Author Archives: jeanne

For the Love of Cousins

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I bear witness. There is something about cousins.

Something great.

Something that takes an ordinary, plastic dump truck (now stuffed with a cousin in a cat mask)…

And turns it into a derby…

That empties its customers on the corner.

And then.

Sometimes…a cousin in the back of your truck…

Isn’t just a cousin…in the back of your truck…

But a confidante on the stairs.

A forever-friend.

Which may just be the best thing about cousins.

The freedom to be yourself.

And the security that comes from being loved.

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On Bowling

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Um.

Don’t let the fancy back leg there fool ya.

Because this is literally the ‘blind leading the blind.’

We know about as much about how to bowl as we do about how to yo-yo.

Like nothing.

Which for some reason is okay when you go bowling. Because nobody gives a rip.

But what baffles is that our kids who claim they are too weak to carry a bag of Costco sugar from the garage to the kitchen can suddenly heft a seven pound ball, can clutch it to their hip and walk ten hunched steps, and then can clunk it down the lane. Forty times.

And right-handed or left-handed?

Who.

Knows?

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So what’s fun about bowling?

Well. That depends on who you are and why you’ve come.

If you’re nine, it might be this.

The anticipation. The hope. The I-can’t-tear-my-eyes-away-from-the-lane-because-my-ball-limping-along-at-2.86-mph-just-might-crush-the-final-pin.

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And when it does… That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Which apparently doesn’t get old.

But if you’re like us, you’ve come to scour the racks for the lightest ball you can pinch your fingers into. You’ve come to announce you’ll get a strike and then, by the grace of the gutter guards, knock down six pins. You’ve come to clap for a kid who tips over two pins; communicate “you’re still awesome” with a thumbs up, hive-five the accidental strike, and massage your aching wrist.

And then, because it’s been an hour, you’re ready to leave. It’s been no amusement park, no heart-pounding novel, no parade with marching bands. But to hear the kids tell it in the parking lot, it just might have been. That fun.

At which time, you suppose–because of the company–maybe it was.

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Is it Hard?

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His left hand was still swiveling in a pool of water on the kitchen counter, when he touched my side with his right. “Is it hard,” he wanted to know. “Is it hard to be a mother?”

“Hard?” I heard myself sigh. “Is it hard?”

I did not know how to answer for a million women. Because what is hard? Collectively what…is hard? When I looked down at my boy’s brave face, the side of it tipped earnestly toward mine, I realized he had not asked a million women.

He’d asked me.

But…where do I begin? I mean, what’s not hard? Picking your nose with your pinky? Flushing a public toilet?

But I asked him instead, “is it hard to serve others?”

And he shrugged. He thought it probably was.

And so I asked again, “Is it hard to pick up underwear that isn’t yours that’s been under the piano for six days? Is it hard to restraighten the shoes in the laundry room you just straightened, only half of them yours, without anyone noticing? Is it hard to finish abandoned bead crafts, fold all the blankets from the fort, snap your fingers to keep the cat out of the kitchen? Is it hard to hope for a ‘thank you’ and not get one?”

Is it hard?

And he answered for both of us, “sometimes.”

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The Blank Page

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Some days the blank page intimidates. It’s been too long. And so I creep up to it like I would our cat after vacation, with gentle fingers that ask, “Do you remember me?”

But the page only waits.

And so I press them. The keys. And they become less new. They invite me like my own pillow. The one that is the right amount of flat, the one with its stains and tears, that is not pretty enough for company, the one that droops half on the mattress and half off. The one that knows me.

The blank page does not throw a lifeline. It merely is. A lifeline. Catching emotions that bump and shove against my heart and threaten to uncork in some ungodly manner and in some unseemly place, if not for words. And a place to put those words.

But sometimes the blank page is inaccessible. Restrained by time. By children. By crap and clutter. And so when we meet again, we shake hands like friends whose absence from each other limits the conversation to talk about the rain outside the window and how long it will last. Until by some miracle, by some bold admission, one friend says, “my boy’s sick,” or “I’m not sure what to do about ___,” and the dam cracks. And the emotions the dam has restrained trickle out in single file. At first. A burp of happiness here. A belch of confusion.

Until, there is no dam.

And all that’s left is a new blank page. A friend. A confidante. Welcoming inadequacy and failure, gentleness and faith. To rest. Here.

One word at a time.

When One of us Hurts

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Our daughter was seventeen months old the day she tripped tottering up my mother-in-law’s driveway. The day she chipped a triangle out of both front teeth. The day I sobbed as if they’d been my teeth.

The dress she wore holds no memory for anyone. Anyone except me. I remember its blue, cotton bottom and its white polka dots. And I remember the feel of her broken teeth in my fingers. Like slices of almond. Fragile. And soft.

I wept that day. Wept for my little girl’s smile. And I grieved her precious teeth.

I am grieving again.

This morning my boy, my boy who who begged with hopeful eyebrows for just a little more time to play, to hang upside down on the bars by his knees and to twist and untwist himself as he’d done a hundred times, he’s hurting. My boy whom I consented could play for five more minutes and who in the very last moment of the last minute as I called with my hand to come, landed with a bar to his front teeth, collapsing three of them.

He cries angry tears, full of ‘what-ifs’ and ‘I-should-haves.’ And I try to soothe my boy with words that do not soothe me. “At least they’re baby teeth.” “You’ll have a brand new smile.” “Mommy loves you.” You’re going to be okay.”

But neither of us feels okay.

At home I cradle my boy whose ice cubes and tears sog my sweater. His sister silently gathers blankets and pillows and builds him a bed on the couch. She kneels where his head rests and whispers words just for him. His daddy kneels too.

We are silent a moment, loving our boy. Loving his whole being. Loving the person inside.

And for now it is enough.

It is. Enough.

Redefining Exercise

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The plan was simple. Put on a padded gym top. Go to the gym. Look busy on a recumbent bike.

And I did. Look busy.

Busy trying to find where the pad for my right boob had gone. Not that I saw it go anywhere. I just sensed in mid-magazine article that the right side of my chest was drooping toward my knee cap. Which, if I wasn’t careful, was going to get in the way of my rigorous exercising.

While the three pedalers beside me pretended to be impressed with their books, I did a fourth two-hand pat down with the same results. Padding. No padding.

Gah!

The pedals were still swirling behind me when I turned the corner to the ladies locker room. I smirked. Half of me was at attention. While the other half was taking a nap, perhaps.

I patted my bullet proof bra pad, my hand rebounding off its cushion. Only…maybe…

Ah, forget maybe. There it was. My vacationing bra pad. Slumped behind the other, like moral support.

I skipped the rest of the bike “workout” and everything else in the gym. Because sometimes exercise doesn’t look like exercise.

Some folks run. Some heave weights. Some move furniture on their backs.

And some…

Some wrestle a dysfunctional a bra pad into its proper place in the locker room.

It’s all good.

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Heart to Heart

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He stands in our bedroom doorway draped like royalty in the blanket he drug from his bed.

Have I remembered, he wants to know. Remembered about this morning?

And I have. Remembered.

And so with love weighting each syllable, I pat the middle of our mattress and say, “Come on, son. Come up by mommy.”

And he does.

With a gentle left hand I smooth and part his hair. I pull my boy close to me with my right and wait as he nestles his rib cage closer to mine. There are a weekend’s worth of kisses to catch up on. And so as he gabs about wheelbarrow rides with cousins and the bath with jets at Nannie’s house, I press my lips to the sides of his head.

He is still a moment before he says, ”Can you hear it?”

And I listen with my hand on his chest.

“It’s my heart,” he whispers. “It’s going beep…beep beep.”

We might have stayed there another minute–me, my boy, his beeping heart. But his love tank was full.

And it was his stomach that needed me now.

The Eavesdropper

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The job of tucking in kids that kept springing from their beds was over.

Sort of.

And so we sat. My husband in the chair against the wall. And me Indian style atop our bed. We talked in low voices, my day, then his.

Until we heard it. The creak of a small boy leaving his bottom bunk.

In seconds our son appeared in the doorway, his face mostly asleep. “Would it be okay,” he grogged, “okay if I just rest?”

We shrugged. Resting was still a kid in his bed.

“Cuz I just know,” he explained, “I just know what you’re saying is gonna be interesting and I can’t turn my ears off.”

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Raising a Boy

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There was a whump from upstairs. A body tarzaning off a top bunk. Or a fan falling, as it were. From a top bunk it was never supposed to be on.

Only I learned it was the fan because my son, his bottom lip leading the way, found me in the living room and half-whispered, half-squeaked his apology. “I choosed poorly,” he said. He eyelashes flicked tears and his head sagged another inch.

I listened to the poor choice and then asked that he scrape the fan into a pile that we could look at later.

Because it wasn’t about the fan.

But about my boy. My rough and tender boy. My boy who has inherited self-deprecation. My boy who does not need stern words, who crumbles at stern words. Who needs instead my dependable arms. And a piece of my shirt to wipe his snot.

My boy is the one confiding to his sister that he wants to run as fast as a cop.

And he’s the one waving for his gym teacher’s attention, only to say softly, “I love you, Miss Trinnelle.”

He’s the one with a boogered pointer finger. And the one sighing for the return of our grandmotherly next door neighbor. He’s the one with the stamina to yank weeds for an hour with his daddy. And the one pleading to help me bake.

Rough.

And tender.

This is my boy.

Rough-and-tender.

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I Feel Pretty

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I can tell it makes her feel pretty. The purple dress.

The purple dress she has worn unabashedly for ten occasions without a breather–church, school, Easter, school, church…

The purple dress she blow dries her hair for and turns sideways in the mirror for, first this way and then that and then another time this way. I say only once, “run down and show your daddy,” because she does. She slips from the door frame with happy pony tails–one on each side–and bounces down the stairs to find her daddy’s praise.

It isn’t just the dress, though. It’s the shoes. The far-from-sensible sandals that click and clack against the wood floors. The ones whose inch and a half white heels wobble with every step and threaten to throw her to the ground. The ones she pretends are as soft as slippers.

I shrug as we leave. “You’re sure you’re okay? Your feet are gonna make it?” And she nods confidently, though a pair of tennis shoes sits beside her.

As we hustle between stores, she clips and clops to stay close. She loses the dainty steps and strides like a sprinter, focused on the finish line. I tell her we can drive across the parking lot to the next store, and she looks at me with a face that is ten years older. “It’s just right there,” she says. And so we do. We clop and click across the black top, her hand swinging in mine, her smile lighting a path for every step.

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I Had a Dream About Sleep

What Really Happens in the Munson Household

Author Archives: jeanne

For the Love of Cousins

On Bowling

Is it Hard?

The Blank Page

When One of us Hurts

Redefining Exercise

Heart to Heart

The Eavesdropper

Raising a Boy

I Feel Pretty