On weddings

Since my last post in December, I've visited the local ER twice to rehydrate from two different episodes of the stomach flu, celebrated both Valentine's Day and Easter with paper hearts and egg dying respectively, traveled to New Mexico for work, and trained for and run my first 5K. And of course, I watched The Royal Wedding.

Before the much anticipated wedding I watched interviews of forgotten semi-royals who once attended royal weddings. I enjoyed the media's replays of Lady Di stepping out of her horse drawn carriage in her gigantic dress. I noted to myself how much William looked like his mother, and thought how sad for him that she would not be there. I wondered aloud what style of dress Kate might choose, the type of flowers she might carry. Honestly, it was a beautiful diversion from my real life of work, and dishes, and diaper changes. And on the morning of the wedding I was thrilled to turn on the TV just in time to see Kate the Commoner whisked away to Westminster Abbey to marry her handsome prince. But since I think of myself as the kind of woman who would dress up for Halloween as Gloria Steinem dressed as a Playboy bunny (complete with "Hello My Name is Gloria Steinem" sticker badge) it's somewhat embarrassing to admit the amount of daydreaming I did about a royal wedding.

I don't know if it was the wedding itself that captured my imagination, or the fact that two exceptionally good-looking people were joining forces and seemed to be (really? truly?) in love. Like driving past a car accident, I had to turn my head to look. And then I had to replay favorite parts until full saturation had been reached. Kate entering the queen's 1950's Rolls Royce. The couple stepping out on the balcony at Buckingham Palace. Kate mouthing "oh wow" as she saw the enormous crowd of people. The kiss. The smile. The look. Only after viewing the wedding (again and again) in snippets and replays over the course of several days, did I come to tire of it and finally refocus my eyes on dust bunnies under the sofa and school papers to toss into the recycling bin. There's something about a wedding...

Now, I understand about money, and acknowledge the burden placed on the British people. I can agree that the amount of money spent to place trees inside the abbey to create the "garden wedding" feel the bride desired was, well, obscene. (Yes, that could have fed a lot of hungry people, or been directed to research for curing the common cold or cancer.) But. But, I still say there's something about a wedding.

My own wedding, well my first that is, was quite lovely. There was an island, and a ceremony held in the garden of a yellow Victorian that had beautiful red geraniums in the window boxes. There were horse-drawn carriage rides for the bride and groom and all the guests, and a big white dress with a bow on the backside. There were registries and showers and gifts. There were photos of the happy couple in front of The Lake and The Bridge, and for the cameras anyway, everything appeared to point in the direction of love. Who doesn't love a wedding? Nb: That first wedding happily only gave birth to a brief period of marital misery which ultimately ended in divorce.

My second wedding was clearly less wedding and more marriage. Even so, there was another white dress, more elegant than the first, and beautiful orange roses in my hand. There was an autumn breeze and a crisp blue sky. There was a whisper in my ear at Post Office Square asking if I would in fact marry him that day and always, and a justice of the peace who spoke about the importance of marriage. There was a champagne toast at a hotel with friends, and a camera passed to strangers to snap our photo as we wandered the city we loved best. It was a beautiful wedding. It was two people saying yes to building toward some new future, without fanfare, parade, attendants, or flower girls.

The thing is, I don't begrudge Wills and Kate their fanfare. A wedding is a celebration; it's one last hurrah before bunkering down in the trenches for the long haul. Marriage can so easily dissolve into unloading the dishwasher, taking out the trash, and paying the bills-- so it makes sense that couples, royal or not, go a little crazy planning their entrance. If there's anything I begrudge the royals, it's their housekeeping staff.

This year, my husband and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. In light of this, I have suggested grand plans for a catered party with friends at a downtown location. My husband has been lobbying for a weekend getaway--just the two of us--with a sitter hired to watch our three little ones. I don't know which way it will all turn out, but I can tell you one thing, I'm aiming to look as good as Pippa.

15 Minutes

Since transitioning my third-born to the same childcare as my second-born, I've switched from having three pick-ups (one of which used to take me across state lines) to just two. And as such, my life has begun to feel a little less frantic, slightly less crazed. But arriving at the decision that those 15 minutes (30 plus counting a.m. drop-off) were 15 minutes worth having has been anything but easy.

Granted, I've been running and operating far beyond (as my therapist-sister likes to remind me) "my threshold." But what the big sister hasn't realized is that my focus over the past year has been solely on the threshold. Getting past it. On time. I've been running into the preschool with my second's coat in hand shouting like some demonic basketball coach, "Let's Go! Let's Go! Let's Go!" I've been miming at the window of the Y Aftercare Program for my first to grab his coat and backpack and to "Hurry Up!" I've been hurdling playkitchen sets, ignoring the smiles of other small, sweet faces that have accompanied those of my child, and checking in with caregivers and teachers in fitful spurts--stopping only to gather required information about lunches half-eaten or forgotten, homework yet to be completed, numbers of diapers changed. I made the decision to switch the care of my child to the place where my second-born was at because I was tired of the sticky anxious runningrunningrunning feeling I would get as soon as 4:30 appeared in the corner of my company provided laptop. (On your mark, get set, go!)

When I was the mother of one I could stop for half an hour to chat about my son's day, to check in with the teachers about their day, or to discuss what they were planning to do with the children in the weeks to come. When I was the mother of two children, I could still stop to check-in, attend school functions with a stroller in tow (Look at Mommy multi-task!), and make it to work on time. But as the mother of three children the challenge really is to "keep all the balls in the air." Seriously, the juggling metaphor works here. Go look in your junk drawer and find three like-weighted objects to toss in the air. Have you dropped one of them yet?

So what's the big deal? Why would you agonize over a decision that would make your life easier? Well, honestly, Lisa was the big deal. Lisa, and Ann, and Loni--the three women who cared for my baby girl. I remember the first time my husband and I visited "the program," rather the first time we met Lisa and Ann. We looked around skeptically. "So, I notice you don't have any baby equipment or bouncy seats. How will you get her to sleep?" Lisa and Ann looked first at each other and then back at two apparently dim-witted parents and smiling (chuckling?) answered, "Well, we'll hold her in our arms." The sparse decor and worn rocking chair faded to black and I was convinced in that single moment that my baby would get everything she needed and then some.

Now my L___ was their only baby at the time she started, so by virtue of the situation it was a child-to-caregiver ratio to drool over. But I soon realized that with their mixed-age family childcare, my daughter was loved not just by three ladies, but by the kids who came to Lisa's after school. She was petted and read to and adored by a whole host of children. She was loved by the sweet boy with the blond hair who made her a Valentine. She was paid attention to by the bus driver. (Even the bus driver knew my daughter's name because the school-age girls talked about her so much she had become a familiar character to the driver.) In the summertime when I picked my babe up, she might be stealing sips from a glass of lemonade with Lisa's husband, or be sitting in the lap of their teenage daughter. Or I would walk through the door to find Loni vacuuming the floor with one hand and holding L____ in her other. Loni would joke with me that my daughter was in fact a Princess, and that she had been teaching her a princess wave. (Show Mama Your Wave! Blow a Kiss!) I often had the sense that on Loni's watch my daughter's feet rarely touched the ground. And that was fine by me. Who doesn't wish for their child to be so loved? Who doesn't pray for the world to cradle their babe, to treasure them, to hold them up to both see and be seen?

L___ was no easy baby. She had reflux and Rinitadine from a dropper three times a day. She had plagiocephaly and torticollis likely caused by her "precipitous delivery," and which required physical therapy and repositioning to avoid the helmets used to cure her "flat-head syndrome." She teethed like a fiend, and demanded her way. But Lisa and Ann never blinked. There was not one sigh about spit-up or afternoon play therapy and for this I will be forever grateful. So how could I let go of all of this? Because I had to. Because I had come to dread the fifteen minutes there and the fifteen minutes back. Because I was tired of placating children #'s 1 and 2 with donut holes, irritated with having to cajole them into the car (Quickly! Quickly!) It had to be done. Right?

The goodbye although official, is unofficial between me, Lisa, and L___. In the final minutes of the day Lisa chimed in with a cheerful, "Bye Goose!" like it was any other day, a cheerfulness that I appreciated. We had decided we would not say goodbye, that Lisa would remain our back-up snowday plan for all three, that we would visit every now and then. This was a very good plan, until it was actually time to say goodbye. L___'s diaper bag uncharacteristically heavy on my shoulder, children shyly coming up to get her attention, L___ leaning forward out of my arms to give kisses all around, my baby girl smiling and laughing as she tried to get someone to chase her to the door.

My sister, the therapist, has told me that sometimes the most critical moments occur at the door to the therapy space, that people will open up about something just as their hand is on the doorknob, their toes crossing the threshold. And true to practice as we stood at the door, Lisa motioned again to my daughter about a spider and rain, a waterspout and the return of the sun L___ spreading her chubby baby fingers up up up toward Lisa's.

Make sure you tell 'em the itsy-bitsy spider is her favorite.

My heart in my throat, my voice washed away by the rain. "Let's go, Miss L___. It's time to go."

Critical Path

In Project Management there is a process whereby you create a visual map of all the deliverables you need to produce in your project. The deliverable is built via a list of associated tasks. Those tasks requiring the most time to build/create/manage the named deliverable are therefore considered most critical to the successful outcome of your project, and are aptly referred to as being on the "critical path." In Project Management lingo, this map is called the "WBS," or Work Breakdown Structure, although I'm sure we could come up with a fun new interpretation for the Work BS. At any rate, using Post-it notes and wall space it's pretty easy to map out a project, break things down, and make it all seem more manageable. But why am I talking about work in this sacredly not-at-work blog space? Let me connect the dots:

The past several mornings as I've been getting ready for work (packing lunches, laying out clothes, making sure teeth [3 sets+my own] get brushed and shoelaces are tied) I've realized that my PMI course instructor might be right when he says, "Everything is a project, and the desired outcome of every project is to change human behavior." In fact, he may even have something useful for mothers in that GBC bound coursepack. I wondered if it might be fun to create a little WBS for my daily a.m. project, which for the purpose of this exercise I've named, "Project 1.0: Getting Out The Door On Time." The start of my project? 5:45 a.m. The end time? 8:00 a.m. with my left hand on the doorknob and my right hand toting my bag/purse/lunch and changeorder inducing Pillow Pet/handful of Matchbox cars. You get the picture. Or do you? Let's take a look:

Core Project Team:

Project Manager - Mom

Contractor - Dad

Sub-Contractor for Tasks Affiliated with Children No's 2 and 3 - Child No. 1

______________________________________

Step 1: Buy some Post-it notes in your favorite color(s).

Step 2: Name your project, and list all deliverables. Deliverable are things. (Think nouns.) My named deliverables are Child No. 1, Child No. 2, and Child No. 3, and Workplace-Ready-Mommy complete with polite, smiling demeanor, okay, with a touch of cynicism for good measure.

Step 3: List all tasks associated with each deliverable. This is all the BS you have to go through to get the W done. (Think verbs.)

Step 4: Order tasks sequentially beneath each deliverable.

Step 5: Freak out about the fact that there are more tasks you could list within each deliverable, but you don't know what they are yet (assumptions/risk) and move on to fret over lack of resources and scheduling.

Step 6: Consider the amount of time each task will take. Write it on each task. (Child No. 1 will take 5 minutes to get ready for school, but Child No. 2 will take a full two hours and 15 minutes.)

Step 7: Order the tasks sequentially. (To the left is the start of your project. To the right is the end of the project.)

Step 8: Share your WBS with someone else so they can point out all of the pieces you've forgotten, and validate whether you're on track with naming the critical path. ("Man! What is up with that? Why is there so much more to do with Child No. 2?) Reassign ownership of tasks if needed.

Step 9: Freak out about the time you spent on the WBS that could have been spent completing the tasks.

In Project 1.0: Getting Out The Door On Time, there are known risks. Child No. 1 may not feel like reading Child No. 3 a board book while the Project Manager is in the shower. If the PM assumes that Child No. 1 will be helpful every morning, it may cause breakdowns in later phases of the project. Child No. 2, despite numerous attempts to wake him, may not get out of bed (even for waffles with strawberries on top) until, well...until he feels like it. Child No. 3 may have a stinky diaper after pink attire has been snapped, buttoned and zipped. (Time estimate, 5 minutes for diaper change, nb. estimate contigent upon willingness of child to cooperate.) The Contractor may sleep through his alarm, and the PM may be exhausted from a busy week at her other full-time job. It gets complicated real fast.

So what's the point of the process? To have a picture of the work you need to do. To determine what is most critical to the successful completion of the project. To direct your attention to the big picture so that you don't get mired down in the details. To lend perspective. The Getting Out The Door On Time project may contain 90-95% of the very same tasks each day, but when you're dealing with an 8 and 5 year old, and a 16 month old, all bets are off. I guess in the end all that really matters is that once you're at the door, you're not too frazzled to forget to blow a kiss or call out with joy, I love you!

Step 10: Ruminate on the fact that "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." (John Lennon)

one hour photo

8 year-old sits
buckled into back
seat
alert/intent
on world past car window, reads
sign fastened to faux brick
on bigbox pharmacy:

[1 Hr - Photo]

don't you think that's a little too long?
(he quips)

I suppose--

too long for the child watching
mother upload photos
instantly

too long for the child begging tiny video clips play (again!) to hear
younger brother laugh (again!) at the sound of
his own laugh/to watch baby sister take steps, snatch at a leaf, grab a toy (again! again!)

what's lost for the lack of paper?
what's gained in time?

I snap photos/upload images/attempt to capture

the moment.

de·fer /diˈfər/ Verb

Let's face it. My last blog post missed the mark. I wrote about yogurt, and at that, rather badly. I don't make time for multiple drafts, and so sometimes I push on with a topic even when I know it's not working, simply because I am desperate to get something posted. My apologies, readers. Honestly, the last post reminded me of the kind of writing I might have produced on a test when I was in public school--forced, lacking in vision, and generally speaking, irrelevant. Moving on...

A good friend of mine recently began her own blog, and I have to admit, I look forward to each new post. Her writing is at once poetic and bold, with a dash of humor to keep things interesting. She is able to pull off what I think of as peeling-back-the-onion-honesty, without anyone getting hurt in the process. Best of all she has a good sense of when to begin and end a post. Her blog "Work Play Eat Dream" was recently highlighted as a blog to check out on Boston.com. (That's impressive stuff in the world of blogging. ) I hope you'll check out Sarah's blog at: http://workplayeatdream.blogspot.com/

Yogurt Culture

Stonyfield Farm makes some darn good yogurt. My sons like the drinkable "Super Smoothies" (Wild Berry) that come in a cardboard sleeve printed with green grass and happy cows. It's good stuff...unlike say, GoGurts ("I want the Shrek ones!") that kids can squeeze up and out of a plastic tube like some flimsy toothpaste tube sans cap. ("No, we're not buying that! I'm not even sure it's yogurt!") Oddly enough, when I shrieked about the bad Shrek yogurt, I wasn't even sure what made bad yogurt bad, and good yogurt good. I was just going off comments I'd heard my sister make.

People like to make their own yogurt, and that seems to make it "good." In fact, yogurt-makers save scrapings from their last batch of old yogurt to inspire the next batch. (Dubious, I know.) My sister, lover of the homemade yogurt, even has her very own yogurt maker. (Is it like a snow cone maker, only no Snoopy?) Thanks to the internet, I've discovered that yogurt is simply fermented milk heated to around 80 degrees Celsius (Fahrenheit, please!) to keep bad bacteria from entering the goo. And, this much loved breakfast/lunch/dinner food has been around for 1,000's of years. (Who knew?)

My uneasy relationship with yogurt began just over ten years ago. The first taste of yogurt I had was in the dorm cafeteria my freshman year of college, (Dannon, "Strawberry on the Bottom.") It was disgusting. I was sure the cup of grainy goo I'd dipped my institutionally washed spoon into had gone bad. And not bad in a good way. But, sportos, sorority girls, dreadlocked hacky-sackers, poets and dreamers all seemed to be eating it up. The cups of unnaturally colored butterscotch pudding lined up in cases by big women in hairnets seemed safer. The yogurt culture was not for me; I played it safe.

But safety and familiarity brought some strange flavors to Freshman year. I had the boyfriend from high school (at another university, 2 hours and twenty minutes away via Greyhound) and the high school friends with whom I ventured onto campus with, only to realize how difficult it was to stay connected, our relationships sitting like unpopped popcorn at the bottom of a very large kettle. But then, there were the rich mochas at Espresso Royale Cafe, and greasy burgers at the Union. Be Bim Bop super cheap just off the main drag, and ice cream instead of dinner at Stucci's. The falafel place and the Chinese restaurant with the dry yellow cookies decorated with an almond in the center. And beer. Of course there was beer.

But what was college if not a supreme exercise in uncovering the tastes that were most interesting/exciting/comforting? The man-boys, the beer, the courses in lit crit, all of them were just filters allowing light to either enter the room, or not. My senior year I worked in the inter-library loan office. The first half of the job entailed standing at the copier with crumbling books that professors from other universities needed copies from because the books couldn't travel from their home in Special Collections. It was boring/easy. The second half of the job required reshelving the books. I was given a small cart, and would steer my charges into the elevator and descend into the stacks. Their were rumors that people had sex in the stacks, were raped, even murdered. But it was too peaceful down there to worry about most of it. The floors had translucent panels to allow light from above to filter down, and the wrought iron rails spoke to a more decorative, a more dignified time in campus history. I would lose myself in those stacks, return one book to the shelf, then pull down three more to page through. Heavenly, I tell you.

But, my shift at the library would end, and I would return the little cart and reenter the world. College was really movement from one culture to the next in an endless, dizzying parade. But sitting here, in my house on this evening, with my three children tucked safely into bed, I wonder what all of those experiences add up to for my life now, as a mother. What becomes of all of those memories and past selves? Looking backward has its purpose, is comfortable and familiar. Looking forward is three times as hard. I guess, like loving yogurt, some things you just have to learn from your kids.

Art Studio

The kitchen in our home serves as a multi-purpose room. Although you can't pull a basketball hoop down from the ceiling, or fold the chairs out of the dining table, our kitchen does serve as a space for food preparation, homework, art-making, entertaining, laundry, band-aid application, etc. I put a stop to some of that x-treme functionality today by moving the art-making to a new home in our home, the dining room. Up until today the dining room has served primarily as a place to fold the laundry washed in the aforementioned kitchen, or to dump junk mail, bills, and school notices. While I think it's pretty common that dining rooms rarely get used because of modern day life/the break-down of the family and all of those other American culture reasons, that's not what I'm interested in writing about tonight.

Instead, let me tell you about my real motivations for making an art-making space/fledgling studio in the heart of my home.

William Morris, father of the Arts and Crafts movement in America (Google him if you like) is credited with saying, "Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." That statement has been running through my head for some time. I think it's what makes me constantly move and rearrange, and filter and sort my belongings. If it's not beautiful or useful, why I am I hanging onto it? (This I know; sentimentality can fill a lot of plastic storage bins in the attic.)

My oldest child attended a preschool housed in a beautiful old Victorian. The reason I enrolled him at the school was primarily because I liked the space. Inside the space, Art, Beauty and Order reigned. It was love at first sight. Glass jars lining the walls, each with a different color of hand-dyed yarn inside. Light tables with glass beads scattered across their tops. A fireplace upon which families were invited to place framed photos. Mobiles composed of branches and twigs some twisted with ribbons and bells and shells hanging from the ceiling. And there were even rules barring the Stupid toys, licensed merchandise, and plastic of all varieties from entering The Space. (I'll kvetch about the snack basket another post.)

The nursery/preschool/pre-k/kindergarten is much more a school than a daycare, and because they know this about themselves, they charge an arm and leg for "before and aftercare." They cater mostly to families with the ability to flex around a shorter school day, which leaves me, the full-time-work-outside-the-home-mother with my nose pressed against the true divided lights, gazing in with desperate longing. But, the standing outside, looking in situation is a sad math fact at this point. Tuition rates + three children = my second-born is unable to attend. It tugs at me in the worst sort of way as I would like nothing more than to give him that unique "Reggio Emilia" experience.

At the core of a true Reggio Emilia program is art studio. There are no predetermined projects in this space. In the spring when the local PS is gearing up for each and every student to cut a yellow tulip out of construction paper, "My School" students are completing ink sketches daubed with pale watercolors to post at the end-of-year art exhibition. (Disclaimer: As an advocate of the public schools, I feel compelled to say public schools are tasked with teaching All children. And we should celebrate the fact that they do in fact take on such a monumental challenge. The Reggio Emilia school only has to teach those who pay, those who choose Harvest Celebrations over Thanksgiving Feasts.)

But. Even so. I want that. I want that space for my middle artist-child. So, after a good three or four weeks of sulking and letting it sink in that neither my schedule nor my wallet can accommodate said desires, I decided to figure out a way to bring "My School" home. And here is my plan... The dining room will be our family studio. I/we will collect and arrange things of beauty to inspire us. I/we will dream up small art exploration projects for our family. As a family we will do what my husband and I initially came together to do, create things with purpose and integrity, live protected by love, always move in the direction of beauty. For now, I'm really just setting the scene. I've recycled most of the plastic, moved some art supplies to the middle of the dining room table, and am satisfied on this evening to have kept my chin up, gotten creative, and found a way to get what I want. Well, almost.