“We will learn that each of us is precious to our Elder Brother, even the Lord Jesus Christ. He truly loves us. His life is the flawless example of one afflicted with sorrows and disappointments, who nonetheless provided the example of forgetting self and serving others.”
-Thomas S. Monson
We live in a world of shrinking families. I remember carrying my two small boys off the airplane when I moved to Illinois. My husband was driving the moving truck, so my dad decided to fly with me and Ryan and Sean. At the time, Ryan was a little over a year and Sean was only three months. Dad walked over to the bathroom for a moment. I sat down on a bench with the kids. Naturally, I’d been somewhat conspicuous on the plane and I tried my best to simply sink into the scenery. Though I recognize it was probably unfair, I always imagined that the thoughts behind those curious stares that strangers always seemed to direct at me were accusing and condescending.
One woman walked over with a conspicuous smile and said, “Good for you for standing up for families.” I stared after her as she walked away, absolutely perplexed. She was clearly a kind woman and her statement seemed completely sincere. But I only had two kids! Two children certainly isn’t many. Perhaps she said it because they were so close together? Nevertheless, the comment cemented my assurance that I was a freak, particularly in Chicago.
Jump back to nearly two years later. Chloe was approaching three months of age and already growing out of many of her small clothes. My mom had bought her a beautiful little dress that was size 0-3 months and Chloe still hadn’t worn it. Mom had also bought me a lovely suit to wear. It was symbolic, though mom had never said so. I am not a businesswoman, and I only dress up for church, but my mom understood well the difficulty I had adjusting to being an at-home mom. She also remembered how I would proudly wear my suit all day on tournament days when I was in high school and college. I loved feeling pressed and professional. So mom’s contribution to my third baby in three years was to try to convey that I was still the girl I had always been, that I could still feel good about myself. Well, the suit didn’t fit and mom had called me several times just to ask if I’d exchanged it yet.
Nate was firmly entrenched in end of semester dealings at school and I knew that returning the suit and dress would involve taking all three kids to the mall by myself. I continued putting it off. It was my mom that finally convinced me to pull myself together and just do it. I knew what it meant to her that I have her gift.
I received a call one night reminding me of playgroup the following day at a McDonald’s. The kids hadn’t been out of the house, except on Sundays, for weeks, so I determined to get up and take them to the playgroup. I also packed up my returns, so I could take them back. It all made sense in my mind. McDonald’s wasn’t far from the mall. It was a fateful decision that I never should have made.
My first mistake was deciding against the double stroller. Once before Chloe was born, I had taken the boys in the stroller only to spend the whole time fighting to keep them sitting while they insisted that they could walk. It would be easier, I reasoned, to not mess with that huge stroller and just take each boy by the hand. Furthermore, the stroller had a pull to the right and it got tedious trying to maneuver it. I imagined pushing it would be much worse with Chloe in a snuggly strapped to my chest. The logic was sound and had advantages. After all, getting three small children out of car seats was enough of a challenge without having to mess with a stroller. I should have remembered the advantage of having the storage space, because I ended up carrying my returns in a bag that became a nuisance. It, however, was the least of my worries.
I parked in front of the Kohl’s store so that I could take the suit back first and then walk to The Children’s Place and exchange the dress. I admit that I hadn’t done my homework and had no idea that the two stores were on opposite sides of a legendarily huge mall. Things went wrong right away. I managed to put the baby in her carrier and get both the boys out of the old blue suburban without one of them running into the street and getting hit by a car. Kudos to me. There is rarely a driving experience where I don’t have a horrific vision of Sean flying through the air. He thinks its funny how mom always freaks out when he heads for the road and he likes to laugh. Enough said.
I think I must have looked so adorable with my two-year-old holding my right hand, my three-year-old holding my left, and the baby strapped to my chest. The bag with my returns was looped around one pinky until I got into the store. I realized right away that I wasn’t talented enough to keep a good hold on the bag and Sean’s hand. And Sean had decided that he didn’t want to hold mommy’s hand. So I was struggling with him while he wiggled like a worm, trying to break loose.
Once I had made my way to the door I picked Sean up in one arm so I could use the force of my body to push the doors open without worrying that he was going to escape. The minute we actually got inside the store, my sweet little Sean ran into the clothes. So I looked absolutely ridiculous trying to catch him by weaving my way through the racks of clothes. Whenever I got close enough to almost catch him, he would laugh and run to the next rack. Suddenly, it occurred to Ryan that Sean was having all the fun, while he behaved. Ryan started to make that obnoxious wrist twisting motion that every parent knows, in an attempt to free himself.
I was not about to let them start tag teaming me, so I grabbed, Ryan’s hand tighter and told him that he was way too big to be running off. I got serious about catching Sean and cornered him before he could get away. Holding the two of them, I walked over to the customer service desk. The polite woman behind the desk gave me a pitying look and said, “Well you certainly have your hands full.” I tried to smile as if I was truly amused, but it was difficult.
By the grace of God, there was a pay phone next to the returns counter. I was careful not to make eye contact with any of the other customers. I didn’t want to endure the stares that clearly said, “Why don’t you make your children behave.” I let Sean play on the payphone, despite the scandalized looks and silently prayed he would not find, against all odds, the numbers “911.”
With the suit gone, it was a relief to have one less thing to carry. I slipped the gift card into my wallet, fully aware that I’d probably never be able to use it. After all, that would require a trip to the mall. I had decided, then and there, to give those up.
If I had more common sense than I do, I would have given up just then. A smarter woman would have recognized her own limits and walked back to the car. But I still had the little dress in a bag, now looped around my wrist. Sean had been reasonably obedient during the return, since I never tried to tell him to do or stop anything. I reasoned that I had done half my task and there was no point in turning back. After all, the biggest difficulty is getting kids in and out of car seats, right?
We proceeded out of the Kohls and down the wide mall corridor with everything going reasonably well. Sean refused to hold my hand, but I didn’t mind. He was heading the right direction and since my legs were longer, I was able to keep up, even while dragging Ryan. We must have looked silly, because I was walking fairly fast to keep up, but that just meant we would get there faster. Sean would occasionally dart into a store to hide from me, but he always seemed to come out when I got closer. He was enjoying the game. Pretty soon, however, I became concerned that we had walked so far without finding the store I was looking for.
I looked ahead to the next turn in the corridor and told myself that if we hadn’t found “The Children’s Place” by the time we got to it, I would turn around and go home. But each time we got to the end of the hallway, I reasoned that it was probably just a few stores down and I would feel really dumb if I gave up when I was so close. So we continued walking.
When I finally made it to the store I was searching for, I got my first good news. It was spring time and, being an outlet store, all of the winter stuff was on sale. It was truly an amazing sale. I noticed several things right away that I wanted to buy for my baby to wear when fall came. I should not have let myself be distracted. The minute I did, Sean wiggled his hand free and took off. Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered that he was free, but I dismissed the thought, hoping I could wait 15 seconds to look down and be sure he wasn’t destroying. It was a great error in judgment. No more than 10 seconds later, I glanced down to see my son and realized he was gone.
Despite the fact that this was a very small store, it was a great place for hiding. All of the cheap winter clothes were pushed close together on too many racks for the small space. I frantically looked for Sean. It shouldn’t have been so hard. He always left a path of destruction. I looked for fallen clothes, accessories thrown off shelves and disgusted glares by other customers.
I may have been able to find him with my eyes closed by simply following the sound of condescending quips of, “My, you certainly have your hands full.” Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the worst of friendly strangers just taken off guard by someone with a million babies and expressing their surprise as well as they knew how. It’s just that in such stressful circumstances I heard the, “What are you trying to do, repopulate the world single-handedly” and “It’s so irresponsible to have more kids than you can care for” that probably weren’t behind most people’s comments, but undoubtedly were behind a few.
Let me explain, my brother went through a phase where he insisted on wearing cowboy boots and hats, despite the fact that he had never ridden a horse. I noticed that people started speaking slowly to him. I don’t believe it’s right to judge someone by the way they look. However, I recognize that you cannot universalize that principle. People will make instant judgments on you and there is nothing you can do about it. Therefore, if you want people to think that you are intelligent, you should look/act like you are. I had made that into a science. It is absolutely impossible to look classy, smart or in control with three small children. Most people automatically assume that you’re lower class when you have a large family. After all, intelligent people know how to prevent that.
My search for Sean brought me to a corner of the store where an assortment of rubber duckies had once been neatly arranged on the shelves. They weren’t any longer. I quickly decided to give up on the idea of doing any shopping today and just find the dress I wanted to exchange. After enlisting the help of both boys to put the ducks back, I walked over to the section where I was certain I would find the size I wanted. I was absolutely delighted to realize that the dress was now only half price. Even more delightful was the realization that the only size they had left was the size I already had. With a sigh, I decided to just go home.
But Sean was lost again. A lady toward the opening of the store saw me looking confused and lost. She pointed out into the corridor. I ran. Sean was already halfway down the hall. I had to run faster to catch up. So there I was, running down the mall with Chloe bouncing along on my chest and Ryan scurrying beside me. When I finally caught Sean, I trapped him in the space between two stores. The display windows went a little into the walkway and so there was a spot between them where I pushed Sean. He giggled madly until he realized that he was trapped and then he started screaming.
I was careful not to turn around toward the traffic. There was nothing I wanted less than for people to see my face while they walked wide of the crazy lady with all those children. When I had finally calmed him down, I made him promise to hold my hand. He refused. I informed him we wouldn’t be leaving where we were until he promised. He started screaming again. Finally, he promised to take my hand.
We’d gone less than ten steps before he started to twist his wrist again and I had to maneuver him back to the side of the walkway, where I could trap him until I had another promise. We did that a few times before we actually got anywhere. When it finally appeared as if we might make it to the end of a hallway without having to stop for another promise to behave, disaster struck.
Just ahead of us, in an open area, there was a display of playground equipment. Sean saw it from a mile away. In one swift motion, he picked his feet up off the floor and twisted his hand so he dropped to the floor. Before I even realized what had happened he was halfway up a latter leading to a clubhouse with slide. I ran to catch him. The slide had been blocked off by a wooden bar across the entrance so that children couldn’t play on it. Sean simply squished himself beneath the wooden bar so he could slide down. An extremely angry security guard made it there the same time I did. The man spluttered, “You can’t…but …don’t.”
I grabbed my two year old and rushed away from the security guard’s scowl. I felt so humiliated. I wondered what percentage of the people in the mall today would hurry home to their loved ones to tell stories of the awful mother they’d seen today.
I sat Sean down on a bench and tried to make him promise to be good. He flat out refused. I felt like crying. We just had to make it to the car. So, I took Sean by the hand in a tight grip. He lifted his feet off the ground and attempted to twist his wrist. I was holding him too tightly this time, though, and ended up pulling him along while he whined.
We went on like that for a while. I could see Kohls and began to have some hope that the whole experience was finally almost over. At least, I thought it was. A young lady hanging on the arm of a man glanced over at me. I must have looked hilarious. I was holding Ryan’s hand, dragging a still-screaming Sean and wearing Chloe. The poor young woman gasped in horror and buried her head in her companion’s arm. Obviously she couldn’t stand the dreadfulness of what I was doing to the poor children.
I sank down on a bench and let go of the kids. Sean just laid there on the ground screaming. Ryan walked over to a display of mall maps. Where had those been when I was lost? I let him. I didn’t have the energy to care and he wasn’t hurting anything. I just stared at Sean.
Trying to cheer me up, Ryan brought me a map and said, “Here, Mommie, I got this for you.” I told him thank you. He must have decided that meant I needed more because be went back over to the display. The maps were sitting upright, like brochures in a doctor’s office. Ryan placed one hand on each side of the stack and picked them up. The one in front and the one in back stayed in his hands. The rest spread across the floor.
I ran over and started picking them up. It was quite an awkward task with the baby still in the carrier on my chest. Every time I reached forward, I thought she was going to fall out. Sean didn’t waver from his spot on the floor and all of the shoppers walked wide to avoid our little zoo.
In the end, I decided I would have to simply pull Sean along again. So we made our way into Kohls, but not much farther. Sean was flailing by this point. There was simply no chance I could keep a hold on him. He wiggled free and contented himself to lay in the middle of the isle, on his face, screaming. Completely helpless, I sat down on a mannequin platform and watched the fit. Ryan sat next to me. Chloe was asleep.
On the other side of the hallway a woman was shopping with a teenage girl and an older woman. She looked over at us and I stared fixedly at Sean. I didn’t want to hear how full my hands were or endure one more critical stare. I wanted to bawl. But instead of turning back to her own business, this woman made her way over to me and asked, “Can I help you?”
I wanted to say she couldn’t. I wanted to insist that I was a good mom and could handle my children all by myself. But, unable to think of anything clearly I just said, “Yes.”
She walked over to Sean and reached for him. When he jerked away from her she looked at me and asked, “Will he let me hold him?”
I blinked back tears and started to unhook the baby carrier. I pushed Chloe toward the stranger and asked, “Will you take the baby?” She gently took her and started walking to the exit, where my car was waiting. I scooped up Sean, took Ryan’s hand and hurried to take the lead.
Somewhere in all of this, I remember my rescuer’s own daughter calling for her, but this wonderful woman just assured the girl that she would be right back.
At the car, I put all the kids inside as quickly as I could, without bothering to strap them into the car seats and thanked the stranger. She didn’t even bother to say that I had my hands full. She just said, “No problem,” and went back into the store.
I climbed into the passenger seat of the suburban, pulled my knees to my chest and bawled in utter humiliation. This is not the way my life was meant to be! My sweet little Ryan seemed very confused about the whole thing. He crawled up into my lap. Putting one hand on each of my cheeks he looked into my eyes. His little lip quivered as if he would cry and he said, “Mommie, what’s wrong? What’s wrong?” And then, with a look of utter horror on his adorable face, he cried, “You lost your keys!” It made me laugh, and then start a desperate search for my keys. I still had them. Not everything went wrong.
I strapped my wonderful children into their seats. But before we started driving, I asked them to join me in a prayer. Together, we thanked Heavenly Father for each other and for the lady at Kohls. That day began a comforting tradition. From that time on, I have made it a habit to mumble, “Heavenly Father, thank you for Sean,” every time I feel my rambunctious child has got me at the end of my rope. I also vowed never to go to the mall again.
Monday
Chapter Eight: Three Weddings and a Plane Ride
“Sometimes that which we are doing is correct enough but simply needs to be persisted in—patiently—not for a minute or a moment but sometimes for years. Paul speaks of the marathon of life and how we must ‘run with patience the race that is set before us.’ Paul did not select the hundred-yard dash for his analogy!”
-Neal A. Maxwell
Chloe was born on her dad’s brother’s birthday. Growing up I always felt a bit gypped that I had my birthday all to myself. My sister got to celebrate her birthday with my grandma. So, when I went into labor on the morning of January 18th, I insisted my husband call his little brother before he called anyone else. Honestly, I don’t know that Justin was all that impressed.
But when he planned his wedding for the day before Nathan took his last final, I decided that the kids and I needed to be there, even though my husband couldn’t come. That meant that I would take Ryan-barely three, Sean-barely two, and Chloe- almost four months, on the three hour flight from Chicago to Salt Lake City.
A month before this exciting event (I mean the plane ride, not the wedding), Nate’s sister decided she was going to get married the day after her brother. I thought, “Sweet! Two birds with one stone.” But it got even better. Katharine, Nate’s sister, was living in Virginia. She was also going to be flying home for the weddings. So, she worked it out that she would have a layover in Chicago and then fly out to Salt Lake on the same flight as me. I avoided the disaster of going on my own.
Nate also had to take the board exam that summer. He decided since he was missing the weddings anyway, that he would stay an extra few weeks in Chicago to study without the kids and me to distract him. He would fly out a couple days before the test, take the test in Utah, stay there for the two weeks until school started again, and we could all fly back together. Owing to our money situation, we would have a layover on the way back. Nathan whined about that for a while, but I pointed out that when the day was over, even if it turned out to be a hard day, we would be about 400 dollars richer than had we paid for the direct flight. The price difference between an economy flight and a comfortable flight is amazing to me. Sure, I would prefer to be comfortable. But it is never a matter of twenty dollars and if I spend a hundred dollars in one day, I’d better dang well have something to show for it the next.
The most difficult part of the flight to Salt Lake was the time from when I kissed my sweet husband goodbye to when I arrived at the gate and met my sister-in-law. I had the boys in the double stroller (A hand-me down from a member of my ward) and the baby in a carrier against my chest. I had a backpack with my kid’s needs on my back. I knew I was a spectacle, but I was getting used to that.
When we arrived at the Security checkpoint, things really got fun. The guards informed me that I would need to fold up the stroller and put it on the x-ray machine. So, I pulled the boys out of their seats and stood them next to me. As soon as I got the stroller folded up and, somehow, maneuvered it onto the belt, despite the baby still on my chest, I took their shoes off and pushed the boys through the metal detector. Then, the security guard told me that the baby carrier would also need to be x-rayed. Keep in mind this was not one of those huge back-pack ones. It is made of a piece of material and a couple plastic clasps. Well, I had to take my back pack off anyway. I tried to look graceful. But it was impossible not to hear the exasperated sighs of the people in line behind me.
One of the guards finally said, “Do you need help?” I told her I needed someone to hold the baby while I got unloaded. She shouted to somewhere past the security checkpoint, “There’s a lady here with three little kids. She needs a hand.”
Another woman in a security uniform stepped forward, looking completely perplexed. She said, “She’s by herself?” as if that was the most amazing thing she’d ever heard. The first lady just nodded. I handed Chloe to the reluctant assistant and pulled the carrier over my head. Somehow, we all made it through the metal detector without any further complications.
Anxious to stop holding up traffic, I opened the stroller and threw the boys in their seats. When I turned to take my baby, however, the stroller collapsed with my children in it. Apparently I hadn’t gotten it locked into place. I hadn’t had it for very long. I had never been so humiliated. Well, it often seems that way. I struggled to get it open and clicked into place while Ryan and Sean bellowed. With the stroller working, Chloe strapped in and the backpack balancing out her weight, I finally turned to scurry away, hoping the bad parent police weren’t sent after me on my way to the terminal.
Katharine was waiting for me, fresh off her flight from Virginia. Thanks to her help, the non-stop, three hour flight was pretty forgettable. Well, it was forgettable to me. I’m certain the passengers around me would disagree. When you are as abundantly blessed as I have been, the extraordinary often becomes mundane.
Lucky for us, the Salt Lake international airport was under construction when we flew in. Without that, we would never have had the exciting opportunity of discovering how many people can squish into a Lincoln. My mother-in-law was throwing a birthday party for Katharine that evening. Did I mention it was her birthday? How could I have forgotten? I am sure she felt very lucky to get to spend her birthday on a plane with my adorable children. Honestly, I think she was so excited to be entering the same state as her fiancé, that she didn’t care much how that was facilitated. She truly had a great attitude about the whole situation.
Because of the birthday party, my mother-in-law, Joy, had driven down to pick me and the kids up. My dad and sister, with her little boy who was two months younger than Sean, showed up as well. Amber was bringing me car seats. We have enough growing children in our family that I could borrow all the necessary car seats, rather than having to worry about bringing mine from Chicago. Dad just missed me (or, more accurately, he missed Ryan, Sean & Chloe). Who wouldn’t? I was honestly surprised the whole state didn’t show up.
Joy, against all odds, had managed to find a parking space in the terrace next to the airport. Dad and Amber hadn’t fared so well. They had been forced to park a couple miles away and take a shuttle to the airport. In order for me to go to Odgen with Joy (an hour drive), I needed to retrieve the car seats from Amber’s car. In a show of excellent humor, Joy suggested we put all our luggage in the trunk of her car and all the people inside.
It took about twenty minutes of pushing and pulling, but the luggage fit. Amber and I sat in the back seat, with our four children climbing on us. Dad and Joy sat in the front. Joy managed to drive to the parking lot despite Sean curled up in the back window. I did try valiantly to keep him down. But I was mostly concerned that my little Chloe didn’t fall. The whole thing barely fazed the grandparents. It’s very hard to get out of the mindset of safety we, as young parents, have been rightly forced into and realize that our parents didn’t even use car seats.
Justin’s wedding was by far the most fun. His lovely fiancé had bought me a dress to wear. Katharine and I both tried our dresses on after her birthday party, the day before the wedding. Mine was tight and decided I’d just wear it, despite feeling uncomfortable. Katharine is quite a bit smaller than me and had a dress two sizes smaller than mine. She couldn’t even zip it up. So, I gave her mine. It fit her perfectly. Joy suggested we run to the mall and exchange Katharine’s for something to fit me the next day. So, I mentally added that to my list of things to do.
The wedding was in the morning at the Bountiful Temple. It would be followed by a luncheon and then pictures and the reception. The contract they had signed with the center catering the luncheon stipulated that every child had to have at least one adult assigned to them. Joy had explained this to me and I had asked my best friend to watch my kids while I went to the temple and then meet me at the luncheon to help with the children. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Sometime during the birthday party, I discovered that my temple recommend was in Chicago. I was between wallets and so Nate had taken it and put it in his the last time I had used it. It turned out I would be skipping the ceremony. It broke my heart because I had missed Justin’s endowment as well. My whole wallet had been lost that time.
The new plan was for me to sleep in, take my time getting the boys dressed and then head to the luncheon. My friend, Lauren, would meet me at the luncheon and we would go from there. It sounds like such a reasonable, simple, infallible plan. Doesn’t it?
I had borrowed a car from my in-laws and driven to my parent’s house the night before the wedding. It just seemed like my in-laws didn’t need the complication of house guests the weekend they were throwing two weddings. So, naturally, I slept later than I should have. My sister helped me get the kids dressed. I told her goodbye and hurried out the door just in time to drive to the luncheon.
About ten minutes and five miles later, Ryan threw up. I swear there is no more horrible noise than a kid puking in the car. Your heart freezes and before you can even worry about the car, car seat or clothes, you realize that your child is having a crisis and there is absolutely nothing you can do to help. Ryan gasped for breath and then cried out hoarsely, “Mommie, help me.” Of all the things he could have done! For heaven sake, scream, so I can be annoyed at the extra noise, cry so I can have an active, achievable task in trying to get you to quiet down. I chocked down my emotions and tried to think pragmatically. Why in the world would I have thought to pack clothes? All I knew was that I had flown across the country and already missed the ceremony. I had to make it to the luncheon.
I flipped the car around and grabbed the cell phone, courtesy of my very thoughtful father-in-law. My kids had a limited amount of dress clothing and it had been carefully rationed for the weekend. I called my sister and asked her if her little boy had anything that was way too big for him. She gathered together a couple of outfits, including an extra in case Ryan threw up again.
Once we arrived home, Amber was waiting by the door to help me clean the mess and hose off Ryan. In a matter of minutes, we were ready to set off. We’d be a little late, but we weren’t going to no-show. I should have expected this. Ryan has gotten sick every time we flew home. Perhaps the change in altitude was to blame.
We drove to Bountiful with no further problems. My mother-in-law had given me the name of the intersection to go to. Well, I drove in circles, down each of the four roads in the intersection and didn’t see it. In desperation, I tried to call Joy’s cell phone. Of course it was off. She wasn’t going to be answering calls during her son’s wedding luncheon. I did remember the name of the place I was supposed to be going, so I drove to a grocery store with a pay phone and looked it up in the phone book. It wasn’t in the intersection I’d been circling.
Unfortunately, the place didn’t have a name or address printed on the building, so I passed it a couple of times before chancing to see a familiar car. Sean and Ryan were both asleep in their car seats and looked down at them helplessly wondering what to do. Fate intervened and I happened to recognize two people walking toward the entrance to the building. I knew they were related to my husband; although, at the time, I wasn’t sure how. Hoping they’d recognize me, I swallowed my pride and shouted to them. They must have known who I was, because they immediately came over to help. One took Chloe and the other Sean. I was left to carry in Ryan. I remember a conference talk on being grateful for small miracles. Since that talk, I’m amazed at how many hundreds of them I notice in my everyday life. They seem to come one after another when you’re a parent.
Halfway in, I ran into my friend who was also just arriving, since I had given her the same wrong directions I had been following. She had happened to see me. That was lucky. She didn’t know the name of the place. Everything seemed to be going well, finally. At least they did until we walked into the decorated dining room. Apparently the staff knew exactly how many people were coming, because they had set up exactly enough chairs for the expected guests. It seems like a logical thing to do. But, since we were late, the only seats left were one here and one there. I simply could not spread my kids throughout the room.
On top of that, the room was in absolute silence. I felt like an idiot. I walked over to a table with two seats together, but was informed that those chairs were being saved for the couple who had been helping carry in my kids. They were Joy’s sister and her husband, I realized. And they were very thoughtful and insisted we take those seats, although the one who had been saving them wasn’t as pleased. I can’t say I blame her. She wanted to sit by two charming adults. Instead she got me, my friend and a hundred kids (Sean counts as 98). We were able to rig it so the older kids could sit and I attempted to keep my head down. After interrupting the peaceful lunch, I just wanted go unnoticed from that point on.
I balanced feeding the kids and Lauren took care of Chloe. It was working out okay. The only real problem was that with all of the people and food on the table, no one ever bothered to bring anything for me. I don’t think it was anyone’s fault. Even Lauren, who was sitting next to me, didn’t notice that I never got to eat. And I certainly was not going to march into the kitchen and demand food. I didn’t have the time, gumption or enough hands to leave the table. That was okay, a small thing.
During the dinner, they passed a microphone around the tables and asked everyone to introduce themselves. Lauren quickly muttered that I needed to introduce her since she wasn’t going to. We’d joked about her coming to the lunch and I had asked her to please dress in lederhosen and put her hair in pigtails so I could tell my husband’s family she was my au pair. Well, I wasn’t real sure how to pronounce au pair. When the microphone came to me, I introduced myself, my kids and Lauren, my nanny. It was a great joke that I assumed most people would blow it off. Everyone knew Nate was a poor, broke medical student. Everyone, that was, in the groom’s family.
They brought out dessert and it was the best thing I’d seen in a long time. I was starving. I walked over and got two pieces. I cut one in half and gave some to Ryan and some to Sean. About this time, Lauren walked in and told me Chloe needed her mom. Oh well. I left my lovely cake and took her to the bathroom to feed her.
I came back to find the tables cleared and Lauren trying desperately to control Ryan and Sean, who were entranced by mirrors that covered the back wall. I ran over and scooped Sean up, tickling his tummy. An old man gave me a pitying look and said, “It’s nice to see you getting to be involved sometimes.” I made a non committal comment about how fun they were and walked away. It took me a whole minute to figure out what in the world he was talking about-my nanny. I went into defensive mode for a moment. After all, if I wanted to have a nanny to help with my kids it was not inherently wrong, no matter whose mother had raised eleven kids as a widow on a chicken farm in Timbuktu. It didn’t last. I didn’t really care what the old stranger thought and it was time to load up the kids and get them to Grandma’s house to dress.
Lauren hugged me goodbye and my in-laws helped me get the children to the car. In no time, we were on our way. The luncheon was over, without disaster. The boys were going to look adorable in their tuxedos. Everything was fine. Ten minutes into the drive, Ryan threw up again. Excellent.
It wasn’t until I arrived at Joy’s house and noticed that she wasn’t there that I remembered the dress. Was I supposed to have gone to the store with Joy? Well, it was too late to do anything about that. I took the boys into the bathroom and started hosing them off. I rinsed the throw up clothes and threw them into the washer. I scrubbed the car seat and left it in the air to dry out. The other members of the family were busy getting themselves dressed. My father-in-law, Chad, told me where the church they were holding the reception at was before he hurried off to make it for pictures. Pretty soon, I was alone with my kids. Maybe Joy wasn’t coming back to the house.
I started packing the kids and their clothes into the car to find the church. Just before I left, Joy pulled in. She told me they were out of dresses that matched the wedding party, so she had bought the only thing they had in my size. It was cream and gold. The wedding party was in hot pink and black. I didn’t care, but hoped the bride wouldn’t be angry. I would just have to steer clear of pictures. I rushed into the bathroom and put on the dress. I must say, I looked fabulous. Perhaps it would be hard for people to see a flustered, neglectful mother while I was dressed like this. More likely, since I wouldn’t match, I would look like a pathetic cousin trying desperately to look dignified while I chased my children. Oh well. I looked great anyway.
We hurried over to the church and I picked a random room to dress my boys and stash my stuff in. I struggled a bit to figure out where everything went on the tiny tuxedos, but eventually, everyone had formal wear on. Chloe was adorable. The boys looked a little disheveled. The tuxedos were too big and impossible to keep tucked in. I couldn’t figure out the point of the little button covers, so I just ignored them. It seemed like way too much work. The boys were never going to look polished.
Like an angel, another of my sisters-in-law appeared as soon as we entered the reception hall. She wanted Chloe. Fabulous. I gave her the baby and chased after the boys. I could handle that. Geez, why did I need a husband at all? This was way too easy. We had missed most of the pictures. I wasn’t going to be in them, but my mother-in-law had rented tuxedos for her grandkids. It would have been nice to have it documented. Oh well. We were disaster free for a while, a short while.
Once the reception was in full-swing, Chloe decided to have a poop explosion. All of a sudden, my sister-in-law didn’t want to hold her anymore. I recruited some of Nate’s brothers to help with the boys and took her to the bathroom. It was an amazing explosion. I pulled her tights and onesy off. They both went straight into the sink to be rinsed out. Her dress had a yellow stain on the back that didn’t come out even with a good scrubbing. I got her as redressed as I could manage and hurried out to see if the boys had broken anything yet.
Laney, my sister-in-law was happy to take a less-stinky Chloe. About that time, Jordan, Nate’s youngest brother rushed into the room and told me, “Ryan’s bleeding.” I ran out into the hall and immediately heard piercing screams from the direction of the men’s bathroom. I went in; thankfully, no one was actually using the bathroom.
Another of my brothers-in-law, Christian, was holding my screaming son, attempting to dab at a gash in his forehead. Ryan’s face was covered in blood and he was kicking and squirming. I took him from Christian and tried to calm him down by letting him know that mommy had him. He calmed a little, but would not let me touch his forehead.
I knew that there wasn’t a chance I would get to clean him up or even get a good look at his face until he calmed down. So, I took him into the reception and got him a dish of ice cream from the refreshment table. It worked. In a few moments, he was contentedly eating his ice cream. I want you to fully appreciate the scene. Ryan had streaks of blood across his face. He was sitting at the table eating ice cream and wearing a tuxedo. I hope Justin’s new wife appreciated her beautiful wedding having a touch of Halloween, because I caused it.
I took a wet wipe and began the slow work of cleaning Ryan while he was still eating. Boy that ice cream looked good. I asked him if he was okay. He said, “Mom, that guy, he take me and hurt me.” Those are words you never want to hear as a parent. But I knew that the actual gash came from Ryan running into the corner of a door when he wasn’t watching where he was going. That meant that he was referring to Christian trying to clean his face. It was so sad, Christian was an attractive bachelor. He was in his mid-twenties. Most people would be in an extended teenaged crisis at that point in their lives. But he was trying desperately to be a part of his nephew’s lives. He was trying to help me and endear himself to them. Poor Christian.
While all of this was going on, Sean was putting his adorable little fingers in the wedding cake. He made some festive decoration in the perfect fondant. How could I have thought to take my eyes off him for a second?
Joy came over to me and suggested I take the boys to her house and get them some food. She was in very good humor and if she was really saying, “Get out of here and stop ruining Justin’s wedding,” she didn’t show it. The thing was that there was only an hour left of the wedding. One thing I didn’t want to do was get them in the car, haul them somewhere, and then have to unload and load again. If we could just hang out until the cake cutting with no more disasters, I would just drive them the hour to my mom’s house. But more guests kept showing up and the line never broke. My boys had gone from euphoric to ornery. It was time to go. I said goodbye to everyone, including the groom. He told me again how much they’d missed me at the ceremony. His bride told him not to make me feel any worse. Perhaps the ceremony was the only part of her wedding that survived.
Some of the family helped me load up the kids and we left. Less than a half hour into the drive, my mom called me on Chad’s cell phone. She was at the wedding. Where was I? I didn’t even have the energy to feel bad. I told her I was passing an Arby’s and she should meet me there. Ryan was asleep in the car when I pulled into the parking lot. I got out of the car. I must have looked like I got jilted at the prom, standing there in the Arby’s parking lot in my formal. I hadn’t even bothered to go to Joy’s house to change. The boys were still in their tuxedos. Ryan didn’t have any clean clothes anyway. I just watched for my mom’s car. She could help me carry the kids in and I could finally get something to eat.
I ordered food for me and the boys, my mom paid for it. I took an ornery Chloe to the restaurant’s outdoor bathroom, after getting the key from an employee. It was fabulous. I had to undress nearly completely to feed her. I suppose formals aren’t made with nursing in mind. Apparently the kids hadn’t worked out all of their energy because they ran wild through the restaurant after I returned. I didn’t care. There was no one they could bother. I didn’t care until Sean stripped completely naked. As I dressed him, I told my mom it was time to go. I reached for my keys. They were gone.
Mom and I went on a wild search of the Arby’s trying to find where one of the boys had stuck my keys. We found them, wedged to the side of a bench amid stale french-fries and half-eaten chicken nuggets. They were completely in accessible. Nevertheless, we tried. I didn’t want to ask for help. In the end, the manager had to come free the keys.
Ryan cried that he wanted to ride with grandma. I put his car seat in my mom’s car. Halfway home, she pulled off the freeway. I followed, hoping nothing was wrong. There was my sweet little boy, covered in puke again. We sopped it up as well as we could and took his tuxedo off. I wrapped him in my mom’s coat and put him back in his seat. Luckily, that was the last time on that trip that any of my children threw up. But I was a little overwhelmed when I remembered that tomorrow was yet another wedding.
Almost absent-mindedly, I wondered what should be done about the tuxedo. They were dry-clean-only and so I imagined it would be bad to rinse it out. On the other hand, could I really return it to the rental place covered in puke? What would you have done?
Katharine’s wedding wasn’t nearly as much fun. In fact, I even got to take a few pictures at that one. A couple days after all the excitement, my brother announced he was getting married a month and a half after we went back to Chicago. I told him good luck, but I wouldn’t make it. So, he moved the wedding up to the week after we were supposed to go home and asked me to stay an extra week.
Nathan, of course, couldn’t stay. He had school. But I reasoned that it wouldn’t be that bad for me. It was just one more wedding alone and then a flight, with a layover, alone. On top of that, Eric had scheduled his wedding day for my sixth anniversary. So, I would not be with my husband to celebrate six wonderful years and three beautiful children, as I should have been. I stayed for Eric’s wedding and was watched over by angels. My life is nothing if not interesting.
-Neal A. Maxwell
Chloe was born on her dad’s brother’s birthday. Growing up I always felt a bit gypped that I had my birthday all to myself. My sister got to celebrate her birthday with my grandma. So, when I went into labor on the morning of January 18th, I insisted my husband call his little brother before he called anyone else. Honestly, I don’t know that Justin was all that impressed.
But when he planned his wedding for the day before Nathan took his last final, I decided that the kids and I needed to be there, even though my husband couldn’t come. That meant that I would take Ryan-barely three, Sean-barely two, and Chloe- almost four months, on the three hour flight from Chicago to Salt Lake City.
A month before this exciting event (I mean the plane ride, not the wedding), Nate’s sister decided she was going to get married the day after her brother. I thought, “Sweet! Two birds with one stone.” But it got even better. Katharine, Nate’s sister, was living in Virginia. She was also going to be flying home for the weddings. So, she worked it out that she would have a layover in Chicago and then fly out to Salt Lake on the same flight as me. I avoided the disaster of going on my own.
Nate also had to take the board exam that summer. He decided since he was missing the weddings anyway, that he would stay an extra few weeks in Chicago to study without the kids and me to distract him. He would fly out a couple days before the test, take the test in Utah, stay there for the two weeks until school started again, and we could all fly back together. Owing to our money situation, we would have a layover on the way back. Nathan whined about that for a while, but I pointed out that when the day was over, even if it turned out to be a hard day, we would be about 400 dollars richer than had we paid for the direct flight. The price difference between an economy flight and a comfortable flight is amazing to me. Sure, I would prefer to be comfortable. But it is never a matter of twenty dollars and if I spend a hundred dollars in one day, I’d better dang well have something to show for it the next.
The most difficult part of the flight to Salt Lake was the time from when I kissed my sweet husband goodbye to when I arrived at the gate and met my sister-in-law. I had the boys in the double stroller (A hand-me down from a member of my ward) and the baby in a carrier against my chest. I had a backpack with my kid’s needs on my back. I knew I was a spectacle, but I was getting used to that.
When we arrived at the Security checkpoint, things really got fun. The guards informed me that I would need to fold up the stroller and put it on the x-ray machine. So, I pulled the boys out of their seats and stood them next to me. As soon as I got the stroller folded up and, somehow, maneuvered it onto the belt, despite the baby still on my chest, I took their shoes off and pushed the boys through the metal detector. Then, the security guard told me that the baby carrier would also need to be x-rayed. Keep in mind this was not one of those huge back-pack ones. It is made of a piece of material and a couple plastic clasps. Well, I had to take my back pack off anyway. I tried to look graceful. But it was impossible not to hear the exasperated sighs of the people in line behind me.
One of the guards finally said, “Do you need help?” I told her I needed someone to hold the baby while I got unloaded. She shouted to somewhere past the security checkpoint, “There’s a lady here with three little kids. She needs a hand.”
Another woman in a security uniform stepped forward, looking completely perplexed. She said, “She’s by herself?” as if that was the most amazing thing she’d ever heard. The first lady just nodded. I handed Chloe to the reluctant assistant and pulled the carrier over my head. Somehow, we all made it through the metal detector without any further complications.
Anxious to stop holding up traffic, I opened the stroller and threw the boys in their seats. When I turned to take my baby, however, the stroller collapsed with my children in it. Apparently I hadn’t gotten it locked into place. I hadn’t had it for very long. I had never been so humiliated. Well, it often seems that way. I struggled to get it open and clicked into place while Ryan and Sean bellowed. With the stroller working, Chloe strapped in and the backpack balancing out her weight, I finally turned to scurry away, hoping the bad parent police weren’t sent after me on my way to the terminal.
Katharine was waiting for me, fresh off her flight from Virginia. Thanks to her help, the non-stop, three hour flight was pretty forgettable. Well, it was forgettable to me. I’m certain the passengers around me would disagree. When you are as abundantly blessed as I have been, the extraordinary often becomes mundane.
Lucky for us, the Salt Lake international airport was under construction when we flew in. Without that, we would never have had the exciting opportunity of discovering how many people can squish into a Lincoln. My mother-in-law was throwing a birthday party for Katharine that evening. Did I mention it was her birthday? How could I have forgotten? I am sure she felt very lucky to get to spend her birthday on a plane with my adorable children. Honestly, I think she was so excited to be entering the same state as her fiancé, that she didn’t care much how that was facilitated. She truly had a great attitude about the whole situation.
Because of the birthday party, my mother-in-law, Joy, had driven down to pick me and the kids up. My dad and sister, with her little boy who was two months younger than Sean, showed up as well. Amber was bringing me car seats. We have enough growing children in our family that I could borrow all the necessary car seats, rather than having to worry about bringing mine from Chicago. Dad just missed me (or, more accurately, he missed Ryan, Sean & Chloe). Who wouldn’t? I was honestly surprised the whole state didn’t show up.
Joy, against all odds, had managed to find a parking space in the terrace next to the airport. Dad and Amber hadn’t fared so well. They had been forced to park a couple miles away and take a shuttle to the airport. In order for me to go to Odgen with Joy (an hour drive), I needed to retrieve the car seats from Amber’s car. In a show of excellent humor, Joy suggested we put all our luggage in the trunk of her car and all the people inside.
It took about twenty minutes of pushing and pulling, but the luggage fit. Amber and I sat in the back seat, with our four children climbing on us. Dad and Joy sat in the front. Joy managed to drive to the parking lot despite Sean curled up in the back window. I did try valiantly to keep him down. But I was mostly concerned that my little Chloe didn’t fall. The whole thing barely fazed the grandparents. It’s very hard to get out of the mindset of safety we, as young parents, have been rightly forced into and realize that our parents didn’t even use car seats.
Justin’s wedding was by far the most fun. His lovely fiancé had bought me a dress to wear. Katharine and I both tried our dresses on after her birthday party, the day before the wedding. Mine was tight and decided I’d just wear it, despite feeling uncomfortable. Katharine is quite a bit smaller than me and had a dress two sizes smaller than mine. She couldn’t even zip it up. So, I gave her mine. It fit her perfectly. Joy suggested we run to the mall and exchange Katharine’s for something to fit me the next day. So, I mentally added that to my list of things to do.
The wedding was in the morning at the Bountiful Temple. It would be followed by a luncheon and then pictures and the reception. The contract they had signed with the center catering the luncheon stipulated that every child had to have at least one adult assigned to them. Joy had explained this to me and I had asked my best friend to watch my kids while I went to the temple and then meet me at the luncheon to help with the children. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Sometime during the birthday party, I discovered that my temple recommend was in Chicago. I was between wallets and so Nate had taken it and put it in his the last time I had used it. It turned out I would be skipping the ceremony. It broke my heart because I had missed Justin’s endowment as well. My whole wallet had been lost that time.
The new plan was for me to sleep in, take my time getting the boys dressed and then head to the luncheon. My friend, Lauren, would meet me at the luncheon and we would go from there. It sounds like such a reasonable, simple, infallible plan. Doesn’t it?
I had borrowed a car from my in-laws and driven to my parent’s house the night before the wedding. It just seemed like my in-laws didn’t need the complication of house guests the weekend they were throwing two weddings. So, naturally, I slept later than I should have. My sister helped me get the kids dressed. I told her goodbye and hurried out the door just in time to drive to the luncheon.
About ten minutes and five miles later, Ryan threw up. I swear there is no more horrible noise than a kid puking in the car. Your heart freezes and before you can even worry about the car, car seat or clothes, you realize that your child is having a crisis and there is absolutely nothing you can do to help. Ryan gasped for breath and then cried out hoarsely, “Mommie, help me.” Of all the things he could have done! For heaven sake, scream, so I can be annoyed at the extra noise, cry so I can have an active, achievable task in trying to get you to quiet down. I chocked down my emotions and tried to think pragmatically. Why in the world would I have thought to pack clothes? All I knew was that I had flown across the country and already missed the ceremony. I had to make it to the luncheon.
I flipped the car around and grabbed the cell phone, courtesy of my very thoughtful father-in-law. My kids had a limited amount of dress clothing and it had been carefully rationed for the weekend. I called my sister and asked her if her little boy had anything that was way too big for him. She gathered together a couple of outfits, including an extra in case Ryan threw up again.
Once we arrived home, Amber was waiting by the door to help me clean the mess and hose off Ryan. In a matter of minutes, we were ready to set off. We’d be a little late, but we weren’t going to no-show. I should have expected this. Ryan has gotten sick every time we flew home. Perhaps the change in altitude was to blame.
We drove to Bountiful with no further problems. My mother-in-law had given me the name of the intersection to go to. Well, I drove in circles, down each of the four roads in the intersection and didn’t see it. In desperation, I tried to call Joy’s cell phone. Of course it was off. She wasn’t going to be answering calls during her son’s wedding luncheon. I did remember the name of the place I was supposed to be going, so I drove to a grocery store with a pay phone and looked it up in the phone book. It wasn’t in the intersection I’d been circling.
Unfortunately, the place didn’t have a name or address printed on the building, so I passed it a couple of times before chancing to see a familiar car. Sean and Ryan were both asleep in their car seats and looked down at them helplessly wondering what to do. Fate intervened and I happened to recognize two people walking toward the entrance to the building. I knew they were related to my husband; although, at the time, I wasn’t sure how. Hoping they’d recognize me, I swallowed my pride and shouted to them. They must have known who I was, because they immediately came over to help. One took Chloe and the other Sean. I was left to carry in Ryan. I remember a conference talk on being grateful for small miracles. Since that talk, I’m amazed at how many hundreds of them I notice in my everyday life. They seem to come one after another when you’re a parent.
Halfway in, I ran into my friend who was also just arriving, since I had given her the same wrong directions I had been following. She had happened to see me. That was lucky. She didn’t know the name of the place. Everything seemed to be going well, finally. At least they did until we walked into the decorated dining room. Apparently the staff knew exactly how many people were coming, because they had set up exactly enough chairs for the expected guests. It seems like a logical thing to do. But, since we were late, the only seats left were one here and one there. I simply could not spread my kids throughout the room.
On top of that, the room was in absolute silence. I felt like an idiot. I walked over to a table with two seats together, but was informed that those chairs were being saved for the couple who had been helping carry in my kids. They were Joy’s sister and her husband, I realized. And they were very thoughtful and insisted we take those seats, although the one who had been saving them wasn’t as pleased. I can’t say I blame her. She wanted to sit by two charming adults. Instead she got me, my friend and a hundred kids (Sean counts as 98). We were able to rig it so the older kids could sit and I attempted to keep my head down. After interrupting the peaceful lunch, I just wanted go unnoticed from that point on.
I balanced feeding the kids and Lauren took care of Chloe. It was working out okay. The only real problem was that with all of the people and food on the table, no one ever bothered to bring anything for me. I don’t think it was anyone’s fault. Even Lauren, who was sitting next to me, didn’t notice that I never got to eat. And I certainly was not going to march into the kitchen and demand food. I didn’t have the time, gumption or enough hands to leave the table. That was okay, a small thing.
During the dinner, they passed a microphone around the tables and asked everyone to introduce themselves. Lauren quickly muttered that I needed to introduce her since she wasn’t going to. We’d joked about her coming to the lunch and I had asked her to please dress in lederhosen and put her hair in pigtails so I could tell my husband’s family she was my au pair. Well, I wasn’t real sure how to pronounce au pair. When the microphone came to me, I introduced myself, my kids and Lauren, my nanny. It was a great joke that I assumed most people would blow it off. Everyone knew Nate was a poor, broke medical student. Everyone, that was, in the groom’s family.
They brought out dessert and it was the best thing I’d seen in a long time. I was starving. I walked over and got two pieces. I cut one in half and gave some to Ryan and some to Sean. About this time, Lauren walked in and told me Chloe needed her mom. Oh well. I left my lovely cake and took her to the bathroom to feed her.
I came back to find the tables cleared and Lauren trying desperately to control Ryan and Sean, who were entranced by mirrors that covered the back wall. I ran over and scooped Sean up, tickling his tummy. An old man gave me a pitying look and said, “It’s nice to see you getting to be involved sometimes.” I made a non committal comment about how fun they were and walked away. It took me a whole minute to figure out what in the world he was talking about-my nanny. I went into defensive mode for a moment. After all, if I wanted to have a nanny to help with my kids it was not inherently wrong, no matter whose mother had raised eleven kids as a widow on a chicken farm in Timbuktu. It didn’t last. I didn’t really care what the old stranger thought and it was time to load up the kids and get them to Grandma’s house to dress.
Lauren hugged me goodbye and my in-laws helped me get the children to the car. In no time, we were on our way. The luncheon was over, without disaster. The boys were going to look adorable in their tuxedos. Everything was fine. Ten minutes into the drive, Ryan threw up again. Excellent.
It wasn’t until I arrived at Joy’s house and noticed that she wasn’t there that I remembered the dress. Was I supposed to have gone to the store with Joy? Well, it was too late to do anything about that. I took the boys into the bathroom and started hosing them off. I rinsed the throw up clothes and threw them into the washer. I scrubbed the car seat and left it in the air to dry out. The other members of the family were busy getting themselves dressed. My father-in-law, Chad, told me where the church they were holding the reception at was before he hurried off to make it for pictures. Pretty soon, I was alone with my kids. Maybe Joy wasn’t coming back to the house.
I started packing the kids and their clothes into the car to find the church. Just before I left, Joy pulled in. She told me they were out of dresses that matched the wedding party, so she had bought the only thing they had in my size. It was cream and gold. The wedding party was in hot pink and black. I didn’t care, but hoped the bride wouldn’t be angry. I would just have to steer clear of pictures. I rushed into the bathroom and put on the dress. I must say, I looked fabulous. Perhaps it would be hard for people to see a flustered, neglectful mother while I was dressed like this. More likely, since I wouldn’t match, I would look like a pathetic cousin trying desperately to look dignified while I chased my children. Oh well. I looked great anyway.
We hurried over to the church and I picked a random room to dress my boys and stash my stuff in. I struggled a bit to figure out where everything went on the tiny tuxedos, but eventually, everyone had formal wear on. Chloe was adorable. The boys looked a little disheveled. The tuxedos were too big and impossible to keep tucked in. I couldn’t figure out the point of the little button covers, so I just ignored them. It seemed like way too much work. The boys were never going to look polished.
Like an angel, another of my sisters-in-law appeared as soon as we entered the reception hall. She wanted Chloe. Fabulous. I gave her the baby and chased after the boys. I could handle that. Geez, why did I need a husband at all? This was way too easy. We had missed most of the pictures. I wasn’t going to be in them, but my mother-in-law had rented tuxedos for her grandkids. It would have been nice to have it documented. Oh well. We were disaster free for a while, a short while.
Once the reception was in full-swing, Chloe decided to have a poop explosion. All of a sudden, my sister-in-law didn’t want to hold her anymore. I recruited some of Nate’s brothers to help with the boys and took her to the bathroom. It was an amazing explosion. I pulled her tights and onesy off. They both went straight into the sink to be rinsed out. Her dress had a yellow stain on the back that didn’t come out even with a good scrubbing. I got her as redressed as I could manage and hurried out to see if the boys had broken anything yet.
Laney, my sister-in-law was happy to take a less-stinky Chloe. About that time, Jordan, Nate’s youngest brother rushed into the room and told me, “Ryan’s bleeding.” I ran out into the hall and immediately heard piercing screams from the direction of the men’s bathroom. I went in; thankfully, no one was actually using the bathroom.
Another of my brothers-in-law, Christian, was holding my screaming son, attempting to dab at a gash in his forehead. Ryan’s face was covered in blood and he was kicking and squirming. I took him from Christian and tried to calm him down by letting him know that mommy had him. He calmed a little, but would not let me touch his forehead.
I knew that there wasn’t a chance I would get to clean him up or even get a good look at his face until he calmed down. So, I took him into the reception and got him a dish of ice cream from the refreshment table. It worked. In a few moments, he was contentedly eating his ice cream. I want you to fully appreciate the scene. Ryan had streaks of blood across his face. He was sitting at the table eating ice cream and wearing a tuxedo. I hope Justin’s new wife appreciated her beautiful wedding having a touch of Halloween, because I caused it.
I took a wet wipe and began the slow work of cleaning Ryan while he was still eating. Boy that ice cream looked good. I asked him if he was okay. He said, “Mom, that guy, he take me and hurt me.” Those are words you never want to hear as a parent. But I knew that the actual gash came from Ryan running into the corner of a door when he wasn’t watching where he was going. That meant that he was referring to Christian trying to clean his face. It was so sad, Christian was an attractive bachelor. He was in his mid-twenties. Most people would be in an extended teenaged crisis at that point in their lives. But he was trying desperately to be a part of his nephew’s lives. He was trying to help me and endear himself to them. Poor Christian.
While all of this was going on, Sean was putting his adorable little fingers in the wedding cake. He made some festive decoration in the perfect fondant. How could I have thought to take my eyes off him for a second?
Joy came over to me and suggested I take the boys to her house and get them some food. She was in very good humor and if she was really saying, “Get out of here and stop ruining Justin’s wedding,” she didn’t show it. The thing was that there was only an hour left of the wedding. One thing I didn’t want to do was get them in the car, haul them somewhere, and then have to unload and load again. If we could just hang out until the cake cutting with no more disasters, I would just drive them the hour to my mom’s house. But more guests kept showing up and the line never broke. My boys had gone from euphoric to ornery. It was time to go. I said goodbye to everyone, including the groom. He told me again how much they’d missed me at the ceremony. His bride told him not to make me feel any worse. Perhaps the ceremony was the only part of her wedding that survived.
Some of the family helped me load up the kids and we left. Less than a half hour into the drive, my mom called me on Chad’s cell phone. She was at the wedding. Where was I? I didn’t even have the energy to feel bad. I told her I was passing an Arby’s and she should meet me there. Ryan was asleep in the car when I pulled into the parking lot. I got out of the car. I must have looked like I got jilted at the prom, standing there in the Arby’s parking lot in my formal. I hadn’t even bothered to go to Joy’s house to change. The boys were still in their tuxedos. Ryan didn’t have any clean clothes anyway. I just watched for my mom’s car. She could help me carry the kids in and I could finally get something to eat.
I ordered food for me and the boys, my mom paid for it. I took an ornery Chloe to the restaurant’s outdoor bathroom, after getting the key from an employee. It was fabulous. I had to undress nearly completely to feed her. I suppose formals aren’t made with nursing in mind. Apparently the kids hadn’t worked out all of their energy because they ran wild through the restaurant after I returned. I didn’t care. There was no one they could bother. I didn’t care until Sean stripped completely naked. As I dressed him, I told my mom it was time to go. I reached for my keys. They were gone.
Mom and I went on a wild search of the Arby’s trying to find where one of the boys had stuck my keys. We found them, wedged to the side of a bench amid stale french-fries and half-eaten chicken nuggets. They were completely in accessible. Nevertheless, we tried. I didn’t want to ask for help. In the end, the manager had to come free the keys.
Ryan cried that he wanted to ride with grandma. I put his car seat in my mom’s car. Halfway home, she pulled off the freeway. I followed, hoping nothing was wrong. There was my sweet little boy, covered in puke again. We sopped it up as well as we could and took his tuxedo off. I wrapped him in my mom’s coat and put him back in his seat. Luckily, that was the last time on that trip that any of my children threw up. But I was a little overwhelmed when I remembered that tomorrow was yet another wedding.
Almost absent-mindedly, I wondered what should be done about the tuxedo. They were dry-clean-only and so I imagined it would be bad to rinse it out. On the other hand, could I really return it to the rental place covered in puke? What would you have done?
Katharine’s wedding wasn’t nearly as much fun. In fact, I even got to take a few pictures at that one. A couple days after all the excitement, my brother announced he was getting married a month and a half after we went back to Chicago. I told him good luck, but I wouldn’t make it. So, he moved the wedding up to the week after we were supposed to go home and asked me to stay an extra week.
Nathan, of course, couldn’t stay. He had school. But I reasoned that it wouldn’t be that bad for me. It was just one more wedding alone and then a flight, with a layover, alone. On top of that, Eric had scheduled his wedding day for my sixth anniversary. So, I would not be with my husband to celebrate six wonderful years and three beautiful children, as I should have been. I stayed for Eric’s wedding and was watched over by angels. My life is nothing if not interesting.
Chapter Nine: The Emergency Room-again
“Jesus, our Savior, was the epitome of kindness and compassion. He healed the sick. He spent much of His time ministering to the one or many. He spoke compassionately to the Samaritan woman who was looked down upon by many. He instructed His disciples to allow the little children to come unto Him. He was kind to all who had sinned, condemning only the sin, not the sinner. He kindly allowed thousands of Nephites to come forward and feel the nail prints in His hands and feet. Yet His greatest act of kindness was found in His atoning sacrifice, thus freeing all from the effects of death, and all from the effects of sin, on conditions of repentance.”
-Joseph B. Wirthlin
This one’s a bit embarrassing to my sweet Nathan, but don’t worry about it affecting our marital bliss. He never reads anything I write. A man who is too busy to look at my novels certainly won’t be looking at a manuscript of “mommie” stories. Besides, it’s just too good not to tell.
It happened just as some friends we had over for dinner were heading out the door. Sean ran over to his daddy with his arms stretched up. Nathan grabbed him by the wrists and swung him up to catch him under his arms and throw him into the air. This was a game they’d played a hundred times before.
This time, however, Sean cried out just as Nate caught him. I hurried over to see if he was okay. We both forgot about the friends, who wished a fervent hope that it all turned out okay and left. Sean looked fine. He was clutching one arm to his body, though and whimpering. I said that it was probably going to be okay, but Nate interrupted with, “No. Amy, I heard it pop.”
Since neither of us had any expertise in the area and Sean wasn’t willing to even let us look at it, we decided not to wait. Something was obviously hurting him, even if we couldn’t see it. We squabbled for a minute about who was going to take him to the emergency room. (It was the only thing open.) Fortunately, for me, I was holding the trump card. I was the only one who could nurse Chloe. Besides, I pointed out, Nate was the one that caused it. That earned me a well-deserved dirty look.
In the couple of years we’d been there, we’d discovered that there was an emergency room only a few blocks from our house. It was certainly nothing like the beautiful hospital I went to when Ryan had croup, but this was a small thing. He would probably be in and out. Right! Nate headed off to the emergency room with my little boy.
I waited for hours for any news. Nate called me once from the hospital. They had seen the triage nurse. She had said it was no big deal, but they would do some precautionary x-rays. After the x-rays, they were told to sit and wait to see the doctor. They had been waiting for three hours. He hoped to be able to come home soon.
I had already put the other children to bed. I tried to wait longer, and fell asleep on the couch. An hour later, Nate walked in, holding a sleeping Sean in his arms. He hadn’t seen the doctor. Patients had come in a steady stream, tying up the resources of the ER. But that wasn’t the only reason he left. For the last hour he had been alone. Not even the triage nurse came around. There were no other patients. He decided that they had the x-rays and would call if anything was really wrong.
I expressed a little concern, but Nate said, “The nurse said it’s called ‘nursemaid’s elbow.’ It’s probably like a sprain or tennis elbow. You can look it up.” With an exhausted sigh, he walked up the stairs to the bedrooms and put little Sean in his bed before collapsing into ours. I looked regretfully at the computer. The power had been out for over an hour. I couldn’t look it up. Besides, Nate was probably right.
I awoke after only sleeping a few minutes. I could hear rustling and whining coming from the boys’ room. I walked in and touched Sean’s head. He whimpered and was still holding that arm tightly against his little body. I laid down beside him in that twin bed. Whenever he started to wake up, I whispered that mommy was there and he fell back asleep.
That is why I found myself up before everyone else. The first thing I did was call the hospital and explain the situation to them. I asked what the x-rays showed. They informed me, very curtly, that they would not release that information to a parent. If I wanted the results, I would have to have a doctor call them. Well, I was fresh out of doctors. The pediatrician that treats my boys wasn’t open yet.
I remembered what Nate had told me the night before and googled “nursemaid’s elbow.” It was a horrible moment for me. The websites explained that it was a dislocation of the elbow. No wonder poor Sean hadn’t been able to sleep. None of the sites I could find explained how to fix it, so I started looking for medical sites written for doctors. I searched online pediatrics textbooks. I figured Nate could work his way through the lingo.
I found one that seemed rather promising and ran up stairs. Nate was sleeping, but I put and end to that. I patted his back and said, “The internet said Nursemaid’s elbow is a dislocation. It won’t go away on its own.”
Nate blinked once and responded, “Well don’t I feel like and idiot.”
I pulled him downstairs and set him in front of the website I’d found. Within a few minutes he had his hand out in front of him and was muttering something while twisting it around. I went back upstairs and got Sean. He still didn’t want anyone to touch his arm.
Nate tried a few things while Sean cried and I had a sudden memory. It had been a year ago at a ward sponsored play group. A friend of mine was pulling on her sons arm telling him it was time to go. The son recoiled and started to cry. My friend freaked out, saying she’d heard the arm pop. Why hadn’t I remembered before? That was the same thing Nate had said. Another lady had walked over to the little catastrophe, taken the boys arm and twisted it. The boy immediately began acting normal. She told us it used to happen to one of her kids all the time and the doctor showed her how to fix it.
I ran for the ward directory and called Sister Clements. I asked her if I could bring Sean over and she told me that I could, but she thought she could tell me how to fix it over the phone. I handed the phone to Nate. He muttered, “Uh-huh. Okay. Right. Thanks a lot.” Then he hung up and said to me, “She said to do the same thing the website said. It’s not working.”
I was a little frustrated, but I hadn’t burned all my bridges. The doctor’s office was open now. I called the doctor. The receptionist told me there were no appointments available, but she could schedule me in a couple days. I begged her, telling her that I was certain this was something the doctor could fix in a matter of seconds. She told me I could talk to the doctor. I told him the problem and he said, “Okay, here’s what you do…” I handed the phone to Nate.
Again, I listened to “Uh-huh. Okay. Right. Thanks a lot.” Then he hung up and told me the doctor had told him the same thing as Sister Clements and the internet.
I growled in frustration and almost screamed, “Then why didn’t you tell him ‘that’s not working, can we bring him in to you.’”
Poor little Sean was cowering on the couch, clutching his injured arm. He obviously wasn’t letting Daddy near it. I walked over to him, grabbed his arm and twisted it a little more violently than I’d seen Nate do. Almost indistinguishably, it popped.
Nate walked over and said, “Let’s try again.” I pushed him away and told him I thought it might have popped that time. He looked skeptical. Sean, on the other hand, had stopped whimpering. The websites told that it might take a day or more for the child to begin using their hand. Within ten minutes, Sean was eating yogurt with it.
The really fun part of the story came about an hour later. I heard Nate on the phone with one of his medical school buddies. He was telling him how inefficient the emergency room was and how he got tired of waiting there. Then he said, “So I left and came home to look it up on the internet. I fixed it myself. It was really easy.”
My first reaction was to call my sister and tell her the whole hilarious story. But a little later, when Nate had moved on to something else, I walked over to him and said in my best deep, cool-guy voice, “I fixed it myself. It was really easy.”
My poor husband turned bright red and stuttered, “I’ll tell him you did it.” I just laughed and laughed. I love that man!
A week after that fun experience, Nate was playing on the computer while I was chopping vegetables for dinner. Chloe was playing on the floor in the living room. She started crying, so I abandoned my chopping to find out what was wrong with my baby.
As fate would have it, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Chloe. But, by the time I discovered that, I heard a screaming coming from the kitchen. I ran to the kitchen and found Sean standing on a step stool he had dragged over to the cupboard where I had been working. He was clutching his hand and dripping blood everywhere.
I yelled for Nate and started to examine my little boy’s hand. He had decided that chopping vegetables looked like a lot of fun and given it a try. Unfortunately, he’d managed to slit his finger tip. Nate only looked at it for a minute before declaring that it needed stitches. With a sigh, he added, “It’s your turn.”
I wrapped the finger with bandage to keep the bleeding at a minimum and then put a sock over the whole hand so Sean wouldn’t be tempted to remove the bandage. Then I packed my sweet, impetuous Sean into his car seat and headed for the same Emergency room he’d been to a week earlier.
I’m not the type of ideal wife that always has dinner on the table at five-thirty. My family is happy to eat around seven. This being the case, it was already getting dark when I pulled into the parking lot at the emergency room.
Unlike when Nate had taken Sean in, the waiting room was full of people. There was no one at the front desk, so I signed the paper and took a seat. It would be a little over two hours before anyone would bother to ask why we had driven to the scenic emergency room that fun, fun night.
I spotted a number of ironies right away. They had baskets full of magazines. I picked one up and started flipping through it. The title was something along the lines of, “Costal Living.” It featured stories about extravagant homes and where to get the best imported food. It was interesting considering the current social group in the ER waiting room.
I had read a news article only days before about the abysmal state of emergency medicine in the United States. The article pointed out that the system was overloaded with the poor and those without insurance using it as primary care. At the time, I laughed, because I knew a student couple in the same situation as me that took their little boy to the ER for ear infections because they hated the state health clinics. Looking around that overcrowded waiting room, it didn’t seem so funny.
I’m not making a statement about people being irresponsible and making it so that those with real emergencies can’t get care. I’m not speaking to a need for change in the current health care system. I’m not even pointing out how my heart aches to see people in such states of despair. If I’ve learned anything while raising my children and facing the various challenges, it’s that I don’t know enough about any given subject to be judgmental. The world is far more complicated than the most effective campaign ad would have us believe. I’m simply describing the scene and the impressions that were laid before me that night.
Across from where I struggled with trying to keep Sean near me, I noticed a young woman there with who must have been her mother. She smiled briefly when our eyes met. I made a friendly comment and was met with a familiar half-smile. It was familiar only since I had moved to Chicago. It meant, “I want to be gracious, but I have absolutely no idea what you’re saying.”
I recall telling my family that I was going to learn Spanish because I was sick of standing in grocery lines and being unable to engage in simple small talk. It was that way in the waiting room at the doctor’s office as well. It was that way in many of the places that I was used to a bit of noncommittal, small talk. I could see the “you sure have your hands full,” in this lady’s eyes. But, I was unable to laugh and tell her that she had no idea how right she was.
The kind looks of the lady were unique in that waiting room. I spent the next few hours making Sean keep his hand covered, running after him as he terrorized the other patients and trying to keep him distracted with toys and crayons that I kept in my backpack for church. Usually I would have had a variety of reactions. There would have been smiles from some people because they understood what I was going through. There would have been pitying looks from others. Some people would have glared at me with that “can’t you control your child?” gaze that I dreaded so much. I was shocked by the complete lack of interest. Everyone seemed to be consumed by their own thoughts or else cripplingly depressed.
Sean’s jovial attitude started to change as well. It hit me that my little boy hadn’t eaten. On one side of the waiting room, behind the wall that led to the bathrooms, there were a couple of vending machines. I glanced at them on my way out of the bathroom after changing Sean’s diaper. I walked over to my backpack and looked through the pockets, but I didn’t have any money. I hadn’t exactly thought about packing a bag as I ran out the door at home.
I sat down again, holding my whining son and attempting to distract him by driving a toy car along the floor. The next moment the lady who had been sitting across from us left. She came back with a bag of cheetoes, which she held out to Sean and said, “Here baby.” I’m pretty sure that exhausted her English abilities, but I tried to thank her anyway. She just smiled that blank smile and sat back down with her mom.
The whining stopped immediately and Sean was quickly seated on my lap, devouring the cheetoes. I don’t know how she knew what he needed. But it was strange to me, in light of social protocol. Many women would not let a stranger give their child something. I wouldn’t think to give someone else’s child something like that without first asking. If I couldn’t ask, I would probably have assumed that it would be more polite just to keep to myself. The bottom line was that there was someone in that room full of people preoccupied with their own suffering that was trying to help someone else. I was ashamed it wasn’t me. Again, I had to be a grateful receiver.
Shortly after that, we were called to the admitting desk to talk to the receptionist. She asked what was wrong and then asked to see the finger. I removed the sock and the bandages. The receptionist handed me some forms to sign and took Sean’s hand to look at his cut. By the time I looked up from the forms, Sean had his hurt hand stuck into the bag of cheetoes and was starting to whine from the sting. Then, I got the “can’t you control your child” look from the receptionist. Oh how I’d missed it!
I ran off to the bathroom to wash Sean’s orange stained hand and re-bandage it. When we emerged, the lady who had given us the cheetoes was gone. And the nurse was finally ready to see my little boy. She took his weight, temperature and blood pressure. She examined the finger and declared that it did, indeed, require stitches. We saw a very nice nurse practitioner an hour later. Sean got two stitches and an “incredibles” bandage. Naturally, the stitches became infected. You shouldn’t treat cuts with cheetoes powder. But that’s a whole different story.
A few months after our trips to the emergency room, I read a news article about a woman who had come into the same ER with chest pains. She had been told to have a seat and died while waiting. The coroner’s office declared it a homicide, putting the ER a few blocks from where we lived into the National news. I just shook my head, remembering how I’d told friends and family after our ER experiences that I was glad Sean’s injury wasn’t something more serious because he would have bled to death before anyone asked me what was wrong. Of course, it was just a shock comment to take their attention away from the obvious question of, “How did Sean get a knife?” I got so sick and tired of people asking me that that I started replying, “I gave it to him and told him to go play in the street.”
-Joseph B. Wirthlin
This one’s a bit embarrassing to my sweet Nathan, but don’t worry about it affecting our marital bliss. He never reads anything I write. A man who is too busy to look at my novels certainly won’t be looking at a manuscript of “mommie” stories. Besides, it’s just too good not to tell.
It happened just as some friends we had over for dinner were heading out the door. Sean ran over to his daddy with his arms stretched up. Nathan grabbed him by the wrists and swung him up to catch him under his arms and throw him into the air. This was a game they’d played a hundred times before.
This time, however, Sean cried out just as Nate caught him. I hurried over to see if he was okay. We both forgot about the friends, who wished a fervent hope that it all turned out okay and left. Sean looked fine. He was clutching one arm to his body, though and whimpering. I said that it was probably going to be okay, but Nate interrupted with, “No. Amy, I heard it pop.”
Since neither of us had any expertise in the area and Sean wasn’t willing to even let us look at it, we decided not to wait. Something was obviously hurting him, even if we couldn’t see it. We squabbled for a minute about who was going to take him to the emergency room. (It was the only thing open.) Fortunately, for me, I was holding the trump card. I was the only one who could nurse Chloe. Besides, I pointed out, Nate was the one that caused it. That earned me a well-deserved dirty look.
In the couple of years we’d been there, we’d discovered that there was an emergency room only a few blocks from our house. It was certainly nothing like the beautiful hospital I went to when Ryan had croup, but this was a small thing. He would probably be in and out. Right! Nate headed off to the emergency room with my little boy.
I waited for hours for any news. Nate called me once from the hospital. They had seen the triage nurse. She had said it was no big deal, but they would do some precautionary x-rays. After the x-rays, they were told to sit and wait to see the doctor. They had been waiting for three hours. He hoped to be able to come home soon.
I had already put the other children to bed. I tried to wait longer, and fell asleep on the couch. An hour later, Nate walked in, holding a sleeping Sean in his arms. He hadn’t seen the doctor. Patients had come in a steady stream, tying up the resources of the ER. But that wasn’t the only reason he left. For the last hour he had been alone. Not even the triage nurse came around. There were no other patients. He decided that they had the x-rays and would call if anything was really wrong.
I expressed a little concern, but Nate said, “The nurse said it’s called ‘nursemaid’s elbow.’ It’s probably like a sprain or tennis elbow. You can look it up.” With an exhausted sigh, he walked up the stairs to the bedrooms and put little Sean in his bed before collapsing into ours. I looked regretfully at the computer. The power had been out for over an hour. I couldn’t look it up. Besides, Nate was probably right.
I awoke after only sleeping a few minutes. I could hear rustling and whining coming from the boys’ room. I walked in and touched Sean’s head. He whimpered and was still holding that arm tightly against his little body. I laid down beside him in that twin bed. Whenever he started to wake up, I whispered that mommy was there and he fell back asleep.
That is why I found myself up before everyone else. The first thing I did was call the hospital and explain the situation to them. I asked what the x-rays showed. They informed me, very curtly, that they would not release that information to a parent. If I wanted the results, I would have to have a doctor call them. Well, I was fresh out of doctors. The pediatrician that treats my boys wasn’t open yet.
I remembered what Nate had told me the night before and googled “nursemaid’s elbow.” It was a horrible moment for me. The websites explained that it was a dislocation of the elbow. No wonder poor Sean hadn’t been able to sleep. None of the sites I could find explained how to fix it, so I started looking for medical sites written for doctors. I searched online pediatrics textbooks. I figured Nate could work his way through the lingo.
I found one that seemed rather promising and ran up stairs. Nate was sleeping, but I put and end to that. I patted his back and said, “The internet said Nursemaid’s elbow is a dislocation. It won’t go away on its own.”
Nate blinked once and responded, “Well don’t I feel like and idiot.”
I pulled him downstairs and set him in front of the website I’d found. Within a few minutes he had his hand out in front of him and was muttering something while twisting it around. I went back upstairs and got Sean. He still didn’t want anyone to touch his arm.
Nate tried a few things while Sean cried and I had a sudden memory. It had been a year ago at a ward sponsored play group. A friend of mine was pulling on her sons arm telling him it was time to go. The son recoiled and started to cry. My friend freaked out, saying she’d heard the arm pop. Why hadn’t I remembered before? That was the same thing Nate had said. Another lady had walked over to the little catastrophe, taken the boys arm and twisted it. The boy immediately began acting normal. She told us it used to happen to one of her kids all the time and the doctor showed her how to fix it.
I ran for the ward directory and called Sister Clements. I asked her if I could bring Sean over and she told me that I could, but she thought she could tell me how to fix it over the phone. I handed the phone to Nate. He muttered, “Uh-huh. Okay. Right. Thanks a lot.” Then he hung up and said to me, “She said to do the same thing the website said. It’s not working.”
I was a little frustrated, but I hadn’t burned all my bridges. The doctor’s office was open now. I called the doctor. The receptionist told me there were no appointments available, but she could schedule me in a couple days. I begged her, telling her that I was certain this was something the doctor could fix in a matter of seconds. She told me I could talk to the doctor. I told him the problem and he said, “Okay, here’s what you do…” I handed the phone to Nate.
Again, I listened to “Uh-huh. Okay. Right. Thanks a lot.” Then he hung up and told me the doctor had told him the same thing as Sister Clements and the internet.
I growled in frustration and almost screamed, “Then why didn’t you tell him ‘that’s not working, can we bring him in to you.’”
Poor little Sean was cowering on the couch, clutching his injured arm. He obviously wasn’t letting Daddy near it. I walked over to him, grabbed his arm and twisted it a little more violently than I’d seen Nate do. Almost indistinguishably, it popped.
Nate walked over and said, “Let’s try again.” I pushed him away and told him I thought it might have popped that time. He looked skeptical. Sean, on the other hand, had stopped whimpering. The websites told that it might take a day or more for the child to begin using their hand. Within ten minutes, Sean was eating yogurt with it.
The really fun part of the story came about an hour later. I heard Nate on the phone with one of his medical school buddies. He was telling him how inefficient the emergency room was and how he got tired of waiting there. Then he said, “So I left and came home to look it up on the internet. I fixed it myself. It was really easy.”
My first reaction was to call my sister and tell her the whole hilarious story. But a little later, when Nate had moved on to something else, I walked over to him and said in my best deep, cool-guy voice, “I fixed it myself. It was really easy.”
My poor husband turned bright red and stuttered, “I’ll tell him you did it.” I just laughed and laughed. I love that man!
A week after that fun experience, Nate was playing on the computer while I was chopping vegetables for dinner. Chloe was playing on the floor in the living room. She started crying, so I abandoned my chopping to find out what was wrong with my baby.
As fate would have it, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Chloe. But, by the time I discovered that, I heard a screaming coming from the kitchen. I ran to the kitchen and found Sean standing on a step stool he had dragged over to the cupboard where I had been working. He was clutching his hand and dripping blood everywhere.
I yelled for Nate and started to examine my little boy’s hand. He had decided that chopping vegetables looked like a lot of fun and given it a try. Unfortunately, he’d managed to slit his finger tip. Nate only looked at it for a minute before declaring that it needed stitches. With a sigh, he added, “It’s your turn.”
I wrapped the finger with bandage to keep the bleeding at a minimum and then put a sock over the whole hand so Sean wouldn’t be tempted to remove the bandage. Then I packed my sweet, impetuous Sean into his car seat and headed for the same Emergency room he’d been to a week earlier.
I’m not the type of ideal wife that always has dinner on the table at five-thirty. My family is happy to eat around seven. This being the case, it was already getting dark when I pulled into the parking lot at the emergency room.
Unlike when Nate had taken Sean in, the waiting room was full of people. There was no one at the front desk, so I signed the paper and took a seat. It would be a little over two hours before anyone would bother to ask why we had driven to the scenic emergency room that fun, fun night.
I spotted a number of ironies right away. They had baskets full of magazines. I picked one up and started flipping through it. The title was something along the lines of, “Costal Living.” It featured stories about extravagant homes and where to get the best imported food. It was interesting considering the current social group in the ER waiting room.
I had read a news article only days before about the abysmal state of emergency medicine in the United States. The article pointed out that the system was overloaded with the poor and those without insurance using it as primary care. At the time, I laughed, because I knew a student couple in the same situation as me that took their little boy to the ER for ear infections because they hated the state health clinics. Looking around that overcrowded waiting room, it didn’t seem so funny.
I’m not making a statement about people being irresponsible and making it so that those with real emergencies can’t get care. I’m not speaking to a need for change in the current health care system. I’m not even pointing out how my heart aches to see people in such states of despair. If I’ve learned anything while raising my children and facing the various challenges, it’s that I don’t know enough about any given subject to be judgmental. The world is far more complicated than the most effective campaign ad would have us believe. I’m simply describing the scene and the impressions that were laid before me that night.
Across from where I struggled with trying to keep Sean near me, I noticed a young woman there with who must have been her mother. She smiled briefly when our eyes met. I made a friendly comment and was met with a familiar half-smile. It was familiar only since I had moved to Chicago. It meant, “I want to be gracious, but I have absolutely no idea what you’re saying.”
I recall telling my family that I was going to learn Spanish because I was sick of standing in grocery lines and being unable to engage in simple small talk. It was that way in the waiting room at the doctor’s office as well. It was that way in many of the places that I was used to a bit of noncommittal, small talk. I could see the “you sure have your hands full,” in this lady’s eyes. But, I was unable to laugh and tell her that she had no idea how right she was.
The kind looks of the lady were unique in that waiting room. I spent the next few hours making Sean keep his hand covered, running after him as he terrorized the other patients and trying to keep him distracted with toys and crayons that I kept in my backpack for church. Usually I would have had a variety of reactions. There would have been smiles from some people because they understood what I was going through. There would have been pitying looks from others. Some people would have glared at me with that “can’t you control your child?” gaze that I dreaded so much. I was shocked by the complete lack of interest. Everyone seemed to be consumed by their own thoughts or else cripplingly depressed.
Sean’s jovial attitude started to change as well. It hit me that my little boy hadn’t eaten. On one side of the waiting room, behind the wall that led to the bathrooms, there were a couple of vending machines. I glanced at them on my way out of the bathroom after changing Sean’s diaper. I walked over to my backpack and looked through the pockets, but I didn’t have any money. I hadn’t exactly thought about packing a bag as I ran out the door at home.
I sat down again, holding my whining son and attempting to distract him by driving a toy car along the floor. The next moment the lady who had been sitting across from us left. She came back with a bag of cheetoes, which she held out to Sean and said, “Here baby.” I’m pretty sure that exhausted her English abilities, but I tried to thank her anyway. She just smiled that blank smile and sat back down with her mom.
The whining stopped immediately and Sean was quickly seated on my lap, devouring the cheetoes. I don’t know how she knew what he needed. But it was strange to me, in light of social protocol. Many women would not let a stranger give their child something. I wouldn’t think to give someone else’s child something like that without first asking. If I couldn’t ask, I would probably have assumed that it would be more polite just to keep to myself. The bottom line was that there was someone in that room full of people preoccupied with their own suffering that was trying to help someone else. I was ashamed it wasn’t me. Again, I had to be a grateful receiver.
Shortly after that, we were called to the admitting desk to talk to the receptionist. She asked what was wrong and then asked to see the finger. I removed the sock and the bandages. The receptionist handed me some forms to sign and took Sean’s hand to look at his cut. By the time I looked up from the forms, Sean had his hurt hand stuck into the bag of cheetoes and was starting to whine from the sting. Then, I got the “can’t you control your child” look from the receptionist. Oh how I’d missed it!
I ran off to the bathroom to wash Sean’s orange stained hand and re-bandage it. When we emerged, the lady who had given us the cheetoes was gone. And the nurse was finally ready to see my little boy. She took his weight, temperature and blood pressure. She examined the finger and declared that it did, indeed, require stitches. We saw a very nice nurse practitioner an hour later. Sean got two stitches and an “incredibles” bandage. Naturally, the stitches became infected. You shouldn’t treat cuts with cheetoes powder. But that’s a whole different story.
A few months after our trips to the emergency room, I read a news article about a woman who had come into the same ER with chest pains. She had been told to have a seat and died while waiting. The coroner’s office declared it a homicide, putting the ER a few blocks from where we lived into the National news. I just shook my head, remembering how I’d told friends and family after our ER experiences that I was glad Sean’s injury wasn’t something more serious because he would have bled to death before anyone asked me what was wrong. Of course, it was just a shock comment to take their attention away from the obvious question of, “How did Sean get a knife?” I got so sick and tired of people asking me that that I started replying, “I gave it to him and told him to go play in the street.”
Chapter Ten: Pre-school
“But whatever the era, whatever the times, one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children, they must come first. You must read to your children and you must hug your children and you must love your children. Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens in the White House but on what happens inside your house.”
-Barbara Bush
Up to this point in the book, there has been an inordinate amount of blubbering going on. Please understand that this is far from the normal happenings at the Hancock house. When I told a friend that I was writing a book based on my experiences as a mother, he laughed and asked, “Did you include the time I came over and the wall was painted with yogurt?” I found that really funny, but not because I remembered the incident with a humor that had been missing when it occurred. I was amused because I didn’t even remember that. Cleaning yogurt, and anything else you can imagine, off the walls is extremely routine.
If I were to write based on anything funny, gross, idiotic, maddening, adorable or just plain amazing that my kids have done, it would be a never-ending recital of everything that occurs in my life. I’m sure any mother’s story would be the same. I decided that this book would be about the experiences that shape my parenting philosophy. Therefore, I am only including those things that are significant enough that they made me really reevaluate my life.
There are a few transitional times in life where everything changes. For me, one of those times was in the fall after Ryan had turned three. I decided, with a lot of reservations, to put him in preschool for 16 hours a week. It was very hard to know that my little boy, who I had previously been with for nearly every moment since his birth, would be away from me for so long. I would no longer have complete control over what he was exposed to, and I had my doubts about that. But, I believe very passionately in giving my children every educational opportunity. I did my homework and all the research seemed to point to pre-school as a significant head start. I couldn’t hold on to my baby forever.
At first, I thought it would be best to take him to school myself everyday. It wasn’t very far from where we lived. But I came to the conclusion that hauling all three of my kids to and from that school everyday simply wasn’t worth it. He was in the afternoon session and the bus would pick him up at our house at about quarter-after noon.
The first day was a parent orientation. I went to his classroom, with Ryan, Sean and Chloe, and met his teacher. She struck me as very matter-of-fact and to-the-point. I wondered how well someone like that would relate to a bunch of three-year-olds, but didn’t think too much about it. She seemed nice enough. Besides, if Ryan hated it, I would pull him out.
She gave me another piece of information. Ryan would be required to have a backpack the next day. As soon as Nathan got home from school, I went shopping. After three stores, I was pretty discouraged. Nobody seemed to have anything for younger kids. Many of the backpacks were on wheels, meant to be dragged. Certainly my little boy didn’t need that.
Finally, I stopped at Target, determined to buy whatever they had even if it wasn’t what I wanted. It was quite a search. They had backpacks in with their accessories, toys, seasonal and sports gear. But even the ones in the toy section were too big for Ryan. I finally found one in a clearance bin with the camping gear. It was shaped like a big, round bug, complete with plastic eyes, antenna, and two little legs dangling down. It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but it was cheap.
Halfway home, I realized I was about to walk into the house with a backpack for Ryan and nothing for Sean. I am not someone who thinks it’s wrong to tell my kids “no.” But this whole school thing was already shaping up to be a major heartache for poor little Sean. He had never spent more than an hour without his brother. I pulled into the parking lot of a drug store and bought a coloring book, so Sean and I would have something to work on after Ryan left the next day.
As soon as I walked into the house, two boys ran over to me. I presented them each with their gifts. Ryan was delighted. Sean glanced down at his coloring book and then said, in a rather pathetic voice, “I want a backpack.” My heart sank. I ushered them both upstairs for the belated bed time that had been ignored until mommy came home.
Ryan took his backpack to bed with him. Sean didn’t cry, but he made the saddest face and held out one hand to his brother. He said, “Share with me, please.” Ryan reached over and handed Sean the backpack. Sean cuddled it and they both went to sleep. Despite Nate’s objections that Sean wouldn’t even remember the incident in the morning, I walked right back outside and went to Target, hoping there was another backpack.
My time and money weren’t wasted. Ryan woke up first the next day and came into my room holding his backpack. Sean walked in a few minutes later. His face fell at the sight of his brother and he reached out one imploring hand as he said, “It’s my backpack.” All of you mother’s know how sad it is to see your child disappointed. And you also know the happiness that it brought me to pull out the other backpack and watch Sean’s face light up. I got a marker and we wrote their names on their backpacks. Sean wore his everywhere we went for weeks.
I had Ryan ready for school hours ahead of time. I had been prepping him for days about what would happen when the school bus came. He was ready. He was excited. The bus arrived a half-hour before the time I had been told at parent orientation. I jumped up and threw Ryan’s coat and backpack on him. The assistant came up to our door and took his hand. He glanced back at me, but his helper pulled him forward. As they were walking to where the bus waited, the driver shouted at me to please have him ready and outside beforehand. I tried to explain that I had been given the wrong time.
Sean ran out of my front door. He tried to get past me to the bus. I grabbed him and carried him to the house while the bus drove off. He kicked and screamed the whole time. Once in the house, with the door locked, I put Sean down. He immediately ran to the door and tried to open it. He kicked and he screamed. He cried and shouted for his brother. Through the whole ordeal he kept clutching that silly backpack. I knew how he felt. My first baby was gone. I didn’t get to kiss him and wish him luck. I didn’t even wave. It was really sad.
That first day, I stared at the clock the whole time. It seemed like the minutes were creeping by. Sean didn’t help matters much. He kept running to the front door and looking hopefully at me with comments like, “Let’s go find Ryan.” Whenever he heard a car pass in front of our house, he would look up, with as gasp, and say, “Ryan’s Home!” I worried about whether Ryan was okay with his first experience away from home. I worried about whether he felt sad that I hadn’t hugged him goodbye. I worried that he would never want to go back.
The one big thing I learned from this whole experience is how difficult it is to get information out of a three-year old. When Ryan came home he told me about the food they had eaten at school, but that was all. I started to ask direct questions. “Did you meet new friends?” He said, “Girls.” But that was the most telling answer I got. When I asked if he liked school, he replied, “Food and snacks and come home.”
That first week we started to settle into our new life. Sean did a little better each day. The hours between when Ryan left and when he came home began to seem less daunting. On the last day of his first week I received a phone call from Ryan’s teacher minutes before his class as scheduled to end. She launched into this huge story about Ryan playing on the playground. My heart leapt into my throat. What had happened to my sweet little boy? Why had I ever let him out of my sight? It seemed like an eternity before she got to the point. He had bumped his head. I laughed out of relief. Of course he had bumped his head. He always did. He had survived that first week of school.
Over the weekend, we went over to visit Brandon and Serena, some friends from our ward. The original plan was for Nate and Brandon to go golfing while Serena and I stayed home to watch the kids. But the men got distracted by a football game and so Serena and I decided we would go shopping while they vegetated.
While I was gone, Ryan went out into the back yard and started to swing on a freestanding hammock. He fell and smacked the side of his face on the metal frame. I came back to find him cowering in his dad’s lap, while Nate tried, unsuccessfully, to ice the large lump beside his eye. He was also developing a spectacular black eye. We kissed him better and took pictures to send to his grandparents.
Monday Ryan went back to school, black eye and all. Tuesday I was getting him ready when I received a phone call from DCFS. I was told not to let Ryan get on the bus because the social worker was on her way to talk to him. His school teacher had seen the black eye and called the child abuse hotline. I was being investigated for child abuse. I launched into a desperate attempt to clean my house before the government representative arrived.
The social worker was a mid-sixties, very sweet woman. She took Ryan aside and asked what had happened. He told her he had fallen off a chair at Serena’s house. Then, she interviewed me. She wrote down phone numbers for our doctor, my parents, Brandon and Serena and promised to call and interview Nate later. That was the worst part of all. My husband was not going to take this very well.
After the social worker left, I loaded the kids into the car and took Ryan to school. The teacher, who had made her accusation anonymously, seemed very surprised to see me. I told her that someone had called DCFS about Ryan’s black eye and that’s why he didn’t come on the bus. She made a noncommittal noise. I sighed and asked how Ryan was doing in class. She told me he was doing okay, except that he would push adults away when they tried to touch him. He would tell them they were hurting him. I left the school, absolutely certain who reported me for child abuse, but very insecure about how to handle the situation.
Most of my family and friends told me to tell the teacher off. If there are truly only two types of people in the world, I think they can be divided into the teller offers and the non-teller offers. Some people like to confront the situation directly and “talk it out.” These are the same people that often ask to speak to supervisors and demand better service. They are the ones that feel those not like them are keeping their feelings bottled up. The non-teller offers feel like there are ways to deal with conflict other than confronting it directly. They don’t think they have any less closure by their methods.
I don’t tell people off. I can’t. You see, making someone else defensive or else miserable doesn’t make me feel better. Not that I think the teller offers are bad people. I am certain their methods work for them. They just wouldn’t work for me. I feel like a relationship rarely survives a telling off in tact. You’ll always have that between you. While I didn’t really care about my relationship with this woman, I recognized that she would, consciously or subconsciously, treat Ryan different if we had an altercation.
I thought about asking if he could be transferred to a different class. I considered just pulling him out of school. What I came up with was a little different. She had been teaching Ryan for exactly four days. At some point during the year she would realize that he was an amazing, well-loved little boy. At some point after knowing me a bit better, she’d realize that she had acted rashly. I would facilitate the coming of that day.
The next morning, when the bus came, Ryan refused to get on it. The bus driver, who seemed to have largely escaped the insanity of everyone else at the school, told me to just put him on the bus. She said her son had the same problem after she had personally driven him to school. She seemed very intelligent and level headed. I would come to appreciate the down to Earth quality of that bus driver, through all the bureaucracy I dealt with the rest of the year.
As soon as I went into the house though, I was overcome with the fact that I had just forced my three-year-old, kicking and screaming, back to the woman who thought I was a child abuser. I stared at the clock the rest of the day. I decided that Ryan didn’t have to go to school that year. It could wait.
That evening when I put him in the bath, I asked Ryan about school. He said, “They hurt and hurt me.” I knew exactly where this was coming from. Sean had gotten in the habit of hanging on my back, with his arms looped around my neck. It cut of my windpipe and I always said, “Sean, stop it. You’re hurting mommy.” Ryan had started saying it as well. It wasn’t surprising. When I was pregnant with Chloe, he went around for nine months telling anyone who would listen that his back hurt.
Despite knowing that he wasn’t really being hurt, I told him that he didn’t ever have to go to school again. He got really quiet. I said, “Ryan, do you want to go to school?”
He said, in a sad little whine, “Yes. I love my teacher.” I repeated it, just to be sure I’d heard correctly. He said, “I love him. I love Miss Ishell.” So, instead of telling Ms. Michelle exactly how angry and humiliated I was by her idiotic actions, I wrote her a note. I told her that the first week of school had been difficult and that I had thought about pulling Ryan out. Then I told her what Ryan had said about her. I told her I hoped the story made her smile. That was it. I didn’t mention DCFS.
A couple weeks later she called me to tell me that Ryan had wet his pants. At the end of the phone call she said, “And, I just wanted to tell you that he’s doing really well. He laughs all the time and really enjoys class. I’m glad you let him stay.” I thanked her and told her to let us know if we could ever help with anything. It wasn’t an apology, but it was close enough. Closure came before the child abuse case was closed.
In the end, we had many more happy times than sad. There was the day Sean ran out to the bus to meet Ryan. Sean started unzipping his brother’s coat. Ryan threw his arms around Sean and said, “I missed you.” Sean patted his brother’s back and muttered, “Missed you, too.”
There was the day Ryan came home with a piece of candy clutched tightly in one fist. He held it out to me and asked me to open it. I was perfectly clear that he’d been told he couldn’t have it on the bus, so he had simply held the precious morsel until he arrived home. Sean picked that moment to wander over. I had just handed the open candy to Ryan. He looked at it and then at his brother, who had noticed it and was starting to whine. Ryan extended his hand and Sean grabbed the candy and ran off. My sweet Ryan looked sadly at his empty hand for one instant and then smiled and said, “Sean likes it.”
There was the time Ryan pulled away from a frustrated lady who was trying to push him onto the bus. He shouted, “I have to say goodbye to my best friend.” He waved one little had and said, “Bye, Sean. I’ll be right back.” Then he let himself be put on the bus.
Oh sure, there are plenty of bites, scratches and screams. I get frustrated about the endless housework and the seemingly wasted days. But, when people smile condescendingly and tell me how full my hands are, I am absolutely certain that Heavenly Father has made my hands just the size they need to be to handle all of the blessings I’m carrying home to him. I am grateful everyday for that.
-Barbara Bush
Up to this point in the book, there has been an inordinate amount of blubbering going on. Please understand that this is far from the normal happenings at the Hancock house. When I told a friend that I was writing a book based on my experiences as a mother, he laughed and asked, “Did you include the time I came over and the wall was painted with yogurt?” I found that really funny, but not because I remembered the incident with a humor that had been missing when it occurred. I was amused because I didn’t even remember that. Cleaning yogurt, and anything else you can imagine, off the walls is extremely routine.
If I were to write based on anything funny, gross, idiotic, maddening, adorable or just plain amazing that my kids have done, it would be a never-ending recital of everything that occurs in my life. I’m sure any mother’s story would be the same. I decided that this book would be about the experiences that shape my parenting philosophy. Therefore, I am only including those things that are significant enough that they made me really reevaluate my life.
There are a few transitional times in life where everything changes. For me, one of those times was in the fall after Ryan had turned three. I decided, with a lot of reservations, to put him in preschool for 16 hours a week. It was very hard to know that my little boy, who I had previously been with for nearly every moment since his birth, would be away from me for so long. I would no longer have complete control over what he was exposed to, and I had my doubts about that. But, I believe very passionately in giving my children every educational opportunity. I did my homework and all the research seemed to point to pre-school as a significant head start. I couldn’t hold on to my baby forever.
At first, I thought it would be best to take him to school myself everyday. It wasn’t very far from where we lived. But I came to the conclusion that hauling all three of my kids to and from that school everyday simply wasn’t worth it. He was in the afternoon session and the bus would pick him up at our house at about quarter-after noon.
The first day was a parent orientation. I went to his classroom, with Ryan, Sean and Chloe, and met his teacher. She struck me as very matter-of-fact and to-the-point. I wondered how well someone like that would relate to a bunch of three-year-olds, but didn’t think too much about it. She seemed nice enough. Besides, if Ryan hated it, I would pull him out.
She gave me another piece of information. Ryan would be required to have a backpack the next day. As soon as Nathan got home from school, I went shopping. After three stores, I was pretty discouraged. Nobody seemed to have anything for younger kids. Many of the backpacks were on wheels, meant to be dragged. Certainly my little boy didn’t need that.
Finally, I stopped at Target, determined to buy whatever they had even if it wasn’t what I wanted. It was quite a search. They had backpacks in with their accessories, toys, seasonal and sports gear. But even the ones in the toy section were too big for Ryan. I finally found one in a clearance bin with the camping gear. It was shaped like a big, round bug, complete with plastic eyes, antenna, and two little legs dangling down. It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but it was cheap.
Halfway home, I realized I was about to walk into the house with a backpack for Ryan and nothing for Sean. I am not someone who thinks it’s wrong to tell my kids “no.” But this whole school thing was already shaping up to be a major heartache for poor little Sean. He had never spent more than an hour without his brother. I pulled into the parking lot of a drug store and bought a coloring book, so Sean and I would have something to work on after Ryan left the next day.
As soon as I walked into the house, two boys ran over to me. I presented them each with their gifts. Ryan was delighted. Sean glanced down at his coloring book and then said, in a rather pathetic voice, “I want a backpack.” My heart sank. I ushered them both upstairs for the belated bed time that had been ignored until mommy came home.
Ryan took his backpack to bed with him. Sean didn’t cry, but he made the saddest face and held out one hand to his brother. He said, “Share with me, please.” Ryan reached over and handed Sean the backpack. Sean cuddled it and they both went to sleep. Despite Nate’s objections that Sean wouldn’t even remember the incident in the morning, I walked right back outside and went to Target, hoping there was another backpack.
My time and money weren’t wasted. Ryan woke up first the next day and came into my room holding his backpack. Sean walked in a few minutes later. His face fell at the sight of his brother and he reached out one imploring hand as he said, “It’s my backpack.” All of you mother’s know how sad it is to see your child disappointed. And you also know the happiness that it brought me to pull out the other backpack and watch Sean’s face light up. I got a marker and we wrote their names on their backpacks. Sean wore his everywhere we went for weeks.
I had Ryan ready for school hours ahead of time. I had been prepping him for days about what would happen when the school bus came. He was ready. He was excited. The bus arrived a half-hour before the time I had been told at parent orientation. I jumped up and threw Ryan’s coat and backpack on him. The assistant came up to our door and took his hand. He glanced back at me, but his helper pulled him forward. As they were walking to where the bus waited, the driver shouted at me to please have him ready and outside beforehand. I tried to explain that I had been given the wrong time.
Sean ran out of my front door. He tried to get past me to the bus. I grabbed him and carried him to the house while the bus drove off. He kicked and screamed the whole time. Once in the house, with the door locked, I put Sean down. He immediately ran to the door and tried to open it. He kicked and he screamed. He cried and shouted for his brother. Through the whole ordeal he kept clutching that silly backpack. I knew how he felt. My first baby was gone. I didn’t get to kiss him and wish him luck. I didn’t even wave. It was really sad.
That first day, I stared at the clock the whole time. It seemed like the minutes were creeping by. Sean didn’t help matters much. He kept running to the front door and looking hopefully at me with comments like, “Let’s go find Ryan.” Whenever he heard a car pass in front of our house, he would look up, with as gasp, and say, “Ryan’s Home!” I worried about whether Ryan was okay with his first experience away from home. I worried about whether he felt sad that I hadn’t hugged him goodbye. I worried that he would never want to go back.
The one big thing I learned from this whole experience is how difficult it is to get information out of a three-year old. When Ryan came home he told me about the food they had eaten at school, but that was all. I started to ask direct questions. “Did you meet new friends?” He said, “Girls.” But that was the most telling answer I got. When I asked if he liked school, he replied, “Food and snacks and come home.”
That first week we started to settle into our new life. Sean did a little better each day. The hours between when Ryan left and when he came home began to seem less daunting. On the last day of his first week I received a phone call from Ryan’s teacher minutes before his class as scheduled to end. She launched into this huge story about Ryan playing on the playground. My heart leapt into my throat. What had happened to my sweet little boy? Why had I ever let him out of my sight? It seemed like an eternity before she got to the point. He had bumped his head. I laughed out of relief. Of course he had bumped his head. He always did. He had survived that first week of school.
Over the weekend, we went over to visit Brandon and Serena, some friends from our ward. The original plan was for Nate and Brandon to go golfing while Serena and I stayed home to watch the kids. But the men got distracted by a football game and so Serena and I decided we would go shopping while they vegetated.
While I was gone, Ryan went out into the back yard and started to swing on a freestanding hammock. He fell and smacked the side of his face on the metal frame. I came back to find him cowering in his dad’s lap, while Nate tried, unsuccessfully, to ice the large lump beside his eye. He was also developing a spectacular black eye. We kissed him better and took pictures to send to his grandparents.
Monday Ryan went back to school, black eye and all. Tuesday I was getting him ready when I received a phone call from DCFS. I was told not to let Ryan get on the bus because the social worker was on her way to talk to him. His school teacher had seen the black eye and called the child abuse hotline. I was being investigated for child abuse. I launched into a desperate attempt to clean my house before the government representative arrived.
The social worker was a mid-sixties, very sweet woman. She took Ryan aside and asked what had happened. He told her he had fallen off a chair at Serena’s house. Then, she interviewed me. She wrote down phone numbers for our doctor, my parents, Brandon and Serena and promised to call and interview Nate later. That was the worst part of all. My husband was not going to take this very well.
After the social worker left, I loaded the kids into the car and took Ryan to school. The teacher, who had made her accusation anonymously, seemed very surprised to see me. I told her that someone had called DCFS about Ryan’s black eye and that’s why he didn’t come on the bus. She made a noncommittal noise. I sighed and asked how Ryan was doing in class. She told me he was doing okay, except that he would push adults away when they tried to touch him. He would tell them they were hurting him. I left the school, absolutely certain who reported me for child abuse, but very insecure about how to handle the situation.
Most of my family and friends told me to tell the teacher off. If there are truly only two types of people in the world, I think they can be divided into the teller offers and the non-teller offers. Some people like to confront the situation directly and “talk it out.” These are the same people that often ask to speak to supervisors and demand better service. They are the ones that feel those not like them are keeping their feelings bottled up. The non-teller offers feel like there are ways to deal with conflict other than confronting it directly. They don’t think they have any less closure by their methods.
I don’t tell people off. I can’t. You see, making someone else defensive or else miserable doesn’t make me feel better. Not that I think the teller offers are bad people. I am certain their methods work for them. They just wouldn’t work for me. I feel like a relationship rarely survives a telling off in tact. You’ll always have that between you. While I didn’t really care about my relationship with this woman, I recognized that she would, consciously or subconsciously, treat Ryan different if we had an altercation.
I thought about asking if he could be transferred to a different class. I considered just pulling him out of school. What I came up with was a little different. She had been teaching Ryan for exactly four days. At some point during the year she would realize that he was an amazing, well-loved little boy. At some point after knowing me a bit better, she’d realize that she had acted rashly. I would facilitate the coming of that day.
The next morning, when the bus came, Ryan refused to get on it. The bus driver, who seemed to have largely escaped the insanity of everyone else at the school, told me to just put him on the bus. She said her son had the same problem after she had personally driven him to school. She seemed very intelligent and level headed. I would come to appreciate the down to Earth quality of that bus driver, through all the bureaucracy I dealt with the rest of the year.
As soon as I went into the house though, I was overcome with the fact that I had just forced my three-year-old, kicking and screaming, back to the woman who thought I was a child abuser. I stared at the clock the rest of the day. I decided that Ryan didn’t have to go to school that year. It could wait.
That evening when I put him in the bath, I asked Ryan about school. He said, “They hurt and hurt me.” I knew exactly where this was coming from. Sean had gotten in the habit of hanging on my back, with his arms looped around my neck. It cut of my windpipe and I always said, “Sean, stop it. You’re hurting mommy.” Ryan had started saying it as well. It wasn’t surprising. When I was pregnant with Chloe, he went around for nine months telling anyone who would listen that his back hurt.
Despite knowing that he wasn’t really being hurt, I told him that he didn’t ever have to go to school again. He got really quiet. I said, “Ryan, do you want to go to school?”
He said, in a sad little whine, “Yes. I love my teacher.” I repeated it, just to be sure I’d heard correctly. He said, “I love him. I love Miss Ishell.” So, instead of telling Ms. Michelle exactly how angry and humiliated I was by her idiotic actions, I wrote her a note. I told her that the first week of school had been difficult and that I had thought about pulling Ryan out. Then I told her what Ryan had said about her. I told her I hoped the story made her smile. That was it. I didn’t mention DCFS.
A couple weeks later she called me to tell me that Ryan had wet his pants. At the end of the phone call she said, “And, I just wanted to tell you that he’s doing really well. He laughs all the time and really enjoys class. I’m glad you let him stay.” I thanked her and told her to let us know if we could ever help with anything. It wasn’t an apology, but it was close enough. Closure came before the child abuse case was closed.
In the end, we had many more happy times than sad. There was the day Sean ran out to the bus to meet Ryan. Sean started unzipping his brother’s coat. Ryan threw his arms around Sean and said, “I missed you.” Sean patted his brother’s back and muttered, “Missed you, too.”
There was the day Ryan came home with a piece of candy clutched tightly in one fist. He held it out to me and asked me to open it. I was perfectly clear that he’d been told he couldn’t have it on the bus, so he had simply held the precious morsel until he arrived home. Sean picked that moment to wander over. I had just handed the open candy to Ryan. He looked at it and then at his brother, who had noticed it and was starting to whine. Ryan extended his hand and Sean grabbed the candy and ran off. My sweet Ryan looked sadly at his empty hand for one instant and then smiled and said, “Sean likes it.”
There was the time Ryan pulled away from a frustrated lady who was trying to push him onto the bus. He shouted, “I have to say goodbye to my best friend.” He waved one little had and said, “Bye, Sean. I’ll be right back.” Then he let himself be put on the bus.
Oh sure, there are plenty of bites, scratches and screams. I get frustrated about the endless housework and the seemingly wasted days. But, when people smile condescendingly and tell me how full my hands are, I am absolutely certain that Heavenly Father has made my hands just the size they need to be to handle all of the blessings I’m carrying home to him. I am grateful everyday for that.
Chapter Eleven: My work and my glory. My love. My Life. My Joy.
“O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!
“Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.
“But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.“
-Alma 29; 1-3
I confess that there have been times in my life when I would have chosen another path. There are days when I wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier taking over a small country, rather than creating one. And there are moments when the priorities I’ve had hammered into my head creep in and whisper that being just a mother is for those that aren’t as creative and intelligent as I am.
Because of that, there have been moments when I found myself ill-content with the life I’ve chosen. Surely, I was meant to do great things in this world. During those times, I consider my desire to give a greater service to our Heavenly Father. I tell myself that if I only had more power, money or influence, I could do vast works of good. Surely, I reason, these must be righteous desires. Although, I will always have to work hard to keep my pride in check, I honestly believe that my desire to do good is not for my own satisfaction. I truly want to help people. It’s one of the reasons it was so hard for me to accept the fact that I was never meant to serve a mission.
There have been days when I would kneel down and pray that the Lord would send me more opportunities to serve. I knew that if I felt more positive about my accomplishments for good, I would be a better mother. Feeling satisfied as an individual would give me much more patience and love. Building an eternal family is certainly a long-term goal. It’s very hard to see the greater good in the everyday struggle.
So, I have turned to the Lord to bless me with a chance to “speak with the trump of God.” I took great pleasure in opportunities to serve in the church and focused on my writing. I hoped that one day my efforts would be rewarded with the opportunity to truly make a difference. And I continued to be frustrated because it seemed like no one heard my prayers. Even when I felt like I was being led by the spirit in a particular direction, I would find my work to be fruitless and have to ask why the Lord would lead me toward a dead-end.
But I’ve learned that if you’re not content with what you have, you won’t be happy with what you get. Heavenly Father knows that. He knows that blessing you with all of your righteous desires negates the need for faith. It also takes away the opportunity to grow and learn. Instead of despairing at the sight of a dead-end down the path the Lord leads us, we need to search for the writing on the wall. Sometimes, there is something there that we need to learn. I discovered that we can only find happiness when we stop looking for what we don’t have and truly find joy in what we do. Then, and only then, does the Lord have license to bless us further.
Recently, I had the opportunity to again, fly home with my three children for another brother’s wedding. My sweet husband had to stay in Chicago for school. It required that I fly home with a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and a one-year-old. I’d like to fill this section with funny stories about the struggles I faced, but there aren’t any. My children obeyed and the trip happened with barely an incident. Well, nothing out of the ordinary, anyway.
But, the familiar attitudes of strangers toward me were still there. I heard more than my share of, “You’ve got your hands full.” I’ve learned to deal with that. What I want to share with you happened in the terminal of the O’Hare airport in Chicago, after we had returned from the wedding. After I exited the plane, I loaded Ryan and Chloe in the double stroller. Sean insisted that he could walk.
There is a particular corridor, leading to and from the terminals, with neon lights on the ceiling. The lights have a set pattern of movement and they are all varying in color and design. The whole thing seems kind of reminiscent of a disco. There are two moving walkways, going opposite directions, in the center of the corridor, and a walking area on either side for people who don’t want to use the moving walkways. Since the stroller is a little bulky, I stayed to the side.
This was a fairly busy evening in the airport and the walkways were filled with travelers. Nobody else seemed to want to take on the long corridor on their own power, however. I had the path to myself. Sean had been holding onto the back end of the stroller and balancing on the bottom bar while I pushed it along, but he couldn’t resist the temptation of the long, empty space in front of us. Neon lights will do that to a two-year-old.
He jumped down and began running, purposely almost colliding with the trash cans to the side and laughing uproariously each time he managed to dodge one. Ryan laughed and clapped. Chloe seemed to catch the mood of the moment. But she turned her attention to the people on the moving walkway. I was surprised to find that we weren’t getting stares of distain or amused glances. In fact, no one even seemed to notice the crazy lady with all the kids.
Chloe was undaunted. She stuck her little fist up in the air and methodically opened can closed it. She smiled her darling little smile and started shouting, “Hi, Hi, Hi,” over and over to the passing travelers. No one seemed to notice.
For my part, I started walking a little faster to keep up with Sean. It soon became a trot. Ryan laughed even louder and Chloe kept repeating her greetings to the unresponsive travelers. I laughed too. If I didn’t look crazy before, I surely did then.
We made a strange procession in the airport. We weren’t running to catch a flight. There were no oppressive deadlines or impending disasters. I was running because I had just realized something that I had known all along, but didn’t want to admit. I love being a mother. I don’t mind the strange looks or even the accusing stares. I don’t care who thinks I’m irresponsible or less than brilliant. I don’t even hate changing diapers, dealing with tantrums, cleaning up messes or eating macaroni and cheese more than I previously thought was humanly possible. If I cry more than I should, I know that the reasons are usually because of gratitude and joy, rather than dissatisfaction.
Why did I have such a hard time realizing that being a mother was exactly what I wanted to be, rather than a sacrifice I was making because I was long-suffering and righteous? I think it’s just hard to let go of the perceptions we have forced on us that motherhood is less than glamorous.
I once told my friends that I would never marry a man that didn’t serve a mission. My reasoning was a little off, though. I said that the Lord only required two years from a man, but he asked women to give their whole lives. I wouldn’t enter a relationship with someone who wasn’t strong enough to give a couple years when I knew that he would ask me to give everything.
I was wrong, as we all are, when we allow ourselves to consider the perception that motherhood is less. We have Heavenly Parents who are the most glorious of all. They have created worlds without number and accomplished tasks that the smartest, most creative, strongest, prettiest and most capable of us can not imagine. Yet, their work and glory is in parenthood. I think I finally know why.
I no longer smile apologetically when people stare in amazement at my young children. I no longer feel the need to give the prepared speech about my reasons for having so many so young. I honestly don’t care what they think. If I had the opportunity to go back and change my life, I wouldn’t change anything about my family, especially not my children. It’s something I cannot be embarrassed of or apologize for.
Tomorrow, my first baby turns four. I will no longer be able to say that I have three children and the oldest is three. It’s been a year since I have had three children under three. It’s not a huge milestone, surely. Our family life is only just beginning. But, if I were an angel and could speak with the trump of God, I would only have gratitude to preach.
“Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.
“But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.“
-Alma 29; 1-3
I confess that there have been times in my life when I would have chosen another path. There are days when I wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier taking over a small country, rather than creating one. And there are moments when the priorities I’ve had hammered into my head creep in and whisper that being just a mother is for those that aren’t as creative and intelligent as I am.
Because of that, there have been moments when I found myself ill-content with the life I’ve chosen. Surely, I was meant to do great things in this world. During those times, I consider my desire to give a greater service to our Heavenly Father. I tell myself that if I only had more power, money or influence, I could do vast works of good. Surely, I reason, these must be righteous desires. Although, I will always have to work hard to keep my pride in check, I honestly believe that my desire to do good is not for my own satisfaction. I truly want to help people. It’s one of the reasons it was so hard for me to accept the fact that I was never meant to serve a mission.
There have been days when I would kneel down and pray that the Lord would send me more opportunities to serve. I knew that if I felt more positive about my accomplishments for good, I would be a better mother. Feeling satisfied as an individual would give me much more patience and love. Building an eternal family is certainly a long-term goal. It’s very hard to see the greater good in the everyday struggle.
So, I have turned to the Lord to bless me with a chance to “speak with the trump of God.” I took great pleasure in opportunities to serve in the church and focused on my writing. I hoped that one day my efforts would be rewarded with the opportunity to truly make a difference. And I continued to be frustrated because it seemed like no one heard my prayers. Even when I felt like I was being led by the spirit in a particular direction, I would find my work to be fruitless and have to ask why the Lord would lead me toward a dead-end.
But I’ve learned that if you’re not content with what you have, you won’t be happy with what you get. Heavenly Father knows that. He knows that blessing you with all of your righteous desires negates the need for faith. It also takes away the opportunity to grow and learn. Instead of despairing at the sight of a dead-end down the path the Lord leads us, we need to search for the writing on the wall. Sometimes, there is something there that we need to learn. I discovered that we can only find happiness when we stop looking for what we don’t have and truly find joy in what we do. Then, and only then, does the Lord have license to bless us further.
Recently, I had the opportunity to again, fly home with my three children for another brother’s wedding. My sweet husband had to stay in Chicago for school. It required that I fly home with a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and a one-year-old. I’d like to fill this section with funny stories about the struggles I faced, but there aren’t any. My children obeyed and the trip happened with barely an incident. Well, nothing out of the ordinary, anyway.
But, the familiar attitudes of strangers toward me were still there. I heard more than my share of, “You’ve got your hands full.” I’ve learned to deal with that. What I want to share with you happened in the terminal of the O’Hare airport in Chicago, after we had returned from the wedding. After I exited the plane, I loaded Ryan and Chloe in the double stroller. Sean insisted that he could walk.
There is a particular corridor, leading to and from the terminals, with neon lights on the ceiling. The lights have a set pattern of movement and they are all varying in color and design. The whole thing seems kind of reminiscent of a disco. There are two moving walkways, going opposite directions, in the center of the corridor, and a walking area on either side for people who don’t want to use the moving walkways. Since the stroller is a little bulky, I stayed to the side.
This was a fairly busy evening in the airport and the walkways were filled with travelers. Nobody else seemed to want to take on the long corridor on their own power, however. I had the path to myself. Sean had been holding onto the back end of the stroller and balancing on the bottom bar while I pushed it along, but he couldn’t resist the temptation of the long, empty space in front of us. Neon lights will do that to a two-year-old.
He jumped down and began running, purposely almost colliding with the trash cans to the side and laughing uproariously each time he managed to dodge one. Ryan laughed and clapped. Chloe seemed to catch the mood of the moment. But she turned her attention to the people on the moving walkway. I was surprised to find that we weren’t getting stares of distain or amused glances. In fact, no one even seemed to notice the crazy lady with all the kids.
Chloe was undaunted. She stuck her little fist up in the air and methodically opened can closed it. She smiled her darling little smile and started shouting, “Hi, Hi, Hi,” over and over to the passing travelers. No one seemed to notice.
For my part, I started walking a little faster to keep up with Sean. It soon became a trot. Ryan laughed even louder and Chloe kept repeating her greetings to the unresponsive travelers. I laughed too. If I didn’t look crazy before, I surely did then.
We made a strange procession in the airport. We weren’t running to catch a flight. There were no oppressive deadlines or impending disasters. I was running because I had just realized something that I had known all along, but didn’t want to admit. I love being a mother. I don’t mind the strange looks or even the accusing stares. I don’t care who thinks I’m irresponsible or less than brilliant. I don’t even hate changing diapers, dealing with tantrums, cleaning up messes or eating macaroni and cheese more than I previously thought was humanly possible. If I cry more than I should, I know that the reasons are usually because of gratitude and joy, rather than dissatisfaction.
Why did I have such a hard time realizing that being a mother was exactly what I wanted to be, rather than a sacrifice I was making because I was long-suffering and righteous? I think it’s just hard to let go of the perceptions we have forced on us that motherhood is less than glamorous.
I once told my friends that I would never marry a man that didn’t serve a mission. My reasoning was a little off, though. I said that the Lord only required two years from a man, but he asked women to give their whole lives. I wouldn’t enter a relationship with someone who wasn’t strong enough to give a couple years when I knew that he would ask me to give everything.
I was wrong, as we all are, when we allow ourselves to consider the perception that motherhood is less. We have Heavenly Parents who are the most glorious of all. They have created worlds without number and accomplished tasks that the smartest, most creative, strongest, prettiest and most capable of us can not imagine. Yet, their work and glory is in parenthood. I think I finally know why.
I no longer smile apologetically when people stare in amazement at my young children. I no longer feel the need to give the prepared speech about my reasons for having so many so young. I honestly don’t care what they think. If I had the opportunity to go back and change my life, I wouldn’t change anything about my family, especially not my children. It’s something I cannot be embarrassed of or apologize for.
Tomorrow, my first baby turns four. I will no longer be able to say that I have three children and the oldest is three. It’s been a year since I have had three children under three. It’s not a huge milestone, surely. Our family life is only just beginning. But, if I were an angel and could speak with the trump of God, I would only have gratitude to preach.
Post-Script
“Was there ever a man who truly loved a woman, or a woman who truly loved a man, who did not pray that their relationship might continue beyond the grave? Has a child ever been buried by parents who did not long for the assurance that their loved one would again be theirs in a world to come? Can anyone believing in eternal life doubt that the God of heaven would grant his sons and daughters that most precious attribute of life, the love that finds its most meaningful expression in family relationships? No, reason demands that the family relationship shall continue after death. The human heart longs for it, and the God of heaven has revealed a way whereby it may be secured. The sacred ordinances of the house of the Lord provide for it.”
-Gordon B. Hinckley
As a teenager, I fell in love with the hymn, “O My Father” because of the line, “But oft times a secret something whispers, ‘You’re a stranger here’ and I felt that I had wandered from a more exalted sphere.” There is something so amazing about that statement. I often felt that longing for something greater, but had never had the words to explain it.
I remember a particular friend in high school who had adopted environmentalism as a sort of pseudo religion. Even then, I recognized that this was a manifestation of searching for something greater within ourselves. But, it seemed like such a contradiction. I think there is something very righteous and inherently spiritual about respect for the environment. But I think that it comes from the Earth’s purpose in God’s plan for his children and its status as his creation.
It seemed so strange to me that someone who was too intelligent to believe in God could be so fixated on saving the planet. After all, if mankind was the creation of a series of genetic mistakes, then the Earth itself is just another rock in the sky. Eventually, the sun is going to burn out and everything on this planet will die. But what does it matter? Why are people who don’t believe in the divinity of humans concerned about future generations at all? How is a person any different from a grain of sand? Why try to live morally, at all? Morality isn’t part of biology. Without God, it must be a human creation. And humans don’t matter. Science teaches survival of the fittest, so why did people who embraced those teachings so wholeheartedly work so hard to help the disabled and downtrodden? The whole thing perplexed me.
I concluded that the whispering that told us we were children of God hadn’t been instilled into me by my religious beliefs. It is natural. Everyone feels it. People grab a hold of morals, environmentalism, political prowess, charity and a hundred other causes to try and create uniformity between their actions and that whispering of divinity because they are absolutely unwilling to accept what their hearts already know.
Recently, this whole idea took a new direction for me. It came from the silliest of sources. My little Sean has become completely obsessed with Superman. I’ve been renting him the moves just to watch his little face light up and the way he jumps into the air and shouts whenever the hero saves someone. It occurred to me, during the 326th viewing of one of these silly shows, that the ongoing theme of father to son kept creeping in. I watched the movie makers’ interpretation of Krypton. They had tried to create a completely alien world. Culture, politics, technology, architecture, and fashion carefully avoided anything that could be familiar to the audience. But there was still the traditional family.
I started thinking of other media. I considered what I know of various fantasy and science fiction movies and books. I was amazed to find that no matter what the writers changed, they always included families. Sometimes the families had different traditions and attitudes toward each other, but they were families still the same. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single story where a human mind had managed to eliminate families from their imagined worlds. Actually, there were usually very strong messages about the importance of families and bonds between generations.
I suddenly saw the similarity between that principle and the “secret something” spoken of in my favorite hymn. Perhaps it’s the holy ghost, perhaps it’s just that we know something of our former home, despite the veil, but I believe the human heart also knows how absolutely crucial and natural the family is, in the same way we know that we are children of God. It’s not an institution of society that we are culturally forced into, but a natural part of humanity that we all yearn for.
This being the case, the desecration of the family is even more of a tragedy. People are managing to replace spirituality with causes and they have begun to replace family with a hundred other permutations that may fulfill the need, but lack the divine nature of an eternal union. I cannot describe what I felt when I realized that the imaginations of amazing writers had not managed to destroy the family, but that we were slowly doing it ourselves with pride and selfishness.
Perhaps it’s delusions of grandeur, but the whole thing makes me very happy to be exactly where I am. I remember my mom saying once that she hoped she was dead before the horrors of the last days consumed the world. I replied, in my typical fashion, that I wanted to be on the front lines, fighting in Zion’s army. Well, the irony is that she was, then, where I am now: in the heat of the battle. Satan is waging a war to destroy us and mothers are on the front lines of the defense.
I have made hundreds of mistakes in my life. I pray every night, sometimes in tears, that Heavenly Father will make me into the mother that my perfect children deserve. But I am certain I have done a few things right. I am certain because the proof is in the sweet fruit of my labor. I have three beautiful, imaginative, intelligent and thoughtful children. I don’t deserve them. I often wonder if the Lord will come in collection of my debt because there is surely no way to make my scale of worthiness to blessings balance. But there is not a major regret in my life.
The girl I was ten years ago would be very surprised. She was afraid to change and didn’t want to grow up. I no longer look back with regret for the changes that come naturally in life or a wish for a chance to return the days when my self concept was different. It is wonderful to be an adult. It is wonderful to be a wife. And there is absolutely nothing in life that can duplicate or match the absolute, lasting joy of being a mother. Instead of wondering what happened to the passionate girl who wanted to change the world, I look ahead to the future with anticipation. I have many years of cleaning yogurt off walls to come and I will cherish every moment of them. I hope someone will find comfort in the story of how I went from being smart to being happy.
-Gordon B. Hinckley
As a teenager, I fell in love with the hymn, “O My Father” because of the line, “But oft times a secret something whispers, ‘You’re a stranger here’ and I felt that I had wandered from a more exalted sphere.” There is something so amazing about that statement. I often felt that longing for something greater, but had never had the words to explain it.
I remember a particular friend in high school who had adopted environmentalism as a sort of pseudo religion. Even then, I recognized that this was a manifestation of searching for something greater within ourselves. But, it seemed like such a contradiction. I think there is something very righteous and inherently spiritual about respect for the environment. But I think that it comes from the Earth’s purpose in God’s plan for his children and its status as his creation.
It seemed so strange to me that someone who was too intelligent to believe in God could be so fixated on saving the planet. After all, if mankind was the creation of a series of genetic mistakes, then the Earth itself is just another rock in the sky. Eventually, the sun is going to burn out and everything on this planet will die. But what does it matter? Why are people who don’t believe in the divinity of humans concerned about future generations at all? How is a person any different from a grain of sand? Why try to live morally, at all? Morality isn’t part of biology. Without God, it must be a human creation. And humans don’t matter. Science teaches survival of the fittest, so why did people who embraced those teachings so wholeheartedly work so hard to help the disabled and downtrodden? The whole thing perplexed me.
I concluded that the whispering that told us we were children of God hadn’t been instilled into me by my religious beliefs. It is natural. Everyone feels it. People grab a hold of morals, environmentalism, political prowess, charity and a hundred other causes to try and create uniformity between their actions and that whispering of divinity because they are absolutely unwilling to accept what their hearts already know.
Recently, this whole idea took a new direction for me. It came from the silliest of sources. My little Sean has become completely obsessed with Superman. I’ve been renting him the moves just to watch his little face light up and the way he jumps into the air and shouts whenever the hero saves someone. It occurred to me, during the 326th viewing of one of these silly shows, that the ongoing theme of father to son kept creeping in. I watched the movie makers’ interpretation of Krypton. They had tried to create a completely alien world. Culture, politics, technology, architecture, and fashion carefully avoided anything that could be familiar to the audience. But there was still the traditional family.
I started thinking of other media. I considered what I know of various fantasy and science fiction movies and books. I was amazed to find that no matter what the writers changed, they always included families. Sometimes the families had different traditions and attitudes toward each other, but they were families still the same. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single story where a human mind had managed to eliminate families from their imagined worlds. Actually, there were usually very strong messages about the importance of families and bonds between generations.
I suddenly saw the similarity between that principle and the “secret something” spoken of in my favorite hymn. Perhaps it’s the holy ghost, perhaps it’s just that we know something of our former home, despite the veil, but I believe the human heart also knows how absolutely crucial and natural the family is, in the same way we know that we are children of God. It’s not an institution of society that we are culturally forced into, but a natural part of humanity that we all yearn for.
This being the case, the desecration of the family is even more of a tragedy. People are managing to replace spirituality with causes and they have begun to replace family with a hundred other permutations that may fulfill the need, but lack the divine nature of an eternal union. I cannot describe what I felt when I realized that the imaginations of amazing writers had not managed to destroy the family, but that we were slowly doing it ourselves with pride and selfishness.
Perhaps it’s delusions of grandeur, but the whole thing makes me very happy to be exactly where I am. I remember my mom saying once that she hoped she was dead before the horrors of the last days consumed the world. I replied, in my typical fashion, that I wanted to be on the front lines, fighting in Zion’s army. Well, the irony is that she was, then, where I am now: in the heat of the battle. Satan is waging a war to destroy us and mothers are on the front lines of the defense.
I have made hundreds of mistakes in my life. I pray every night, sometimes in tears, that Heavenly Father will make me into the mother that my perfect children deserve. But I am certain I have done a few things right. I am certain because the proof is in the sweet fruit of my labor. I have three beautiful, imaginative, intelligent and thoughtful children. I don’t deserve them. I often wonder if the Lord will come in collection of my debt because there is surely no way to make my scale of worthiness to blessings balance. But there is not a major regret in my life.
The girl I was ten years ago would be very surprised. She was afraid to change and didn’t want to grow up. I no longer look back with regret for the changes that come naturally in life or a wish for a chance to return the days when my self concept was different. It is wonderful to be an adult. It is wonderful to be a wife. And there is absolutely nothing in life that can duplicate or match the absolute, lasting joy of being a mother. Instead of wondering what happened to the passionate girl who wanted to change the world, I look ahead to the future with anticipation. I have many years of cleaning yogurt off walls to come and I will cherish every moment of them. I hope someone will find comfort in the story of how I went from being smart to being happy.
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