ElizabethEsther.com

but the greatest of these is love...

{i know i said i was taking a break this week but the not writing is like not breathing and i just can't hold my breath anymore. you don't mind, do you?}

The rain is falling softly in filmy layers across the black asphalt street where I am sitting in the parked family car, a dull ache growing in my chest like a tumor.

It's quiet here, in the car. I've escaped--albeit briefly--for a moment's respite from the constant state of play-acting, poll-taking, peace-making.

When I was younger I used to believe that there were answers for every question, solutions for every dilemma. I don't believe that anymore.

The best we can hope for, it seems, is to manage the dysfunction: to bail out the boat, bail out the leaky boat. Find a way. Patch the holes. Bind up the slights and spites with contrite hearts and the gentle salve of soft words.

And in all the bailing and failing, the wailing and tattle tale-ing, we stumble across moments of certainty, of clarity and I think--although I'm not sure--that these moments are love.

But still, I must escape to the quiet, to this car parked in the loaminess of this wet darkness and listen. Listen to the sound of falling rain.

Love, perhaps, is our only hope. Our only certainty.

Hello? Is this thing working?

This is a test post. My blog has been down for 24 hours. After much barfing, prayers, obsessing, hand-wringing, tears and general pathetic ridiculousness, my precious, beloved, dear little blog is up again. Or is it? Is this thing working? Please tell me you're still there. 

UPDATE: I SEE YOU! I SEE YOU! OH, DEAR BLOGGY! YOU'RE BACK! xoxoxoxoxoxo. EE.

UPDATE #2: it's official. my husband thinks i'm clinically insane. But, "you're cute when you stress out." Awwww. Thanks, babe! 

UPDATE #3: If you can see me, leave a comment. Or not. Or just tweet at me on Twitter. Time for wine and Mint Milanos!

How being an at-home mom isn't always the best for kids (or moms)

I am a stay-at-home mom. I used to think I made this choice because it was "best" for my children. I'm beginning to realize that even having the option to make this choice was nothing short of privilege.

Let's make this entirely clear: it's a luxury to be a stay-at-home mom. It simply means we make enough money to live on one income and don't have to choose between working to feed our children or staying home to raise them.

In other words, where I am today is largely the result of factors outside my control: my husband's good job and being born in an affluent area. It would be so easy to take the credit for all this, to say that I made these noble, virtuous mothering choices in the best interest of my precious children.

But that would be a lie.

The only reason I was able to make those choices in the first place was because I wasn't scrabbling for mere survival. Sure, I wanted to be an at-home mom. And as a young woman I made certain sober-minded choices that helped me achieve that goal. 

However, life could have easily handed me a different set of harsher circumstances. And I probably would have had to make different choices; ie. work outside the home.

Would that make me less of a mother? Would I love my children less because I had to work to feed them?

No.

Sometimes I think we lose sight of the fact that even having the option to choose what is "best" for our children is a luxury. Are our children really "best served" by being given the "best" of everything?

I have to be honest and say that in some ways I think being an at-home mom has actually placed my kids at a DISADVANTAGE. For one thing, they've started to take for granted that I'm always going to be here to wash their laundry, fix their meals, help them with homework and run their lunch to school if they forget it at home.

Don't get me wrong. I love tending their needs. But it's my job to raise responsible, independent adults--not molly-coddled leeches. Sometimes I wonder if they will lack the "street skills" (for lack of a better word) to fend for themselves, to solve problems on their own, to be independent without always needing Mommy's help.

In that regard, the child of working parents is building a skill set my kids don't have. Is that skill set qualitatively better? Maybe.

Let's just say I hope my kids don't fall apart in college because I'm not around to help them manage their lives.

Still, I don't regret my "decision" (insofar as it was a decision and not just a privileged option that happened to align with my beliefs and desires) to stay home with my children. It was awesome to be there for all their little "firsts."

But I also know that it was exhausting. And I couldn't have done it for much longer. As much as I feel guilty for saying it, the truth is that I'm a happier mother (and a happier person!) now that all my kids are in school everyday. Or maybe I'm just not chronically exhausted anymore and can actually feel again.

Either way, I feel better.

It's pretty cool to go pee without 5 kids barging in. And I can get dinner on the table every night now that I have time to prep it each morning.

CONFESSION: we ate TONS of takeout food when we had lotsa small children. I WAS TOO TIRED TO COOK! (and guess what? my kids ate the occasional mcnugget and the world didn't end)

Ultimately, I really enjoyed this recent article about motherhood in the Wall Street Journal: "Do the best you can. There are no rules."

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When you can't make sense of it all, make pizza. At the very least, dance in the kitchen with your rolling pin.

When I make pizza, I turn on the music and dance unabashedly with my rolling pin. Rolling pins are very obliging partners.

Scandalous as it may sound to my proper fundamentalist upbringing, I really like to have fun. I can't help it. I've tried to squelch that unholy urge for years. Then I discovered Catholicism.

Now I eat, drink and am merry. For tomorrow I go to Confession. 

KIDDING!

Let's just put it this way: Catholicism has given me the long-awaited permission to enjoy my life. Now I attack life with WILD ABANDON and without one tiny scintilla of guilt. I love making pizza, I love making sex, I love making a bajillion kids, I love a bustling, bright kitchen where food and drink and laughter, debate, discussion and dancing with rolling pins are not only allowed...they are CELEBRATED!

Speaking of pizza, look at this beauty I whipped up the other night:

 
I call it Greek Pizza. I don't know if there IS such a thing as Greek Pizza, but eh. I threw some Kalamata olives on there and called it Greek. OPA!

After all, I am Greek and we Greeks like to take credit for everything in Western civilization. Including Pizza. Which may or may not be Greek. But who's quibbling?

Is it Italy or Greece? Is it Rome or Constantinople? Is it the Pope or the Patriarch?

See, did you ever suspect that making pizza was so pregnant with such potential controversy?!

We Greeks also like to say the Greek Orthodox church was the official, original Church. To which I say: TYPICAL GREEK. Then again, I do love the Greek Orthodox Church and am sorely ticked off at my Grandfather for abandoning it and thinking he knew better and could start his own, new and improved church. WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT ENDED. Typical Greek.

So, here I am. And I hate picking sides.

Why should I? Anyone can see Italian pizza does just fine with Greek olives on top.

Can't the Orthodox and Catholic churches just make up already?

Everybody kiss and eat pizza!

OPA!

 

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Mommy Loser. Daddy Rockstar!

When Mommies are out in public alone with their kids, do they get treated differently than when Daddies take the kids out alone? Um. YEP! Here I am explaining the hilarious differences in what happens when I take all 5 kids out by myself vs. when my husband goes out with them: MOMMY LOSER, DADDY ROCKSTAR!

Mopping in High-Heels

I like a clean house. Unfortunately, I suck at keeping it clean. Mostly because there are 8 million children tromping in dirt 3 seconds after I finish polishing the floor.

Hoping to make my mopping easier, I purchased a Swiffer last year. When I got home I was all: "HEY! Do these things come in different sizes? 'Cause I just bought the one made for my kids' pretend kitchen!"

This mop was so short that the only way I could use it was by hunching over. Still, I wasn't about to return it. That would be like admitting I'd only bought the mop to make my life easier--not to actually clean. AND I HAVE MORE INTEGRITY THAN THAT! So, this is how I mopped for over a year:

Well, at least my chiropractor was happy. He can now send his children to any college he pleases.

I mean, I knew that the mop extended to a longer position, but I could never get it to stay that way. I tried tightening the yellow rings, taping it in place. Yelling at it. Eventually, I came to the following brilliant conclusions:

a.) the mop is supposed to elongate, but the mechanism for locking it in place is defective

OR

b.) indeed, this is a mop for kids and/or Little People

I'll let you guess which conclusion I favored after I tell you that one of my favorite TLC shows is "The Little Couple." 

So, maybe you're wondering why I didn't just buy a new mop? Two reasons: 1. in all other respects, it was a perfectly good mop; and 2. what's a little bodily pain compared to an eternal weight of glory?

Last week, though? I got tired of mopping my way to Heaven. I just about broke down weeping when the twins spilled their juice all over the floor. Through my tears, I noticed a sticker on the Swiffer handle. I'd never seen it before.

"Do not use yellow rings to tighten handle."

WHAT?!

"Tighten by twisting the chrome handle in opposing directions--simultaneously."

YOU MEAN THIS MOP IS NOT DEFECTIVE?!

Indeed, the only thing defective around here, obviously, is my brain. 

But I don't mind because I can now mop with ease. My happiness is complete.

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You know he loves you if he shops for your, uh, Feminine Napkins

A few weeks ago the cargo-sized vessel of tampons I'd purchased at Costco had---shockingly!--run out. I sent my husband to the store with specific directions and a color-coded map. 

He called me a few minutes later. "What does the box look like again?"

"A blue box with a yellow stripe. LOOK.FOR.THE.YELLOW.STRIPE!" I felt like I was giving morse code for some super-classified, high-level, undercover ops. Undercover. Heh. Indeed.

"Yellow stripe, yellow stripe," he intoned and I imagined him ticking down the Feminine Hygiene aisle scanning the plethora of flowery boxes.

"GOT IT!" he crowed. "Wait. Regular? What does that mean?"

"Yes, regular," I said. "That means Regular sized tampons. Or Regulier if we're speaking French."

Because you know tampon boxes always advertise their wares in like three different languages. So helpful.

"Don't forget I need pantiliners, too," I reminded him.

"Yeah, I got those already. The box with the red flower on front, right?"

"Indeed."

Later, I was re-arranging my toiletry cabinet and suddenly noticed, like, how downright weird the pantiliner box was. 

I mean, I never noticed before. I'm more of a HEY LOOK, IT'S THE RED FLOWER BOX and I grab it off the shelf. But have you ever really looked at a pantiliner box? Let's ponder this. Take for instance, the bar-code side of the box:

Yes, friends. Not only does Kotex offer IMPROVED PROTECTION! and AMAZING COMFORT! but it also offers Latin lessons.

That red flower on their box? It's not just a Lily, you know. It's Clivia Miniata. Which makes it sound so much longer and, I dunno, important. Because in Latin, everything has more gravitas. You take a simple, 2 syllable word like Lily and suddenly, in Latin, it's practically a paragraph. 

Talk about bang for your buck-itas.

Moving on. The Lily, the folks at Kotex tells us, is "symbolic of three qualities: majesty, purity and splendid beauty."

BECAUSE THAT'S EXACTLY HOW I FEEL WHEN I'M ON THE RAG!

There's nothing like my period to make me feel majestic, pure and pretty much bursting with splendid beauty.

Dear Kotex, you picked the wrong botanical. Try a Venus Fly-Trap next time. That'd be closer to the truth.

Now, when you look at the other side of the box, you discover the various fits and sizes of pantiliners Kotex has to offer. Because Kotex, you see, has "a le produit qui repond a vos besoins" which translated into boring English means: products to fit your individual needs.

Dude, I hate how everything sounds so unsexy in English.

But I'll tell you what's more unsexy: pantiliners for THONGS. Yeah. Chew on that for a moment. Kotex offers THONG pantiliners. I'm sorry, but that just freaks me out.

Who wears a thong while she's on her period? Am I missing out on some super fun times women are having while they're menstruating? I guess I just assumed that every gal had her Period Underwear and her Pretty Underwear. Am I totally uninformed, here?

I mean, yeah, I do enjoy a pretty thong, but you couldn't PAY ME to wear my pretty thong with a thong pantiliner--not even if Kotex promises it has BONNE (good) coverage. Or buena cobertura if you speak Spanish. Oh, yeah. Kotex definitely se habla espanol. Don't tell Arizona.

Which begs the question, if the purpose of a thong is SANS coverage, how can a thong pantiliner promise BUENA coverage? 

So, not only is the pantiliner box weird, it's also totally oxymoronic. 

Now that's ettonnant.

Or as we unsexy English speakers say: uh-mazing.

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Make Snuggle Not War

I'm a snuggler. It calms my brain. Also, it keeps me warm. 

However, some people don't like snugglers. We snugglers are often misunderstood.

This is how you can identify an Anti-Snuggler: "It's hot! Get off of me!" or "Don't cross this line down the middle of the bed!" or "Ewwww! You snuggle?"

My sister was the first Anti-Snuggler in my life. She practically made me sign a notarized Non-Snuggling Agreement like every time I got scared at night and asked to share her bed. She had a codified, alphabetized list of 25 Rules & Regulations For Proper Sleeping Protocol. 

These included (but were not limited to): no touching, no snoring, no weird breathing, no movement of any kind. In other words, I was supposed to be like a robot and unplug myself before bed every night.

I used to lie awake until she was asleep and then I'd stealthily creep one little toe across The Sacred Line down the middle of the bed. HA! VICTORY!

If I was feeling especially brave, I'd walk two fingers across the Sacred Line and try to rest them on her arm without waking her up. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes I had to do her chores the next day for breaking my word.

She was a relentless enforcer of her Anti-Snuggling rules.

Of course, I thought it would all be different once I got married. That was before I read The Purpose Driven Snuggle and learned that for men, snuggling requires a purpose. A destination. A reward. AHEM.

Snuggling just for snuggling's sake? WASTE OF TIME.

Can you imagine my devastation? First I get rejected by Anti-Snugglers and then I get manipulated by Agendized-Snugglers! So unfair. 

It's enough to make a girl cry during that movie Field of Snuggles. Because it was SO TRUE. If you snuggle, they will...

...well, they'll give you babies, that's for sure.

And therein lies a snuggler's salvation. Oh, sweet, precious little babies who like to snuggle! Babies who love nothing more than to be hunkered up in your armpit all night long. Or carried around all day.

Best of all, babies totally don't mind if you take frequent sniffs of their dear, fuzzy little heads. I'm serious, the baby smell sends a straight blast of oxytocin to my brain. Mommy wikes.

Sometimes I wish my babies could stay little. I tried sniffing my son's head the other day and he reared back in disgust.

"Ewwwww!" he yelled. "Don't snuggle me!"

Oh, why must they grow up so fast?

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Like a herd of stampeding buffalo with paintbrushes

I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with some fantabulous surprise for your birthday. You don't like presents or hoopla. You especially don't like me writing about you on this here blog. 

But then I remembered that almost nothing makes you happier than a clean, tidy house. INSPIRATION!

Now, this is where my ADD-brain goes a bit whack. I attacked the project with all the pounding energy of a herd of migrating buffalo. Wait. Do buffalos migrate? Hm. No, they stampede. Oh, yes. STAMPEDE!

Point is, not only was I gonna whip this house into shape, I was gonna go the extra mile and PAINT. There's this patched-up spot, see, that's gone unpainted for like 2 years. I thought you'd be so proud if I painted it!

DO I KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PAINTING? NO! WHO CARES? YIPPEEEEEEE!

I found a can of yellow paint--looks good enough to me, says I--so I pour it out and start rolling. I'm so thrilled and excited and thinking: OH, WON'T HE BE SURPRISED?!

And my imagination is taking flight with all kinds of fanciful dreams about how you come home, gasp with surprise, sweep me off my feet and burst into songs of praise!!

I finish painting and think: Hm. It looks lighter than the other paint. OH, WELL. Maybe it will look darker when it dries.

Then I stampede off into another direction. MORE! Let's do MORE! I start wildly ridding the room of clutter. I haul out like 10 trashbags of junk. I organize ALL our bills and paperwork. I sweep! I dust! I move furniture! I pull a muscle!

And then I stand back and admire my handiwork. Oh, my the CLEAN. It's like a drug, this clean. I could sniff it all day.

Mismatched paint? WHAT? WHERE? I DON'T SEE IT!

So, then I wait for you to get home. I'm so excited--mismatched paint and all--that I keep checking the clock and giggling to myself. I even burst into anticipatory song: Will you dance for me, Matthew, or in awe of me be still? I can only imagine!

And then. You're late.

Like, kill my buzz late.

By the time you walk in, I'm all hobbly because dude, my back! My back! I hurt my back!

Suddenly, everything feels sucky and ruined. Look, I even painted with the wrong color and how come EVERYTHING I try to do always gets messed up?

I was only trying to make you happpppyyyyyy! MY BAAAAAAAAACCK!! AAUUUGH!

You stand there for a moment, all stunned and a little disconcerted ("You moved furniture?") and then you fetch me some ibuprofen, pat me gently and say: "Nice work, Little Mother. Next time try not to kill yourself."

"You don't mind the paint?" I sniff.

You chuckle. "We'll just call that the primer coat."

And this is why you're awesome. Because you never really see my mistakes. You always choose to see the good.

Happy Birthday.

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Water Ballet

 

She asks if she can swim in her fancy, expensive recital costume. At first, I balk. Ruin it just for play? No! Never!

She attaches herself to me, a quiet shadow, scanning my face. I shake her off. I am cumbered with many things, important things, productive things.

"I'll never wear it again, you know," she finally offers. "I only want to see what it feels like to dance through the air and land in water."

That gives me pause. But still, I resist. It seems...what? Dangerously frivolous. Sinfully impractical. It grates against everything inside me. 

"No," I answer again.

"Then what are we keeping it for?" she asks.

Indeed. What are we keeping this dress for? For moth and rust? For creeping time's mildewed memories all neatly packaged and vacuum-packed in some forgotten closet corner?

Sometimes all we have are these little moments of unadulterated joy. Sometimes fleeting moments are our only antidote against the grim struggle of everyday life. Perhaps it is wise is to collect these moments and store them away: a repository of joy. 

So, I relent.

Dance, I say.

She fairly skips away, all bubbling ideas and felicitous laughter. Her joy is infectious and it sucks me in. I lay aside my dishtowel and follow her outside, into the sunshine.

She dances for me and she is so blithely happy that I wonder why I denied her for as long as I did.

I thought I was allowing her to have joy, but the truth was that she was also giving mine back to me.