be better off without me, the world might have been without me, and without my four beautiful babies. As I listen to their quiet breathing tonight, and as I read the flood of confessions and calls to action following the tragic suicide of Robin Williams, I pray that the other lives teetering on the edge of despair find their way back to solid ground.

Days such as this shock us into movement, and throughout the last 24 hours, people around the world have begged us to seek help and to help others. Inevitably, focus on this issue will fade when the next human tragedy occurs, but I implore you to be vigilant. The dismantling of a human because of depression is not something that can be casually or intermittently patched. It is silent and dark and omnipresent, and to me, it felt like someone dangerous was following me down quiet, black alleys.

I have come out safely on the other side. I still fight some demons, as many of us do, but every single day is no longer a struggle. I have learned to wrestle self-loathing to the ground, to ask for help, and to understand that I am not actually a burden to the world.

But (and here's the really important part that all of us, those who fight depression and those who don't, need to know) I did not do it alone. In college, there were two friends in particular who did not take "I'm fine" for an answer. My family rose up like a great and mighty wall, to offer support and protection at any cost. And my parents, whose fear rattled me, stood armed and ready to combat my depression with love, time, prayer, and listening.

I see my own children, and I worry that hiding in their genetic code is a little of what drove me to desperation. What will be, will be, and no amount of self-love and pride and confidence that I can soak them in will be enough to overwhelm depression, if it appears. I will try to inoculate my kids against it, but must remember that it can hit even those who seem the most collected, the most even. If it comes, I have to unleash the weapons my loved ones used for my sake.

There is much good advice circulating today about preventing suicide and treating depression, and we should sit up and pay attention, and not just for the week or month. We can never know what is inside a person's head, what private struggles cloud their thoughts, but we can be compassionate observers and listeners. I can say with certainty that the road to recovery is difficult, and with equal certainty that each life is worth the effort to listen and love.

Please know that this mountain can be climbed. If you are lost inside your own head, put out your hand to someone on the outside, and they will take it. If you see someone stumbling, even someone who you think is fine or who has overcome in the past, watch for their outstretched hand or just go and take it.

Four little people are on this Earth because I climbed that mountain.

The Other Heroes

Let me tell you about my sister. She's younger by two and a half years, loves her job as a veterinary technician, and is a devoted mother to two sweet boys.

At this moment in her life, the thing that is largely defining her existence is one that she inherited through her marriage to her husband, Joe, and one that makes her both proud and scared. She is a military wife, about to bid her deployed soldier farewell.

My sister and I have a lot in common. We are busy working moms, we have similar values, we laugh at many of the same things, we are in secure, loving marriages. And we both have a sense of what it means to struggle with the schedules our husbands' jobs create for us, and the loneliness that battles with pride.

The singularly unique experience of being a military spouse is one that I can't pretend to understand, no matter how much I miss Chef Matt on our long stretches of long days. We all have our private struggles, but I believe that it takes a remarkable sort of woman to be a good military wife.

As the granddaughter of two war veterans and the daughter of an Army brat, I was raised with an understanding and respect for the sacrifices of soldiers and their families. My grandmother, at the end of her honeymoon, watched her new husband leave for Korea. When he returned, he had a son. And so continued their lives through six more children and another war. My grandfather was a patriot and a brave soldier, but so was my grandmother. The sacrifices of soldiers are tremendously important, yet without the equally important sacrifices of their families, it is difficult to keep the world of military active duty in any kind of balance.

As a historian, and a patriot myself, I feel awe and profound appreciation for the men and women that have served since Lexington and Concord. When I learn about the conditions of battlefields and Army camps and trenches and parachuting missions, I can barely believe that so many have answered their country's call. They carry with them their service and the things they have seen, far beyond their active duty. I see my brother-in-law ready to deploy, and I feel that, just as it has been since 1775, our country is in good hands.

But when we think about our soldiers, we cannot forget about those back home. The women and men on the home front kept farms and businesses going, raised children, buried family members, fought to keep from starving, and battled with the fear for their loved ones' fate. I think about the debilitating sadness of a lost husband or father, and the inestimable joy of a safe return. The families are heroes, too.

The next time you see a soldier in uniform, please thank them for their service. No matter what you might think of the military or the war, that is still a soldier who felt driven to serve and protect. But then also send up a prayer or kind thought for that soldier's family. Parents, spouses and children sacrifice and hold life together in a soldier's absence, and though I've never done it, I know that it is difficult and frustrating and unsettling. That family is waking up every morning with one thought in their mind, yet facing a million little things that need to be done. Life goes on, but for the families, it goes on with a temporarily empty chair at the table.

On this Independence Day, I am grateful for my country and its founding principles. I am grateful for our own G.I. Joe, and all the loyal soldiers in our history. And most of all, I am grateful for my sister, and all the other families who have sent their beloveds off to war. We are behind you. You are brave and your soldiers are lucky to have you in their corner.

Life, Kindergarten, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Every time I see an online post titled something to the effect of "20 Things I Will Teach My Daughter" or "75 Things I Want to Do with My Kids to Make Them Active Citizens in an Increasingly Global World", I read it, partly because I want to see how my parental teachings stack up. What nuggets of wisdom am I already imparting and what am I missing?

This week, my daughter finishes kindergarten. In the past seven days, I've also had a preschooler finish his year and a first and third birthday, so you've caught me on a particularly weepy week. But my daughter's matriculation from kindergarten has me thinking about the list of advice I shared with her on her first day of school and wondering if a post titled "3 Things I Said as I Sent My Peanut into the World of Formal Education" would be of use to anyone. Probably not, but here it is anyway.

I gave her a note on her first day, and I told her that while she was in school, she would learn so many things. No matter what she learned, and how old she was, she should always remember these three things.

Be Kind.
Be Curious.
Be Yourself.

Kindness is magic. Even in small doses, it has great healing power. I can remember, with great regret, times when I was unkind to others, and with great relief, times when others were kind to me. Think of all that we might accomplish if we were kinder to each other, if we recollected more often that unkind and kind behavior can leave equal traces. I watched my daughter shrink under the embarrassment of being pushed over on the bus, and then rise with grace at the hand of a sympathetic third-grader.

Curiosity is a kind of Miracle-Gro. Under the influence of a curious nature, we flourish. The world is a curious place, as Alice noted so often while down the rabbit hole, and if we are scared or unwilling or uninterested in asking questions of it, we cannot properly grow into better beings. Our daughter has implanted an infectious curiosity in her brothers; I cannot get through an entire book without a half-dozen inquiries about words' meanings. Even our three-year-old, who doesn't quite know what it means to ask "what does it mean?", is building a habit of asking without fear.

To be yourself is sometimes the greatest challenge of all. We spend a lifetime with ourselves, trying to figure out who we are and what we want, and along the way we sometimes try too hard to fit in or be someone we are not. The person we are cultivating will certainly change, but that change should be on our own terms. Embracing our individual weirdness can be hard, especially in school, but how freeing it is to finally look in the mirror and see the self we want, and not the self that others determine is okay. From the viewpoint of a mother who has always struggled with this, my daughter's unembarrassed self-acceptance is a relief and a joy.

I could have added so many things to this list. Be confident. Be strong. Be proud. Be cautious. Be risky. Be dependable. Be a dreamer. Be a listener. Be a doer. And I'm sure that in time in years of schooling and living, she will learn all of these things.

But last week, when the mounds of papers started coming home, I was reading her writing journal, and I noticed a pattern in her words that cut right to my heart. The lesson that she learned, the "Be" that enveloped her and that I had not thought to include, was present on almost every page: "I was happy."

Perhaps it was just that her vocabulary of emotions wasn't expansive. But I don't think so. I think she genuinely saw that happiness is important, and that so many things make her happy, from the park to her friends to to ice cream to family outings to trips to Grandma's. And her happiness was big enough as she talked about all the doings of her life that she expressed it over and over.

Such is the wisdom of six-year-olds. It matters to be kind, curious, and yourself. But happiness should be front and center. We seek it, it slips by us, we envision it in places or things that are like walls of smoke, we wake with a start to realize that is is staring us in the face. And maybe, in the pursuit of happiness, amongst all the other things we are trying to achieve, we should look for it in the realm of a kindergartner: in parks, ice cream, and family. It's a place to start, anyway.

A Dinnertime in the Life Of

5:45 p.m. Basking in the sun at the playground. Wonder vaguely what to make for dinner.

5:53 p.m. Remember that I am supposed to be on a Twitter chat for work, which starts in seven minutes. Attempt to wrangle playing children. Feels a little like a game of Pac-Man.

6:01 p.m. Unceremoniously dump children into the house. Shove a bottle at screaming baby.

6:07 p.m. Now late to the Twitter chat because of inept struggle with the iPad cover.

6:09 p.m. Finally on Twitter chat. Boy #1 escapes outside.

6:12 p.m. Remember that the masses still need to be fed. Begin hard-boiling eggs. Add too much water, which will shortly become another problem.

6:17 p.m. Boy #2 escapes outside.

6:20 p.m. Boiling water overflows. Baby throws bottle at me, howls to be set free of car seat. Twitter chat continues at the speed of light. What are these other people doing at dinner time that they have so much time to Tweet four times a minute?

6:26 p.m. Boy #2 finds the biggest branch in the yard and is wielding it like a sword, all the while teetering on the edge of the landscaping. Boy #1 breaks baseball T and demands I fix it immediately. Threaten loss of all dinosaur toys if they don't behave.

6:28 p.m. Realize we have no fruits or vegetables on the house. Food pyramid fail.

6:35 p.m. Twitter chat is now going so rapidly that my responses coming in two minutes late are clearly "so yesterday."

6:38 p.m. Both boys now running through the yard in their socks. Run out to corral them inside. While retrieving Boy #2, Baby somehow manages to open screen door and is headed outside. Jump down treacherous stairs, with a boy over my shoulder, to save Baby.

6:42 p.m. Crack eggs incorrectly, have to peel shells off in millimeter-sized pieces. Decide that a crunchy egg salad sandwich is exactly what the kids will eat.

6:45 p.m. Yell at three older children for stepping on each other. Discover hidden stash of peaches. Feel slightly less incompetent.

6:46 p.m. Hear Girl consoling crying brother who is sad that Mommy yelled. Feel incompetent all over again.

6:49 p.m. Finally figure out iPad cover, but give up on Twitter chat. Boy #2 dumps full glass of water all over the floor, and then kicks the Baby.

6:53 p.m. Feel slightly crazed and start mumbling to myself. Girl says, "It's okay, Mommy."

6:59 p.m. All children seated, prayers said, eating late dinner. Half ends up on the floor, but no one mentions crunchy eggs.

Married and Happy About It

A happy marriage does not make for very good entertainment, I think. It's the reason that "Downton Abbey" killed off a beloved main character, and it must be the reason that we don't have our own "Housewives" show by this point.

When I write about my happy marriage, it is true and sincere, but probably not very compelling, and quite possibly comes off as boasting. And maybe because the marriages that fill our celebrity news feed are dramatic and tumultuous, the happy marriages out there in the world aren't quite on our radar.

To everyone else, our marriage might seem a little boring. There's very little drama. There's not much in the way of exotic vacations or fancy anything. There's romance, but in the way of "thanks for taking hamburger out of the freezer so I could make tacos tonight" romance. We have our moments, but for the most part, we are happy.

This might only be interesting to read about if it is coming from a cute old couple who's been married for 70 years, or a couple who's come back from the brink and are stronger than ever, or a couple of high school sweethearts who reconnected after 40 years. But what about the everyday cases of happy? Sometimes I feel reluctant to share our happiness, maybe because it might seem too private, and maybe because I don't want anyone to think that we are arrogant in our gushiness.

Good marriages are not newsworthy. Perhaps they should be. "Couple Still in Love, Folds Laundry Together to Celebrate" is not going to sell any newspapers. Yet in that story of folding laundry is the revealing of a thousand little things. It's a sharing of life's mundane responsibilities, the acknowledgement of tensions related to jobs that never seem to get done, the financial strain of so many tiny dirty clothes, the precious 20 minutes spent together watching "Princess Diaries" while sorting two dozen socks without matches. It's ups and downs and boredom and romance, all in one giant pile of laundry.

Can we please talk more about happy marriages, in an honest, hopeful way? We shouldn't try to come off as perfect, but we should be unashamed and genuine in our discovery of a match that is more than we could have wished for. I love to hear people talk about their happiness. We do it at length about our kids and our pets and our jobs, so maybe we should up our game in praising our joyful wedded state.

If you see me posting one too many pictures of Chef Matt on social media, or hear me talk yet again about how awesome he is, don't think that I'm out to brag. Truly, I feel all lit up inside every day of my life, and he brings such peace and confidence into our world. It's bliss that I can barely contain. And if your bliss is powerful, too, as it emanates from love letters or walks on the beach or date-night laundry, then share. We could all use a little more happy.

Sometimes, I See a Grinch in the Mirror

I was watching Spongebob Squarepants the other day, all by myself, while the kids were Heaven knows where destroying Heaven knows what. I realized what I was doing after a few minutes, and it turns out, I was entranced by the song Spongebob was cheerfully singing to anyone who would listen: "Don't Be a Jerk, It's Christmas."

Spongebob, in all his infinite wisdom, might have hit the nail right on the head. Sometimes I feel like Christmas makes jerks out of all of us, in some way. We buy excessive amounts of stuff, we get quickly and colossally irritated by other shoppers/drivers/family members, we sneak into cookie exchanges or potlucks with nothing but our appetites, we are offended when someone tells us "Merry Christmas" or when we feel like we are not allowed to say "Merry Christmas," we leave our Santa lawn inflatables out until Easter.

Is it the Christmas seasons that makes jerks out of us, and we just can't help it? The stress can overwhelm us as we try to keep up with our traditions, our internal expectations, and the completely unrealistic world of Pinterest. Even if you love the holidays, there has to be a moment where you start to freak out and contemplate running over pedestrians to park on the sidewalk because there is nowhere to park within two miles of the only store in the state that contains the exact gift your child wants. If you hate the holidays, you might feel like the 30 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas is open season on all the crazies who do.

I am just as guilty. I start to act like a jerk when the stress of presents, Christmas cards, baking, and the Elf on a Shelf starts to take its toll. The thing that overwhelms me the most is my sub-par Christmas parenting. I am not very good with maintaining any holiday traditions, and I sometimes worry that what my children will remember is that Mommy was always frazzled. Most troubling is that we are religious people and I feel we don't always emphasize the reason for the season in the midst of the mad dash.

So let's all come to an agreement, then. Let's not be jerks. Whatever your beliefs about the season, whether you anticipate the coming of Jesus or the coming of a hot toddy and a day off work, let's agree that the spirit of the season is one of love. We can all use more love.

If you celebrate Christmas, actually celebrate Christmas. Skip Christmas cards if it makes you less anxious. Buy less stuff, and when you do buy, stroll through Target with a Starbucks like you have nothing planned for days. Don't get angry if someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Remember that the lights and the trees and the stockings and the cookies can be magical, even for adults. Do you recall that scene in the original Miracle on 34th Street, when the postmen carry dozens of bags of Santa letters into the court room? Magic.

If you don't celebrate Christmas, remember that it is a commemoration of a historical person's birth, and that person believed in love and generosity and forgiveness. Smile and extend good wishes to someone who says "Merry Christmas." Take advantage of all the good food floating around. Use December as an excuse to love more and get angry at pushy holiday shoppers less.

And finally, we need to give whatever is in our power to give. It may be a smile to the tired waitress (or line cook!), your mittens or lunch to the homeless person standing on the corner, a contribution to a charity, or the precise gift that your niece desperately wants. Consumerism can easily swallow us, and the frenetic season can shorten our tempers. The quickest way out and into a place of more love is to give.

However odd, let the words of Spongebob be your guide: Don't be a jerk, it's Christmas. Be a positive force instead because that benefits us all, no matter our beliefs.

The Gift of Sundays

My son told me today that he is thankful because he goes potty on the potty chair. I am also very, very thankful for that. My daughter wrote dozens of notes to all our family members about all the love she has, and I am thankful for that, too.

On this day of grateful love, I'm thankful for the usual slate of blessings, for a few nerdy things like the 19th amendment, and some silly things like our awesome new space heater. But this year, I think the thing I am most grateful for is that Chef Matt now has Sundays off.

In a couple's opposite-schedule world, one whole day off together is like a Yeti. You know it exists, you may have glimpsed it once or twice, but it eludes regular sightings. You yearn for Christmas, and if you are like us, you keep having kids in anticipation of two whole weeks at home together when the baby is born.

Matt has not had a regular weekend day off in five years. Oh, he's had a day here and there, and we had those five perfect days in Napa Valley in 2010. But for the past several years, we have operated on an entirely split shift. It has saved us so much in daycare money. It has also been a strain that I am not sorry to see partially disappear.

Wednesday through Friday, we are awake in the house together for about 15 minutes total. We are those neighbors whose lawn is just past embarrassingly long, and those people who wade through 47 loads of laundry, only to leave them languishing in clean piles for two weeks. Without a full day to get through the regular stuff, we have no chance of getting to the batteries that need changing or the garage that needs organizing.

A full day off together will change our lives, which sounds dramatic, but there's truth in it. When he's home, I breathe easier. We pull strength from our togetherness and cease to operate like a long-distance business, fulfilling duties and updating only over the phone. Cramming groceries dishes bills mopping diapers raking scheduling vacuuming and all else into a few hours a week leaves us little time for the kids or each other. A full day seems luxurious and long, 75-minute hours rolling out in slow motion, with possibilities of fully clean rooms, three meals with six people, and potential trips to the amazing places like the zoo.

When we told our daughter that daddy would be home on Sundays, her face lit up and she said, with joy and disbelief, "Both my parents home on the same day?" That reaction alone told us that it had been too long.

Sundays belong to us again, and this is what I am thankful for today. That, and the potty-training and the love. What is wonderful in their world is in mine, too.

Get Thee to Daycare

Chef Matt and I are a DILOK family. The slightly more crowded cousin of DINKs, DILOKs are Double Income, Lots of Kids, and that distinction comes with the challenges you might expect: the chaos, the four wildly different levels of ability and neediness, the lack of time to get anything done.

And then there's the challenge that I did not expect to be one. In our DILOK family, both of us love our jobs. Like really love our jobs. They are careers that we sought out and have cultivated for almost a decade, and aside from the normal off-day, we enjoy going to work every day.

The problem lies with the jobs we have chosen. My job, in the nonprofit world, is not likely to be very lucrative. Matt's job, in the restaurant world, is shackled with unusual hours. When a stagnant salary is mixed with night and weekend shifts, I can't help feeling that the ones who suffer from our job choices are our kids.

We had a lot of kids for a number of reasons: 1. we love having them, 2. we could, 3. a big family is important to us. As parents, it is our responsibility to bestow upon them all of the time, talent and treasure that we have to give, but in some ways, our jobs plus our large family limit the amount of time and treasure available. We don't have weekends together as a family, or most evenings, either. We won't be able to take a lot of vacations or pay for every lesson our kids want to take.

We could fix that if we wanted to make different choices. I could get a job in the corporate world, and Matt could find a job with banker's hours. And believe me, we've talked about it and the benefits for our family. Two whole days a week together! Piano lessons for everyone!

But I've started to wonder, as I wade through the mommy guilt, if loving our jobs isn't equally beneficial for our kids. Kids are smart. They can sense tension and stress and frustration in your voice, posture and emotions, just as much as they can sense contentment and passion. Since going back to work two weeks ago, I feel more centered and inspired, because every day I work at a job I believe in, with people who also believe. I adore my kids, but I'll admit that I am a mediocre stay-at-home mom. I am a much better mom when I am spending my days doing what I'm good at and what drives me.

Someday, when they start to take more notice of our conversations and the things in our house, they'll see the piles of cookbooks their daddy reads like comic books, and the stacks of books on historically famous and obscure topics, which their mommy is simply unable to part with. They'll hear Matt talk about his halibut dish that's going like gangbusters, and hear me talk about some old document like it's a Rembrandt, and what they'll really be hearing is pride. And enthusiasm. And motivation. I want them to know that aspiring to be successful can also mean that you have found a calling, and are making it happen.

Do I wish we had more time and money? Sure I do. And I know how we can get both of those things, but at the moment, we'll stay put. It seems a little selfish, like we're indulging in a great luxury at our kids' expense. But if we make the most of the time and treasure we have to give, our talent can be one of the best lessons we offer.

Losing a Hometown

When I was in high school, the musical "Rent" exploded into American culture with extraordinary music and lyrics that captured our obsessive attention, lingering today in my ability to sing every one of those songs. The song that was attached to the musical's publicity is "Seasons of Love," which ponders the measure of a year in someone's life, beyond that of seconds and minutes.

"In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife." When I first heard it, on the brink of adulthood, I was sure I knew what that meant. It means something a little different to me now, as I measure my own years upon my children's, but this week in particular, it tears at my heart on yet another level.

This week, I am losing my hometown. We moved in 25 years ago and my parents have been in the same house for 19 of those years, a house they are vacating in a couple of days. Our family moved in the month before I started high school and for 19 years, despite my occupation of various other places, including two homes with my husband, it has always been "home."

It was the home where I set the kitchen on fire (accidentally) one cold January morning while my parents were in Las Vegas. It was the home where I parked my first car (1986 Ford Taurus station wagon), where our trees were attacked by hundreds of rolls of toilet paper, and where my friends always knew they were welcome. It was the home I always came back to, as a college student, as a broke twentysomething fired from a job, and as a wife and mother between houses.

It was the site of three high school graduation parties, three college graduation parties, a wedding rehearsal dinner, a post-wedding breakfast, and two baby showers, not to mention dozens of birthday parties, family reunions, pool parties, and gatherings convened as an excuse to get together and play cards and drink. All my kids and my nephews were babies in this house, although all but one will forget its rooms within the next year.

Logically, it seems silly to be so attached to a house, when it is the memories that are important. But loving a home is an illogical thing. I will never see my grandma or grandpa again, but just being in the rooms, knowing that they were here a year and a few months before they died, makes me want to roll up the carpet and remove the sheet rock and carry it with me. My oldest starts kindergarten this fall, but sometimes when I look at her in my parents' house, all I can see is a beautiful baby with no hair rolling around on the living room floor.

I cannot go back to see it one last time with no furniture, and there is not much reason for me to visit the town again, either. And I know that my heart is not the only one that is breaking a little bit. For my parents, on the verge of their sixtieth decades, pulling up roots and walking away from the home where they raised three children and watched the growth of their family as we added two sons-in-law and six grandchildren is painful.

But here is what is wonderful about it. The easiest course for them, with such a large family and such a connection to the house, would have been to stay and let further generations commit its walls to memory. But for 20 years, they have wanted a lake home. This summer, they decided it was now or never, and they pulled the trigger. It was the most selfish thing they have ever done, and I say that with the most positive meaning possible.

They will not be the couple whose dream is neatly tucked away in a basement closet, waiting for just the right "someday." Of all the lessons we have learned in our house, this might be one of the most important: the time will come when your dreams are within your reach and you have to snatch them up before the door closes again. We know that this is true, we know that some wishes should not remain so, but how often do we actually act? These are people acting, out of their comfort zone and for once, not solely in the best interest of their kids. The lake that's been shimmering like a mirage outside their back door is a real thing.

We will see more daylights and midnights, drink more coffee and feel more laughter and strife, just as we did in the old house. This will be the house of my children's memories, just as the old one is the house of mine. And they will look out the windows of the only home they have ever known as Grandma and Grandpa's to see a landscape that is reflective of their grandparents' character.

To the lake we go.

Oh Pinterest, You Evil Temptress

Not too long ago I was seduced by Pinterest for the first time. We had been dancing around each other for a while, hesitant to define a relationship. It dangled all kinds of beautiful things in my face, and my willpower began to crumble. Then, one day at work when I was hugely pregnant and hungry, I saw a picture of S'mores bars and all bets were off.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, emboldened by the short ingredient list and the fact that, like any good American, I've made many a S'more around a summer campfire. And then Pinterest deceived me. The picture showed a crumbly bar with perfectly melted chocolate and a picturesquely gooey marshmallow filling, without any sort of warning that cooking with marshmallow fluff will destroy you.

The stuff is like thick, gloppy cobwebs. It doesn't mix well, spread well, divide well, or do anything well except aggravate anyone who touches it. Trying to layer it over graham cracker crust is probably not even possible, so I tried to spread it over the chocolate bars, first with a knife, then with a spatula, then with a spoon. I stopped spreading and just started throwing globs of fluff in a fit of slightly hysterical frustration.

This is where Pinterest failed me. The picture was so pretty, and the recipe came from a blog that looked far more professional than mine, and so many other people had repinned it that I figured it had to be relatively easy. We live in an era of DIY "Food Network" simplicity, and Pinterest does nothing if not foster this false sense of comfort in our abilities. Look at all this amazing stuff that other people do so beautifully! You can do it, too! I promise you won't end up angry in the kitchen with marshmallow fluff all over your counters and hands and oven.

I am no stranger to images of perfect food, professionally staged and floating next to a recipe: we have about 75 cookbooks in our house. Pinterest is a different animal; it's this endless dream list of gorgeous things and brilliant ideas, floating out there on the cloud for us to drool over, largely because these things and ideas are often the work of regular people and not always a professional chef who had to go through the rigmarole of publishing an actual book. In a way, it's empowering and seductive. A casserole or dessert on Pinterest seems far more attainable than something in "The French Laundry" cookbook.

Therein lies the danger. Suddenly, you're wrist-deep in marshmallow fluff and you end up with a whole section of bars with no chocolate. You go back to the picture online and cry a little inside because that is decidedly not what your bars look like. And then you say a little prayer of thanks that your husband and co-workers aren't sticklers about pretty food, and resign yourself to the fact that you are not actually going to be the next big thing in the world of food blogging.

And ultimately, it turns out okay. Because ultimately, you have S'mores bars.

Still Mixing After All These Years

Thirty-six years ago this month, my parents were married on a rainy-sunshiny day in central Illinois. They were barely old enough to drink at their own wedding and didn't have two pennies to rub together; my mom always said that in those early years, they were living on love.

One of the wedding gifts that they received was an avocado green hand mixer, a historically popular color for kitchen utensils and appliances in the years before Reagan. Life was good if you had a fridge and stove in matching avocado green; a hand mixer was another accessory for a well-coordinated kitchen.

My mom loves to bake, so that hand mixer occupies a solid place in my memory. My childhood recollections waver between crystal clear and fuzzy around the edges and completely opaque, but always, the avocado hand mixer is there, sitting on the kitchen counter in the four houses that I remember well.

It was the kitchen utensil that I learned to use because hand mixers, as far as cooking tools go, are relatively harmless. I remember learning important lessons about putting the mixer in the batter first before turning it on, and not the other way around. I learned how to mix while scraping the sides of the bowl to catch all the flour. I learned that being offered a beater after the cookie dough was mixed is one of life's greatest treats (salmonella risk aside).

When I moved into my first apartment, my mom gave me the mixer. At first, I didn't use it much. In college and then directly after, I didn't cook so much as assemble sandwiches and put waffles in the toaster. But I began to experiment with baking and learned that it calms me. There is something so lovely about the precise art of baking, and something so satisfying about modifying that precise recipe into something even better.

I have had that mixer for almost 15 years. In my apartments and houses, it has made cookies, brownies, pie fillings, whipped cream, and a hundred other things. In the last year or so, my kids have started to prop a stool against the counter and watch semi-patiently for the avocado mixer to stop so they could commandeer a beater.

After 36 years of use, that mixer still works and shows no signs of dying on me. I bought another one years ago, one that was new and white and had sleek-looking beaters. I think I have used it twice. I much prefer to use the one that was gifted to a young couple, starting life with not much else than each other and some things for their house. I don't have the avocado green appliances to match, but that great old mixer is nothing but at home in its second-generation family of bakers.

Are You Ready for Us, Baby?

Dear Baby,

Today, I forgot to pick up your sister from school, and then I cried. On the surface, this does not bode well for you: you will be born to a mother who leaves her child stranded at school and is an emotional wreck.

You may as well know now that I am not perfect. From your warm and cozy little home, it may seem unbelievable that you could be born into a world and a family that are chaotic and flawed. Your entry into this life will certainly be a shock, and you will not be happy about it at first.

But when you arrive, and you hear my voice in the outside world, you will not care that I am not perfect. You will not care that I have eaten approximately my weight in ice cream in the last month. You will not care that I sometimes make my kids watch "Harry Potter" movies when I am too tired to play and too irritated to watch any more cartoons. You will not care that every once in a while I am "that mom" who forgets school-picture day or lets your brothers go to bed with dirty knees.

Someday you might care that I am not Donna Reed, so I think it is only fair to warn you now about what you can expect out of me as a mom. At least then I can throw this back at you in fourteen years when you wish, silently or not, that I was like the other kids' moms.

I will kill spiders, bees and centipedes in your room, but if I see a mouse, you are on your own. I love my job, so you will always be in daycare. Sometimes I just want to hang out with your dad, with no kids. I do not do crafts, but we can make as many pies as you want. I will yell at you, probably more often than I should. Our house will not always be clean, but I promise we will never end up on "Hoarders." You will try Brussels sprouts, venison, and blue cheese and all kinds of other crazy foods, when all you want to eat are chicken nuggets. We will unintentionally hurt each other's feelings, but we will also intentionally lift each other up.

Do not be afraid to join us in our imperfect world. Because what you will see in your first moments of life will be the people who love you most. It will be evident to you, every day of your life, that you are loved and wanted. Despite all of my flaws and un-Carol Brady behavior, and the grief that we will cause each other, all of that will be easily overshadowed by the wonder you will see in life and the wonder I will see in you.

If all this sounds reasonable to you, then feel free to join us at any time. We cannot promise a perfect life, but we can promise love and warm jammies and a full tummy. Come and see us when you are ready, Baby. We are ready for you to complete our wonderful, chaotic family.

The Moms That Keep on Giving

A few years ago, I saw a news piece about the children of the Great Depression, and an older gentleman was talking about always being hungry. He said that he rarely saw his mother eat, and that he could not imagine how much she gave up to make sure that he was fed. He barely got the words out, and I still tear up when I think about both his mother's selflessness and his adult realization of her silent sacrifices.

As children, we do not always have a clear sense of the small and big sacrifices that our mothers make for us. Even as adults, when we start to understand the degree to which our lives shaped our parents' lives, we can never quite grasp the hundreds of ways our mothers put themselves second. Whether it is always taking the burnt piece of toast, or starving so we might eat, our moms give, and they give whether we are grateful or not.

I have been reading a lot of mommy blogs lately, for reassurance and solidarity, because I have learned that as a mom, second-guessing becomes second nature. We do not hesitate to sacrifice but we always wonder if we are doing enough. As a mom, looking at my growing circus of children, I would say that I am not doing enough to ensure that my kids are well-rounded, well-mannered, well-adjusted individuals. I obsess about the manners, knowledge, instruments, sports, languages, arts and community engagement that my kids probably will not master because I don't have the time to indulge them, and tend to forget that I am not Superwoman.

But as a daughter, looking back at my childhood and adolescence, I would say that my mother's sacrifices, both the ones I saw and the ones I did not, were not lacking. And since the best people to reassure mothers of their fine mommying are kids themselves (no matter how many times other people might say it, I always believe it more when my five-year-old identifies my good mommy skills), I want to tell my mom that all she invested is appreciated.

Sorry you had to attend so many two-hour torture sessions known as junior high band concerts.

Making me learn how to do laundry at 10 years old was really smart. I totally get it now.

I know now why I couldn't have a veil for my First Communion, and I'm sorry I was so sullen about it.

I understand now how exhausting it was for you when Dad was traveling.

You didn't fulfill your dream of Australia until this year because, among other things, you were spending precious travel money on family trips planned around my academic competitions.

Thanks for listening to me ramble on about whatever latest obsession, even though there was probably some show that you really wanted to watch instead.

You probably took the burnt piece of toast, the piece of cake with less frosting, and the butt of the loaf of bread.

I know that your heart broke every time I treated you poorly and every time I was hurting. I never quite appreciated that until my three-year-old said he didn't like me.

I don't know if you feel like a success or a failure, or if you still second-guess yourself. I don't know if you remember all the things you gave. I can't remember all of them, either, but you should know that I will take the burnt toast, go to the torturous band concerts, and listen patiently, and in that lies your success as a mother. I will do anything I can for the hearts living outside of my body, as you did for the heart living outside of yours.

It's the Real Thing, Baby

First blueberry pie. Almost certainly not the last. 

Whenever I am in the kitchen, there are four little words I love and dread hearing: "Mommy, can I help?"

I love that my kids want to help. I know that someday, it is possible that no bribe or threat I can dream up will get them within twenty feet of the kitchen, so I enjoy their enthusiasm now. Truthfully, however, there are times that their "help" adds an hour, an egg on the floor, and flour in crevices that will never come clean, and I just want to do it myself.

It is a constant pas-de-deux of cooking and trying to prevent salmonella when they climb up on their little stools and, faster than the speed of light, rub their little hands on raw meat. Powdery white substances are irresistible, both for eating by the handful and for smearing onto hair and eyes and siblings.

Despite this, I almost always let them help. I want them to have memories of being welcomed in the kitchen. My mother tells a story about baking cookies as a child for a 4-H competition and burning the first batch. Her mother helped her start over, remix and re-bake, and under my grandma's guidance, the second batch was perfect. This memory means a great deal to my mom; as one of seven children, she did not always have much individual time with her own mother. I am sure it meant a great deal to my grandma, who lost her mother before she was five and probably spent little time with her in the kitchen.

Besides the benefit of time -- which is precious with two working parents and three, soon to be four, children -- learning to cook is a lesson in self-sufficiency and persistence. And in our house, that lesson is built upon a foundation of do-it-yourself. We still buy boxed macaroni and cheese (because it is delicious), but otherwise, we cook, and we teach, from scratch.

I have not bought a box of pancake mix in almost two years. Through much satisfying and frustrating trial and error, I found a recipe and modified it until it was perfect. I have learned to be comfortable making slow-cooking oatmeal and slow-cooking grits. I take great pride in my pie crusts, which my mother showed me how to make. Sometimes they are still too sticky and shaped like footballs, but I persist, and every once in a while, they are flaky and light and beautiful and I want to send pictures of them to my mom.

This is what I want my kids to learn when they "help": it is not okay to eat raw eggs, and if you measure and mix all the ingredients yourself, it will take longer and taste better. We live in a post-Betty Crocker world where you can buy just about anything pre-made, and I am not going to lie, sometimes I would love to cook nothing but things that require me to add water or press "bake" on the oven. Sometimes a Stouffer's lasagna is the best-tasting thing on Earth.

But so much is lost in the instant-ness. A muffin mix doesn't allow a three-year-old to build a brown-sugar sandcastle. When my daughter made her first little pie, it was all she could do to not march around the house, hoisting the ramekin above her head like a trophy. I showed pictures of her pie to my mom, and felt the do-it-yourself implant in a fourth generation.

As long as they want to help, and as long as I can summon the patience, my kids will be allowed to "help" in the kitchen. Someday, when they are living in early-twenties poverty, they will buy ramen and instant oatmeal, but they will have memories of learning to saute garlic, roast squash, and bake homemade pies. They will remember that flour and baking powder just feels better than a pre-mix, and somewhere down the line, I will see pictures of their kids' baked goods: proud smiles alongside accidentally dropped eggs and sugar in their hair.

Growing Life and Combating Stupidity

 The hardest part of being a Kitchen Widow is missing my husband. The second hardest part is parenting my children alone for much of the week. Some days, a long day at my job and the 200th evening viewing of "Despicable Me" and breaking up inane fights over one wooden block that someone wants and someone else threw at my head are more than I can handle.

Yet, we are having another baby. I think some people, privately and not-so-privately, cannot imagine why we would have a fourth child when having three stretches us mentally, physically and financially. It is not easy; that much is absolutely true. And having multiple kids is not for everyone. And sometimes I complain about it.

Pregnancy #1, Summer 2007

But the truth is that we are happy and excited to bring another life into the world. We love being parents and are mostly good at it. I like being pregnant and mostly enjoy it. And most people are supportive and wonderful. I have been discouraged lately, however, by a barrage of comments on my pregnancy and our full household. I have never encountered, throughout any of our pregnancies, such a menu of ridiculous, mean and inconsiderate statements, and I think it is time to stand up for pregnant women and mommies (especially those of big families).

Things Never to Say to a Pregnant Woman (and these are all real comments made to me this year):
"You are so big!"
"Are you having twins?"
"You sure you're not due sooner?"
"You look miserable."

Things Never to Say to a Soon-to-be Mother of Four (again, all real):
"You are crazy/insane/a glutton for punishment!"
"Isn't two enough?"
"You'd think you would have learned your lesson."
And my personal favorite: "Don't you know how to stop?"

Pregnancy #2, Winter 2009

I guess people are trying to be friendly or funny, but let me set the record straight. Being pregnant is hard work, whether you are working outside the home or not, whether you have other children or not. And as pregnant women, we have the amazing privilege of growing life, while balancing changes to our emotional, mental and physical states. We know what we look like, but unlike observers, we also know what we feel like. And some days we feel beautiful, other days we feel wretched. In the end, we are doing an important job that is not easy. You would not tell an overweight person that they are looking pretty fat, so do not tell me I look big and miserable.

Pregnancy #3, Spring 2011

Being a mother of three small children on my way to four is also not easy. But it is our choice. We are fortunate that getting pregnant and delivering healthy children has been relatively easy for us. I know couples who have struggled with this and my heart breaks when I think about those who cannot have or have lost the children they want. We have always felt that it is a gift that we can have kids and, to be perfectly cliche, we are not looking a gift horse in the mouth. A big family has been our dream all along, just as some people dream of one child or two or none at all. In the end, it is nobody's business.

Pregnancy #4, Spring 2013

So in answer to that last comment, I guess we don't know how to stop. We see the three beautiful children in our home that sometimes drive us crazy but always bring us joy, and I feel the baby elbowing around inside me, and it is all a blessing. Even if you feel it is nonsense to have more than one child or more than two, or if you are a perfect stranger who feels close enough to me to touch my stomach, just back off. We all make choices, and we are happy with ours, so my new choice is to have you zip it and just tell me that I look great and you are happy for our growing family.

I mean really, do you actually want to piss off a huge, miserable pregnant woman who is insane and ignorant? I didn't think so.