FAITH or faith?

Lately, I find I am very adrift when it come to faith.  Not FAITH (God, the Trinity, do unto others...), but faith: which faith, which church, which way to tell our kids is it.  Bill and I both grew up Catholic but stopped practicing as Catholics in our adulthood.  We have had cause to go to Catholic mass twice in the past few months and while he and I found the sameness of it comforting, our children looked like they were being skewered with hot pokers the entire time.  I guess you can't raise kids in a church with contemporary music and programs designed specifically for them and then expect them to sit, stand, kneel for an hour and feel like God is there for them too.  My stepdaughter likened it to secret club where everyone knew how to reply or when to kneel or what to say except her. 

We have gone to a huge, non-denominational church for years and enjoyed parts of it very much, but never really found our place in there.  We tried joining things, volunteering in different areas and then committing to small groups where you get to know a few families and get together with them.  This is an attempt to make a church of thousands homey.  However, every time we joined a group, after a few months the leaders would move.  Really, we were the Kevorkian of small groups.  It gets to where you feel like you just can't invest in the awkwardness of forcing a friendship or sense of familiarity with people anymore when you are just waiting for them to move on you. 

We have been shopping around for a new church for the last year.  We will try a church or two and either the kids will like it and we won't or we will like it and the kids won't.  There are many more weeks that we don't even try.  It is a very first world problem to have so many churches at our disposal to choose from, I know.  We live in a university town in the Bible belt.  People are atheists, agnostics, evangelists and zealots.  I know people who do not go to church but spend more time on the weekend serving and building their community than I have ever thought to do.  I know people who carry God in their heart everywhere they go and in everything they do and wonder how they do it so easily.  But what are we?  We are not any of those things.  I think we are just parents trying to raise good kids and keep God in the picture while we do it.  But I wonder if we are failing them because they are not growing up in a church reaching milestones and then the next milestone and then becoming an adult in their church? 

My grandmother was one of the most religious people I have ever met.  The woman raised 12 children in a house with one bathroom. She went to Mass every day.  My mother tells of having to go to church on Christmas morning before they could open presents.  I remember being a foul mouthed teen and grumbling that I had to go to church on a weeknight because it was a holy day of obligation.  Being a know-it-all 15 year old, I pointed out that if we were really celebrating the conception of Jesus, shouldn't we go in March and not early December?  She was furious.  Having never seen her more than annoyed before, I took note and even listened to what she had to say.  She said sometimes you just have to have FAITH.  You have to stop being so smart and to just believe.  She may have also been hinting at being more obedient and perhaps docile, but I had stopped listening by then. 

We had an incredibly intelligent and long conversation around the dinner table last night with all of our kids about God, about religion, about why we have not found a church.  I was amazed with the insight they provided about what they see, what they think we could do, what things we all could do and I thought that perhaps our indecision and hesitancy about faith isn't affecting them as negatively as I had thought.  It may have been good to tell them we don't have all the answers or they may just use against us in the future.  I did walk away from the table thinking that maybe we aren't failing as badly as I thought.  And I guess for the time being, we should just focus more on FAITH and less on which building to put that faith in.

Paper, Plastic or Do the Right Thing?

Back in March of this year, the City of Austin passed a ban on retailers offering single use plastic bags when consumers purchased items in their stores.  This ban came after a long period of back and forth between legislators fighting the ban and grass roots movements pushing for the ban.  It was highlighted in the news, it was broadcast on the back of shopping carts and billboards and it got a lot of hype.  As someone who has been using her own bags for years, I did not and still do not see what all the hype is about.  You stick some reusable bags in your car, bring them into the store, empty them at home and put them back in your car.  Easy peasy!  

Ugh.

It is estimated that the City of Austin alone used over 260 million plastic bags per year! Austin is known to be pretty granola and green-minded, so I thought all my fellow Austinites would join me in happily giving up the plastic bags.  I think I had a Mary Poppins moment thinking about us all carrying in our reusable bags to HEB while Disney woodland creatures frolicked at our feet and sang with merriment.  Boy was I wrong!!

City of Austin – you are a bunch of whiners!  I am so tired of listening to people lament the passing of plastic bags.  Retailers have worked around the ban by offering paper bags or thicker plastic bags in the hopes that they will be reused, but I think this is a cop out.  Bring your own or carry your items in your hands I say!  Yes, I know, you reused your bags to line your garbage cans or pick up dog poop.  Use a bread bag instead and just wash out your garbage can every now and then.  In fact, make it a punishment for your kids and you never have to do it yourself.  I know, it takes a while to get in the habit of remembering your bags.  I get that.  But really, did you have to grow and harvest the food you just purchased?  No, a struggling farmer or huge farm conglomerate did that.  Did you have to sew the shirt you picked up at Target?  No, some five year old in Bangladesh did that for you.  Stop whining, enjoy your privileged life and start hauling some bags with you!

I overheard a woman in CVS ranting about how her husband is “just livid about this bag thing.”  Really?  He is “enraged and furiously angry” about plastic bags?  Seems like a very passionate response to trying to green up a city if you ask me.  I don’t know, perhaps people enjoy asphyxiating marine life with their plastic bags more than I thought.  

A sea turtle's last thought: "Oh yum! Is that a jellyfish I see before me?"

And don’t get used to getting paper bags everywhere either.  Once they start deforesting America to keep up with the consumption, there will be a ban on those as well. 

I know, it is funny how passionate I am about this ban. I get involved with little, I confront even less, I make an effort to keep peace at all times and I am genuinely lazy.  So I tell you, if I can bring my own bags to the store, you can too!  Stand with me Austin!  Join us America!  You can do this!  And the next time you are asked if you want to buy some plastic bags or use the paper ones, you can look that person in the eye and proudly say “Neither.  I brought my own.” I get a shiver down my spine just thinking about it!

The Boiling Point

I will preface this rant by saying that it has actually been a very good summer.  The weather has not been insanely hot and we even had three straight days of rain!  We have gone on some small adventures that both the kids and I enjoyed.  We have relaxed; we have spent mornings hanging out in pajamas and just savored the not having to be anywhere right away.  Bill has not had to travel much at all this summer (other than his crazy commute each day) and is home almost every night.  It really has been good.

However, even with all the good, I am slowly reaching my summer vacation boiling point.  I can feel it bubbling under the surface about to break through in an ugly crescendo of swear words, tears and/or a primal scream.  I find myself weary of making sure the ADHD boy gets enough exercise to keep him calm when all he wants to do is play video games and/or watch cartoons.  He has been relegated to Tom and Jerry and Animaniacs for the rest of the summer because they don’t leave him quoting the episode word for word or over-stimulated. I am weary of the sloth-like teen who emerges from her teen cave at noon at the earliest and uses me as a taxi service to her various social engagements.  She can’t understand why I am not ready to pick her up as soon as she texts me and I can’t understand why she wouldn’t think to walk the half mile home instead. 

I am annoyed with giving them all one small chore for the week and still having to remind them to do it every day.  And the glasses!!!  ARGH the dirty glasses.  Our dishwasher is running twice a day because none of them can use the same glass twice.  Rinse it out, use it again, I say.  They look at me as though I have two heads.  Or when I reach into the fridge and someone has put the ice tea pitcher back in there with just enough tea to coat the bottom of it.  Mmm, refreshing.  Thank you for saving me that half-swallow of tea.

And while kid hygiene is never stellar – does it get worse than ever during the summer or what?  I didn’t realize that tooth brushing was only necessary when school is in session.  Or deodorant.  Why is telling them that they stink and to put deodorant on funny?  It’s not funny and the funk they expose me to is not funny either.  They started doing their own laundry this summer; as a result my son has been wearing the same pair of shorts for the past four days. 

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  They are beating me down, but I am going to stop and take some deep breaths and not let them beat me. I will take comfort in my fellow moms who lock eyes with me at the grocery store as if to say “Solidarity, sister” as we ignore the whines of kids begging for various bags of high fructose junk.  I will revel in the Facebook posts of other moms who lie in bed and pretend that they can’t hear fighting from the other rooms in the morning.  I will immediately empathize with other moms when they start a sentence with “I just can’t stand….”  Doesn’t matter what it is, I am right there with you.  And when all else fails, I will remember the mom I passed in church who was close talking to her son while pointing a finger in his face and telling him he’d better shape up or he was going to lose baseball.  I wonder what that kid did bad enough to push his mom into yelling at him in church and warrant losing a whole sport. 

We are 2/3rds of the way through; I am not going to trip at the finish line.  We are going to end this summer vacation strong.  We still have homemade poptarts to make and bike rides to take that last more than 5 minutes.  There are pools to swim in, friends to have over and feeble stabs at craft projects to make. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.  I can do this and enjoy most of it while I do it.  I can do this and enjoy them because they are just getting so big. I can do this and not inadvertently teach my children more swear words. I can do this!

My Favorite and My Best

Today, Bill and I celebrate our twelfth wedding anniversary! Because neither of us were strangers to marriage when we got married, we promised each other that we knew that it was a life-long commitment this time and agreed that mostly happily ever after was what we could expect in our future.

We were married on July 18, 2001 in Florida at a Justice of the Peace and it was the most beautiful wedding I have ever seen.  The lady who married us was so excited to be marrying someone and was as teary as we were by the end.  Really, all I saw was Bill: just locked eyes with him while my heart was screaming WOOHOOO!!!!!!  It was a very good day.

tee hee!  look how young we are!

Within 18 months of meeting each other, we were married, had a baby, moved into a house and Bill started a new job.  Talk about stress!  Additionally, I gained a three year old stepdaughter and she and I took to each other well until we all lived in the same house.  We like to tease her about how she commented that I should “take my stuff and bring it back to my own house” and they like to tease me about how I thought it was perfectly okay to beat a three year old in a foot race. Who knew?  Within three years, we had another baby and another move, this time to a new city AND another job.  It is no wonder those first five years flew by.  We are both hard pressed to remember more than just pieces of it.

Like any couple who have been together for more than a decade, we have seen our ups and downs.  There are times when we love each other much more than we like each other.  Times when I think if he gives me that polite Canadian face with the tight smile and dead eyes one more time when I know he is really so mad he should yell, I will scream.  Times when I am not nearly as funny as I think I am.  And don’t even get me started on 2010 – definitely NOT the year of the McMahons. 

Marriage is work.  It is trying even when you don’t want to, it is being gracious when you would rather be mean and it is remembering all the reasons you fell in love with this person while the daily grind beats you both down.  It is having a partner to shoulder responsibilities, to share in the joy of your children and to make you feel loved even when you are feeling most unlovable.  It is about finding what works for you.  We went to a seminar once about “Love and Respect”; how men need to feel respected and women loved for a marriage to endure.  After ten minutes in, I looked at Bill and said “I respect you”.  He replied “I love you.”  We left and had margaritas instead.  Worked for us!

When I think about our lives together today, I just keep thinking “Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered and it keeps no record of wrongs.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)  Thank you, Bill McMahon, for being patient, for being kind, for being supportive and loving and committed to not only me, but to our family.  Thank you for telling me I am beautiful when I am not, or for supporting me in things that bore you to tears but make me happy.  Thank you for being a great dad.  For loving our children and teaching them table manners, math and leading by example.  You are showing our son how to treat women and our girls how they should expect to be treated by someone who loves them. 

“It always protects, it always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres” (1Corinthians 13:7) Thank you for always making me feel safe.  Not just because you are muscley, but because you never give me a reason to doubt our love and our life together.  Thank you for being the sunny optimist to my cautious realism.  Thank you for trying.  And trying.  And trying some more.

“Love never fails.” (1 Cor 13:8).  Well, of course it can, but we choose every day not to let it.  Thank you Bill McMahon for enduring all the bad, for celebrating all the good and for sticking with me for whatever the future will hold.  I love you and will love you and thank God for you every single day.

.....And I Will Go to Texas

I moved to Texas when I was 19 with a solemn agreement with my friend that we would give Texas and each other six months before we decided if it was going to work or not.  That was twenty years ago and I am still here.  I have periodically wanted to move back home (Buffalo, NY) AND we have considered other places with job opportunities, but Texas is home.  However, despite having lived in Texas half of my life and almost all of my adult life, things keep popping up to remind me I am not a native.

 

1.  Bluebonnets:  I do not have any pictures of my children frolicking among the bluebonnets.  Three kids, nary a one. I do think there is a picture of my stepdaughter as a baby with some plastic bluebonnets, but she not sitting in a field of them.  For those of you who don’t live here, the bluebonnet is our state flower. Our children learn the Legend of the Bluebonnet in school, we are forbidden to mow them, transplant them or kill them outright.  However, it is perfectly reasonable to trample down fields of them in order to get a picture of your kids among them.  I don’t get it.

 

Pretty, right?

2.  Sonic.  Sonic stresses me out.  Why do you they have those slanted spots to pull into and a drive thru?  Is one faster than the other?  Is eating in your car while parked more fun than cramming fries in your mouth and driving with one hand?  Do you tip the people who bring your food out?  What if you use the drive thru – do you still tip? Why?  Plus, and they may run me out of the state for saying this, the food kind of stinks.  To be fair, we don’t eat a lot of fast food, but when the kids say the ice cream tastes weird, that is saying a lot.  They are not really discerning when it comes to ice cream.

3.  BBQ.  Up north, anything you place on a grill to cook is BBQ.  This can be hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, veggies – when it touches the grill, it all becomes BBQ.  In Texas, BBQ is beef.  Brisket slow-cooked in foil for hours requiring grown men to stand around it grunting and periodically poking it through the foil while debating the ingredients in their rub or sauce.

4.  Football.  Don’t get me wrong, I like football but no one in my family bleeds orange or crimson or, God help me, silver and blue.  My son picked the Philadelphia Eagles as his favorite team and Bill and I don’t care much one way or the other.  And we will root for anyone playing against the Dallas Cowboys.  (Whew! I am getting my Texas card revoked for that I am sure!)  This started during the Superbowls against the Bills back in the 90’s when my friend and I pretty much ran for our lives outside a Target for mistakenly wearing Bills gear out in public and enraging Cowboys fans.  If there was ever a chance of my being publicly stoned, that was definitely it!

5.  Mexican food.  Actually, not only do I get this, I THANK YOU Texas for Mexican food.  Tex-Mex, whatever.  Up north, the best Mexican food can be found at ChiChis.  ChiChis.  If you have never had to eat at one, stop and thank the Lord right now.  It is Mexican food made by people who pronounce the “j” in jalapeno.  Bland, blah and tomatoe-y.  Thank you, thank you for fajitas and queso and enchiladas and margaritas and tasty-yummy-happiness on almost every corner.  (Notice I left off tamales.  My first encounter with tamales, no one told me you take off the corn husk first.  That was a lot of chewing trying to get that first bite down, let me tell you.)

My throat hurts just looking at this.

Finally I have to say that you will never, ever hear me ask “Is it hot enough for you?”  Is it over 80?  Then yes, yes it is and I will assume the same for you.  I shudder a little when my kids say treadmeeeel instead of treadmill, but they tease me for the hard “A” sound that won’t leave my words. I did stop saying “you guys” after a few years here but I still cannot say “y’all” without giggling a little inside.    I will never blend in totally, but I stick out less than I used to.  Twenty years will do that.  Twenty years.  Ugh, that makes me feel old!!!

Tradition

I think that everyone should have a 96 year old neighbor living across the street from them.  It really gives you perspective on things.  When they first moved in, I took cookies over to our neighbor and his much younger bride.  (Bride.  They were newlyweds!)  He thought this was a wonderful gesture and proceeded to remind me each time someone new moved in that I should do the same for them.  So I would – sometimes happily, sometimes grudgingly, but he was right, it was a nice thing to do.  He also hated to see women mowing the lawn.  Any time he saw me out there cutting the grass, Bill or I would hear about it later.  He would provide us with a comment, a harrumphing tone, or a haughty eyebrow indicating his disapproval.  And again, in a way, he was right.  Not in that women shouldn’t cut grass, but women who hate to cut grass and don’t have to really should not.  Bill likes to cut the grass and I was not really helping him at all by periodically butchering the lawn.

Our neighbor took an active interest in our kids, in the families around him and in doing so made all of us get involved with each other as well.  It is easy to just pull into your garage at night and forget that there are families living along side you raising their kids as you raise yours.  He and his wife have an uncanny way of getting us to be invested in those around us.  For a long time, they were front and center at all the neighborhood activities, showing the rest of us that it is wise to make the time to invest in others.  They showed us that it is important to carve out a sense of community and to truly get to know the people along your fence line.

Our neighbor is a quiet member of that Greatest Generation.  He served in World War II, but he deemed his service not as important as others.  He would not talk much about the war or his part in it.  He would dismiss it like it was no big deal but he was out there at sunrise every holiday that required a flag, unfurling his American flag, hoisting it up and smartly saluting it before going back inside.  The first time I saw him do this, I was instantly choked up.  There was something so beautiful in this old man who stood a little more stooped over each year, but became ramrod straight when it came to saluting his flag.  

Sadly, we have watched our neighbor’s health decline over the last few years.  All of us holding our breath as he walked to the mailbox, not sure if he would get there or not, but there was no way to offer this proud man a hand.  Or as his hearing declined, conversations became more of loud HELLLOOOOOS and thumbs ups rather than discussions on things.  It was hard for this proud man to decline, hard on his wife to shoulder it and sad for the rest of us to see a cornerstone of our community crumbling.  When he was taken to the hospital last month and things looked very dire indeed, we sat down and told the kids.  They both burst into tears and our 11 year old said “But he has always been there.”  He has a sense of permanence in both their memories and his presence has been a source of continuity and comfort for all of us.  However, I think that what this man has instilled in all of us the most is a sense of tradition.  

Ditcionary.com defines tradition as the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice.  Our neighbor has helped us to realize that tradition can be so much more than that.  It can be starting something and following through with it every time whether you feel like it or not – like in the case of cookies for new neighbors.  Or that tradition can ensue when you take the time to get to know the people around you and start sharing your life and your children's lives with each other.  Or that simply, tradition can be that you continue to do what someone has done before you.  In our case, with our neighbor winding down his days in hospice, we chose to honor him and his sense of tradition by continuing to raise his flag for him.  It was a beautiful and bittersweet moment on the 4^th of July as my Canadian husband and 9 year old son unfurled our neighbor’s American flag, hung it with care and then stepped back to salute it, just as our neighbor would have done.  

It didn’t take much time or effort but it helped cement for us that with just a little forethought and some consideration, tradition can be a constant in our lives as well.  Thank you, Bentley.

A New Normal

I have news.  Exciting news!!!!  Ready?  I have been offered a…..full….time….JOB!!!!!  Can I get a WOOHOO?!?!?!  I will be working in a high school library come August and I am thrilled!  HOORAY!  The funny thing is that I was actually offered two different jobs the same week – the when it rains it pours deal I guess.  I hemmed and hawed, I made a chart, and I compared and contrasted and went with the one I felt would be best.  Whew, all that interviewing over and a new chapter about to begin – have I ever mentioned how bad I am with change?

Once the thrill of being offered a job settled down, anxiety started to creep in. Anxiety to me is like a rat running around and around on a wheel in your head that keeps you from totally paying attention to what is going on around you or listening clearly or even thinking clearly.  I tell you, there was a pet store full of rats running around up there.   

I have not worked full time in a long time.  Like before kids long time.  I have been fortunate (i.e. saddled with debt) in that I have been able to be at home with my kids this long.  With my kids in different schools next year, I need to figure out what to do with my son after school.  Why does elementary school get out first?  Why can’t middle or high school get out first so that the girls could watch their brother and make my life easier?  I am a wreck trying to decide if I should find someone to watch him at the house or enroll him in something at school or something offsite that will pick him up.  I know my daughter will forget something vital each day and I keep picturing her waiting for the bus in the rain.  Am I crazy?  This is Austin, it rarely rains and certainly not every day.

Other craziness that has been spinning around is when can I kettlebell? Or volunteer at school?  Or bake?  Or take a nap during the week?  These little rats of insanity going around and around in my brain have led me to make many proclamations based on hormones and my fear of change.  Kids will now do their own laundry.  Kids will learn to cook.  Kids will actively engage in helping to make pizza or I will not make pizza any more.  Luckily for the kids, Bill reined me in before I could make more proclamations and completely ruin summer.  “We have time” he said, “We will figure this stuff out”.  He is so wise and calm to my crazy.

I did stick with the proclamation that kids will do their own laundry.  I watched my son fold his the other night and while it took him 45 minutes, he did it.  It made me think of all the other things he could do if I stopped doing them for him.  Maybe he will have better luck with friends if I am not there trying to smooth over his social awkwardness.  It made me realize that my daughter will definitely forget things she needs for school, but if I am not there to run them up to her each time, I bet she will forget them less often.  And I can always buy her an umbrella for the 4 days a year it does rain.  Maybe if they are hungry enough or bored enough, they will be the ones starting dinner and they will learn to cook.  And maybe if I back off a little, they will help make pizza on Fridays and Friday Pizza Night will be a real tradition, not just mom making pizza. 

I have been aware lately how big my kids are getting.  It is hard not to notice when two out of three are taller than you and that they no longer smell like puppies when they come in from outside; they just smell.  It is time for me to work more and it is time for them to do more and this change is a good thing. The new normal that will develop is a good thing, it will just be new.  Whew.  I have banished the rats from my head and am looking forward to this change– just in time to enjoy the rest of summer!  And my NEW JOB! WOOHOO!!!!