The dreams and the reality

Originally published in The Miami News-Record, June 2020

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being married. As I got older, the vision in my mind only got stronger and more vivid as to what I dreamed it would be like. I’d meet this amazing, dark-haired man and we’d have virtually everything in common. We’d go on picnics and watch movies together. We’d lie in the grass under a tree and have deep conversations about the future. We’d bake cookies together and someone would inevitably throw flour at someone and we would laugh and laugh. We’d have a neat and tidy house, eventually a couple of well-behaved children, and live happily ever after. 

Like, none of that happened. None of it. Okay, well, we’re happy and this seems to be the “ever after” part they mention, so okay, those happened. He doesn’t even have dark hair – he’s a ginger for crying out loud. We have virtually no like interests, we aren’t even politically aligned, and if you turn on a movie, one or both of us will likely fall asleep.  

A friend text me the other day to tell me that her husband had just shown her a pimple he had on his back. She’s 13 years my junior and has been married 10 years to my 27. I had to laugh as I responded with, “I hate to break it to you, but he’s probably gonna offer to show you a hemorrhoid one of these days, probably fairly soon. Get ready.” 

In reality, marriage (and mostly life in general) isn’t the storybook version of “romantic.” It isn’t deep conversations under trees in your perfectly manicured yard, or flirtatious food fights. No, it’s mostly exhausted questions answered with exhausted grunts and I never dared to playfully start a food fight in my kitchen because I knew I’d be the one cleaning it up. The yard has never been manicured – he just sets that mower as low as it’ll go so he won’t have to mow so often. And when the dog tears up the trash you just hope a windy day is on tap so it will all blow away.

It’s the ugly stuff in life you never considered you might encounter that mostly comprises married life. You discover stretch marks and toe fungus, you have morning breath and really bad gas after eating Chinese food, he snores, you snore, the dog snores. Basically, everybody snores. The children are super entertaining and amazing humans, but maybe not the “well-behaved” vision you had in your head. He leaves his little beard hairs on the sink and breadcrumbs on the counter. You have an Amazon shopping problem. 

But when it comes down to it, marriage gives you a person. A person to call your own, a person who commits to being there for it all. A person who has this spot right on their shoulder where your head fits perfectly. A person who, upon hearing the word “turnpike,” immediately launches into a tirade about tolls and maintenance and you laugh even as you roll your eyes because you’ve heard that tirade a gazillion times before. A person who helps you paint even though they might hate painting even more than you do, and you hate it a lot. A person who binge-watches “Cheer” on Netflix with you and gets just as excited as you do when they stick the landing but would never admit to another living soul they did. A person who is a constant, a comfort, occasionally a source of frustration, but so many experiences and memories you can’t fathom going through them with anyone else. 

Sure there are pimples and bad breath and the years bring on gray hair and wrinkles and extra pounds, but by that point you and your person are so entrenched in this weirdly personal thing called marriage you just embrace it for what it is: your very own version of “romance.” 

Humility and hilarity

Originally published in The Miami News-Record, May 2020 

Some things are more humbling than others. Sometimes things are humbling and also hysterical. For instance, getting a new pair of shoes that have a little more heel than you’re used to, practicing walking in them so you don’t look like a frozen-toed chicken, then sashaying across the room all sassy-like only to twist your ankle and fall. That’s just humbling. Or accidentally saying the wrong word - a DIRTY word - in place of another, in front of the whole family at Christmas, trying to correct it, messing it up again, then messing it up THREE MORE TIMES before your mother finally says, “Enough! Stop trying to fix it!” That is humbling and amusing even while you mortified your grandfather. Or getting tickled with your best friend at the Tastee Freez and laughing so hard you pass gas very loudly (if you remember the old Tastee Freez in Miami, the place was small, sound carried, the booths were very hard and….resonant). That’s just downright hysterical. 

The other night I had an experience so humbling and hilarious I can only write about it and share with you, Constant Reader, because that’s just what I do. 

I’ve been doing some extreme social distancing since March, plus I had been in school for almost a solid year and had very little social interaction even before the pandemic hit. Only recently have I emerged from my little groundhog hole, eyes squinted, skittish, and very, very wary. We have limited our interactions to only our kids, my sister and her crew, and my mom and pops. Even those interactions are distanced and there isn’t the usual hugging and close proximity we are all accustomed to.

Last Thursday Paul and I had dinner at Mom and Pops’. After dinner, the fellas went to the living room to watch TV while Mom and I stayed in the kitchen and visited. 

You ladies know how it is, you touch your chin and accidentally discover a chin hair, and then it’s literally all you can focus on. I was trying to get it with my fingernails to no avail and Mom said, “Well, you can’t just sit there and fiddle with it, come on.” I protested, telling her I had car tweezers (because y’all know that car light is the best light to nab chin hairs) and would get it on the way home. She insisted I follow and as I entered the bathroom she unfurled a giant magnifying mirror from the wall. That thing had to be about 97,856X magnification. But I’m so short all I could see was my eyebrows and those were another story altogether. I tried standing on my tiptoes but still couldn’t get my chin in the frame. Finally, Mom got tired of watching me hop and stretch and said, “Give me those!” She snatched the tweezers, abandoned all social distancing rules, and grabbed my face. The hair was actually down below my jaw and still pretty small. She couldn’t see it. I found it and said, “There, right by my fingernail!” With a surgeon’s precision, she honed in on the hair. The room was quiet. And then…she started laughing. Then I started laughing. My chin in her hand, tweezers between us, both of us were laughing so hard that one of us passed gas. And one of us - okay, probably both of us - peed a little. The more we laughed the funnier it got and both of us were doubled over, wheezing, until Paul got concerned enough to come check on us. I heard him say to Pops, “I don’t know what was going on in there, but they’re both bent over and neither one of them can breathe. They’re probably fine.” When we finally composed ourselves we decided to just count our losses and leave well enough alone. 

The next day when I plucked that sucker from its little hiding place, I got to giggling all over again. Few things humble - and amuse - us more than chin hairs and having someone else attempt to pluck them for us. 

First you have to find yourself

Originally published in The Miami News-Record, May 2019 

My final kid graduates tomorrow. She completed her Junior and Senior years this year and is enrolled at Crowder for the fall. It’s been a busy time since March finalizing everything and getting things ready. We are building her an apartment in the south half of our house, so on top of school stuff we now have added construction stuff. It’s been a whirlwind to be honest.  I haven’t really known how to feel about her graduating. I didn’t get particularly emotional when the other two graduated and haven’t really felt too emotional with this one either. Since she’s not really leaving the nest just yet like her siblings did, I can save the empty nesting for another time. So yeah, I think I’m handling it. 

Graduation is an exciting time. I didn’t have a really great Senior year and not a lot of super awesome memories from that time, but I remember standing on that precipice between childhood and adulthood and being SO READY for whatever was next. I had bounced from one career dream and college major to another about a dozen times - from lawyer, to judge, to teacher, to actress and a few more that year. I started NEO that fall as a Theatre major. One semester in I woke up and realized I wasn’t going to make it as an actress, I had very little support for my education and I dropped out. I went to work in a daycare, moved to Stillwater, worked in a grocery store, moved home, met my husband, got married, and well, voila. I am now a mom with three adult children, two grandkids, a husband of 26 years, a job I adore, and life is good. I was a stay-at-home mom for roughly 20 years, homeschooling seven of them, and I got to help raise a few other people’s kids over the years as their babysitter. I don’t have a giant resume to show off, but I have had the most gratifying time “growing up.” 

My mom worked for an attorney in Miami, Mr. James Reed, for several years and I worked for him a few summers. He was a daunting man, very authoritative, and formidable. He, however, had a heart for seeing people succeed. Inside the card he sent me for graduation he wrote, “First you have to find yourself. For some it is not easy. Accept trial and error.” I kept the card in its entirety for years, eventually just cutting out a square around his words and laminating it. Right now it hangs on a magnet board on my bathroom wall and I see it every day. It has hung in a prominent place in my home for 29 years now. And it is the best piece of advice I’ve gotten regarding the future. 

I’ve tried to make sure my own kids have always known that it is 100% okay to just not know. It’s 100% okay to try - and fail. It’s 100% to start over - repeatedly if you have to. And as my youngest child, my wild child, my “she definitely keeps life interesting” child is about to embark on her own journey into adulthood, I hope she can remember that because Lord knows her momma is the queen of starting over and the whole try-and-fail thing. She’s amazing and confident and crazy smart, so I think she’ll embrace it just fine. And I hope her daddy and I have created a soft, safe place for her to land if she needs to. 

Kadybugg, I cannot wait to see how this plays out. I hope you sincerely enjoy the journey of finding yourself. It’s been a pleasure seeing you grow and learn and bend us all to your will. You are a whirlwind of kindness, belligerence, strength, beauty, compassion, and empathy. I am so proud of you and the woman you have become. 

Happy Graduation to all the graduates. Y’all are gonna change the world. And I love that. Be kind. Be you. Be Love. 

How wonderfully

Originally published in the Miami News-Record, June 2019 

I was scrolling through Facebook one morning, just as I do every morning. I allow some leeway in my morning schedule to give myself time to wake up. I take that time to scroll through Facebook. I’m sure a psychologist would screech in abject horror that I’m doing something horrible to my brain by waking it up that way, an optometrist might waggle a finger and tell me that blue light first thing in the morning will surely blind me. Meh. I enjoy a lazy, sleepy-eyed perusal through my most-used social media first thing in the morning and until Sigmund Freud himself tells me I should stop, I’m going to continue. 

Wow, that was a digression. 

The other morning as I was doing my morning scroll, I found something my youngest had shared. It was a square filled with line after line of the same sentence. The font was teeny tiny but neat and it caught my eye immediately. My scrolling stopped and I just stared. The repeated words formed beautiful row after row, line after line of perfection. That’s what originally stopped me, but then I read the repeated sentence:

“How wonderfully you have grown since June of last year.” 

It was like that little box was speaking directly to me. I’m not sure the reason why my daughter shared it. Maybe for herself, maybe for a friend. Maybe because she, too, liked the look of the repeated lines and rows. But it certainly wasn’t by accident that it showed up in my feed that morning. 

Last June Paul was on month three of unemployment. Aside from the loss of our first child, it was the hardest season we have gone through in our marriage. We were both bitter and angry. Fear plagued us both. I was a month away from having a total hysterectomy after over a year of severe problems. I was in pain and exhausted physically, then we were thrown into a place of insecurity we had never been. By the end of the month he had a job. A job that would thrust him into a depression he’d never experienced. At the beginning of July I had surgery. Major surgery. I felt better immediately. However, during my recovery I found another job, the job I am at now. All while trying to make sure my husband didn’t harm himself or give up. 

“How wonderfully you have grown since June of last year,” echoes in my head as I write this. 

I am learning how to be. And by “be” I mean, I am learning how to “be [fill in the blank].” It seems general and vague, but think about it. I want to be [better at painting]. I want to be [a cowboy]. I want to be [more loving]. Being is a state of existence and I want to be. 

I want to be more loving, caring, compassionate, fun, open to change, open to diversity, able to roll with whatever comes my way. I want to be a better mom, wife, grandma, daughter, sister, and aunt. I want to be a better employee, student, person in general. You can add “I want to be…” in front of all of those and make sentences. Profound sentences. 

Since changing jobs I have realized how closed-minded my world has been. I have shrugged off some ages-old thoughts and ideals that benefitted NO ONE and I’m ashamed I propagated them for basically my whole life. I now embrace everyone and even the “worst” individual humankind can introduce me to, I try to see things from a different perspective and see past what they are and into who they were and how they got to where they are. I love with all that is in me. I do good recklessly. I love who I have become since June of last year. And I hope that next June I can look back and see where I’ve become even better since this year. 

How wonderfully I have grown. 

2019 - a (mostly crappy) year in review

January: Paul and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. Sam and I started the year out on a nearly holy level by seeing the Broadway tour of Book of Mormon in Tulsa. I was fairly certain during one song that the entire theatre was going to be struck by lightning, but aside from that underlying fear, we laughed our asses off and I am hoping to go see it again this year in Arkansas. I turned 46. woot.

February: Paul turned 56. A friend in Tulsa gave me two tickets to see The Play That Goes Wrong at the PAC. Sam couldn't get anyone to cover his call, so I took Mom. It was cute and I plan to see it again this year in Springfield with Sam.

March: Paul, Kady and I got the flu during spring break. That was super fun. Mine went into pneumonia. That was also super fun. Abby, Kady and I went to NEO to see Frank Warren of Post Secret fame. It was spectacular, especially since I was reading Post Secret when it started.

April: Paul started a new job with the City of Miami. We continued our years-long journey into trying to find out What's Wrong with Kady™. Mom, Pops, and I rode to Tahlequah together to see my niece in a Greek thing for her sorority. It was on that car ride that I verbally announced to the first people on the planet my intention of going back to school to pursue a degree in Journalism/Public Relations. My anxiety went through the roof. Speaking it makes it more real. Later in the month Mom, Sis and I dressed up in 1980s dayglo and went out in public. Mom was adorable. Sam dumped his motorcycle and we spent all night in the ER getting him sewn up and a CT done just to be safe. He took a few years off his momma's life.

May: Paul bought a motorcycle. My anxiety went through the roof even more. I attended my first nerd-themed wedding. It was spectacular and the most fun I've ever had at a wedding. Sam and I continued our theatre adventure by seeing Something Rotten in Springfield. It was entertaining, but I'm not sure I'd see it again. Kady graduated from high school (a year early). Most of Ottawa County flooded.

June: Paul, myself and the kids journeyed to Silver Dollar City for the first time in ages. I rode a roller coaster for the first time in over 10 years. It. Was. AMAZING. The day after SDC I began summer classes online. We began construction on turning half the house into an apartment for Kady. The week after classes began there was a crackhead on a crime spree in our neighborhood and a high speed chase that ended up going literally through our front yard. Kady suffered some serious trauma from it. It was the first time in my life I ever pulled a gun on a person with the intent of shooting in self-defense. At the end of the month we went our our every-other-year traditional Big Family™ vacation. 18 people, one house, much chaos. And food.

July: Wemberly turned 3. She wanted a "birthday party [themed] birthday party" so that's what she got. Kady finally got into a GI doc who listened to her and agreed with our suspicion of Ehler's-Danlos Syndrome.

August: Celebrated my one year anniversary at Crowder. Started another semester of college - one online class (World Religions) and three seated (Journalism, Public Relations,  and Quantitative Reasoning - math). Kady also started her first semester of college at Crowder while Sam began his final one. At the end of the month a very crazy storm rolled through the area - 80 mph winds which took out trees and power lines everywhere. Our power was out for four days. We ran a generator to keep the fridge and freezer going and showered in various places, including a state park. During that time I started having some abdominal pain (and honestly just thought I was constipated because of the fact we'd had no water and I'm a shy pooper lol). Also, Sam and I reached the pinnacle of the year's theatre experience when we saw Hamilton in Tulsa. I was so sick, running a fever and in so much pain, but wasn't about to miss out on the experience. It was absolutely phenomenal!

September: Sam and I got home from seeing Hamilton around 2am. I was in tremendous pain, so I took some Aleve, got a heating pad and slept horribly for a few hours. Paul went up to a neighbor's to work on his trailer. After some googling and a few phone calls, I decided to shower and pack a bag for the hospital. Paul had left his phone in the truck while he was working on the trailer, so Kady had to run up and get him. He careened into the driveway, ready to carry me in his arms if that was needed. I made him shower and just drive me instead. We went to Claremore Indian Hospital since I didn't have insurance. A CT showed diverticulitis with an abscess. They said they were admitting me and planned to do surgery in the morning, however the surgeon took one look at the scan and said, "I'm not touching her." So I took my first ambulance ride in about 40 years in the middle of the night to OSU Medical Center in Tulsa where I spent four days with three teams fighting over if I was going to have surgery and what kind. I was septic and miserable and scared and two hours away from my family. I ended up not having surgery, thank God. Abby drove in Tulsa her first time in order to get herself, her daddy, and sister there to see me. In order to not have to drop classes altogether since I was slipping behind in the journalism classes, I switched my major to General Studies, dropped the journalism classes and added a couple of second-eight-week online classes (Philosophy and Music Appreciation) to allow me time to heal and also keep me enrolled full time. I got home from the hospital just in time for Petal to turn 2.

October: On his way home a weekend with his girlfriend in Arkansas, Sam hydroplaned in his truck and left the roadway. The truck came to rest about 1000 feet into the brush. It took the tow truck 4 1/2  hours to get him out but there was ZERO damage to the truck. His mother's nerves, however, were another story. Mom had a tumor removed from her bladder. I followed up with the surgeon in Miami who suggested getting some insurance and considering a surgery to remove a significant portion of my intestines. I scheduled a colonoscopy with him for the next month. Abby turned 23. Paul and I went to a Halloween party dressed as Ladd and Ree Drummond (aka Marlboro Man and Pioneer Woman).

November: Sam turned 21. I had my colonoscopy. I woke up during it. That was bizarre. The doctor found some hyperplasia and said the diverticula were vast and widespread and the surgery should be even more highly considered than before. We had pizza for Thanksgiving because Momma wasn't up for killing herself to cook a giant meal in the midst of ...... well, everything.

December: The whole family went to see Polar Express in the theater. I passed all my classes with As. Sam finally graduated from Crowder with his Associate degree in Journalism/Public Relations. The whole family (minus the babies) saw White Christmas in the theater. Kady turned 18. We took her gambling. We sang Christmas carols for our 80 year old Uncle Tom. We had our annual Christmas Eve Mario Kart tournament. I made chocolate gravy for the first time. Kady saw a rheumatologist who shrugged his shoulders over her and referred her to a geneticist. So that saga of What's Wrong with Kady™ continues into the new year.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

2019 wasn't great. Pretty crappy, if you want me to be honest. Yes, pun intended. Sure, we all survived. It could've been worse. But if you asked me to rate it, I'd likely not give it five stars.

2020 will see me finally graduate college with an Associate degree in nothing special in particular. This will mark 29 years since I took my first semester at NEO right out of high school. What should've taken four semesters took 29 years. I mean, I did it my way, right? I'm still working in Project NOW at Crowder and still love my job very much. I work with amazing people and I love helping the students. I hope to see better health and wellness - physical and mental - for us all as a family.

Kady has decided to take at least a semester off college to see what full-time work feels like being all grownup and stuff. She has a fast food job, but an interview with a bank tomorrow. She's still living in her little apartment next door and has been sharing it with her brother and his girlfriend since early December.

Sam and Maegan just moved into their new apartment today in Neosho. She has an interview tomorrow and Sam's working parttime at Crowder with hopes of a full time position soon.

Paul's still with the city. He still has his motorcycle much to my chagrin. He still leaves his little red beard hairs on the sink. We just celebrated our 27th anniversary.

Wemberly and Petal are in occupational and speech therapy respectively and are making great strides. W has Sensory Processing Disorder and OT is helping her with that so much. Petal is largely nonverbal, but speech therapy is helping her communicate. Abby and Dakota are amazing parents who absolutely devote all their energy into helping those two little girls thrive. Those two grandgirls just thrill my Kiki heart to no end.

At the beginning of last year I claimed a word for 2019: Wellness.

........you see how that worked out.......

I have adopted no word, no theme, no claim for 2020. We'll just see what happens.

Oh How Things Have Changed

Growing up, we always went to Nana's on the 4th of July. Always. There was no option, no variance, it was always to Nan's for the noon meal. We took day-works - firecrackers, snakes, sparklers, poppits, jumping Jacks, and the like. Lunch was burgers and hot dogs. There was always watermelon and homemade ice cream. When my cousin Russ was alive and still mobile, we cousins would gather around him in the living room floor before and directly after lunch and play dominoes or Boggle. The women cleaned the kitchen and visited, the men dozed off in the post-meal tradition.  Then finally! We'd climb the chat pile out back (hello, lead poisoning!) and Dad and Uncle Mike would oversee the explosives. That was Dad's side of the family. Mom's side of the family was fairly fluid in their plans. Sometimes it was our house, sometimes it was Uncle Larry and Aunt Sue's, occasionally we gathered at Papa's farm, it depended on where he was with harvesting or mowing or how sick Memaw was at the time. They were the evening festivity people. More sparklers, plus fountains and all the other fun, booming, high-in-the-sky stuff. It was always a day of cousins and food and stickiness and dirt and fun.

Then we grew up and as soon as the meal was over, we left whatever house we were at with our respective boyfriends and girlfriends to go see a movie or go to their family's shindig. I dated a guy in high school and they had a lake house and a pontoon boat and a lot of money. I hated the whole scene (they were *gasp* Republicans) and I really just wanted to go back to my family where we had cheap hot dogs and not filet mignon for lunch.

When Sis and I started families of our own we were just excited to have reason to buy fireworks once again. Paul and I were so broke when the kids were little, but starting in June we would scrimp and save up $100 for fireworks. It seemed like a lot until we got to the tent, then it seemed paltry and like it never bought enough. Sam always picked out something that pooped, Abby like the screaming chicken laying a fiery egg, Kady usually cried and whined that one of her siblings picked out the firework she wanted and the world was surely coming to an end. Most of the time the gathering was at our house because Mom lived in town and Sis did until she briefly lived in the country for a few years. One year we caught the field on fire. That was scary and fun all at once.

When we moved to Wyandotte I forced Paul's family to get together for the holiday. They are definitely not like my Big Family™. They don't actually like getting together. Mine anticipates the next one before the current one is over. My family lingers in the kitchen, there is always noise and laughter and eleventy-seven conversations at once. His family gets a plate. Quietly. Then some sit in the living room, some go outside, some sit at the picnic tables, some sit on the porch. There is rarely conversation and if there is, it's quiet and short. Mostly one syllable replies. Some nodding. That's just how they are. 

But the ONE thing I always anticipated with Paul's family coming up on the 4th - blowing shit up. We would trek to Academy the week before to buy a stupid amount of Tannerite and unfortunately, it seems there is always an appliance to go out some time during the year to provide the explosive entertainment. We've blown up a washer, a dryer, a dishwasher, and I think a hot water tank. It was always a good time.

Last year I had surgery on the 3rd, so our 4th was quiet. I came home from the hospital that morning and just rested the rest of the day. Apparently it would usher in a series of quiet 4ths.

This year we are empty nesters. Kady has an apartment attached to our house now, but she's her own person. She cooks for herself, pretty well stays to herself these days. (Although she still relies on us some since she STILL doesn't have her driver's license.) I slept until 8 this morning and when I woke up Paul was gone. He had gone up to Abby and Dakota's on the tractor to fix their perpetually washed-out driveway. He wanted to get up there and back before the humidity got to swimmable. I made coffee, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, made some breakfast, checked Facebook, and just kind of marveled in the fact that we bought ZERO fireworks this year, no one is coming over, we aren't going anywhere (unless we decide to venture to Lowe's for some trim to finish the dining room later), and how different our life has become. The grandgirls are still too little for fireworks of their own, although Petal likes the noise where Wemberly HATES it. My Big Family™ will be over on Saturday, but even then we aren't doing any fireworks. We are volleyball obsessed, so there will be a pool and slip-n-slide, much food and MUCH volleyball. We don't play by many rules and there is a lot of smack talking and laughing and even more of Abby and me avoiding the ball at all costs. But we will be together and that will be the best part.

As we got onto the interstate last week headed for Branson for Big Family™ vacation, Paul kind of sighed and reached over to pat my leg. "It's pretty strange.....looking back and seeing your kids driving their own cars, following you to vacation, when just a few years ago they all three were right there behind us in the backseat, with us." He is far more sentimental than I these days, so I just squeezed his hand and said, "Yeah, but they're still with us, there are just more of them now. And besides, when they were in the car with us, it was much louder. And I was usually reaching back to smack someone at any given moment along the way. It's not bad, the way we are now. Just different. Enjoy, Mr. Hoover. We've earned this. This quietness, this calmness, this getting to watch them now instead of being immersed in it nonstop." He shrugged. He's seeing this part of life much differently than I am. I was in the trenches, doing most of the work when the kids were little. He worked, I stayed at home. I never got a day off. I was on the job 24/7. He had a 30 minute drive to and from work ALONE and if the house got loud, he just went out and mowed the yard or piddled in the barn. And now that my work is mostly done, I am enjoying the break, the quiet, the calm, the spectatorship of it all. Maybe he feels he missed out. I can't say for sure. I know I didn't miss anything. I was in the trenches, covered in blood, guts, gore, sweat, tears. It was exhausting. Rewarding as all get out, but also exhausting.

However, I do know this: I am enjoying the hell out of my empty nest right now. Maybe I'll get lonely? Maybe I'll get bored? I doubt it. For right now I'm still Kady's Uber driver, I find myself drowning in hours of homework every day, I am learning to cook for two rather than the NINE we had in the house just a few short years ago. I like my clean and tidy tiny little half-house. I like it when the kids come to visit and bring the noise and chaos and I like it when they go home again, back to their own homes where they now do their time being young adults, growing families, learning how to be adults, getting educations, becoming the amazing individuals we raised them to be.

And if they need us? They know where to find us.  ❤️

Insult and Injury

(Originally published in the Miami News-Record)

Now that life has settled down a bit, I’m trying to establish a routine at my house. Housework that has been done on an as-needed basis (read: only if I knew someone was coming over) is now being done because basically I’m only working a couple days a week now, there are no small children in the house, and really I have no excuse to not have a house that doesn’t look like crime scene investigators should be called in. I’m not aspiring for Chip and Joanna Gaines status, just less “There appears to have been a struggle” status.

A couple weeks ago I was happily doing my new Saturday cleaning thing. I sprayed down the shower and decided to dust while I waited for those scrubby little bubbles to work hard so I don’t have to. As I was finishing up the mantel I looked up and noticed the TV screen was fingerprinty. Not sure why since it’s mounted on the wall and it’s not touch screen, but in my house I have learned that my children are capable of just about anything and most of all, weird things. It’s pretty much a circus when they’re all together. My circus, my monkeys, nothing I can do about it even if I wanted to. I just embrace the chaos and wait to clean it up after it’s over.

I scrubbed all the fingerprints off at the bottom and saw some toward the top of the screen. I am all of 5’2” and the top of the TV is somewhere around seven feet so I was struggling. Having been this height since I was 13, I did what I have done for over 30 years - I stood on my tiptoes. I didn’t go full pointe like a prima ballerina. I just barely went up enough to allow my paper towel a liiiiiiiiittle extra oomph.

Then I felt a pop in the top of my foot. Followed by what felt like a horrendous cramp. Then I said a bad word. Followed by a few more. I sat down and did a few flexing and pointing exercises and felt the crampy feeling subside to a dull ache. I think I know now why people avoid housework the way they do – IT’S DANGEROUS. I figured I probably needed to put on my shoes to do housework from now on since I’m old and fragile, but instead of doing that, I went on with my vacuuming and then finished up the bathroom. As the day went on, I noticed the pain was intensifying and by evening my foot had swollen to comical proportions. Monday I shoved my foot in a comfy shoe and ate ibuprofen by the handful. Tuesday morning I could barely get any shoe on. I got a same-day appointment, they x-rayed it, and she said it sounded broken but didn’t appear broken on film. Then added that stress fractures don’t always show up immediately on an x-ray. She wanted to put me in a walking boot, but since it’s my right foot I begged for anything but that. I need to be able to drive because Kady is in physical therapy in Joplin twice a week for her very own foot injury. So instead she put me in a “surgery shoe” and scheduled me for a follow up in two weeks.

As she was walking out she cautioned, “Please be very careful the next few weeks. That shoe will affect your balance and you’re a fall risk.” I, being who I am, laughed and said, “Yeah, and at my age I’m probably at risk for a hip fracture as well.” She didn’t even smile, she just replied with, “Yes. Absolutely. So be careful.” Then patted my leg, gave me a sweet smile, and said I should probably schedule a bone density test.

Ouch. That hurt worse than the injury – or the fact that I have to tell people I am hobbling around in a Frankenstein shoe because I injured myself while dusting.

Hope and Avon Bottles

(Originally published in the Miami News-Record)

Hope and Avon Bottles

Mom’s hope chest was a crate of mystery that loomed ever so sternly in the corner of her room, never giving hint to the wonders inside. It wasn’t ornate, but beautiful nonetheless. I didn’t dare look beneath the lid; Mom made it clear Sis and I weren’t to touch it.

I have no idea how old I was the first day she opened it up for me, but I can still see the day in my mind like it was yesterday. It was summer – the curtains which usually kept her room dark were pulled back  and the windows were open. Her room looked entirely different in the summer sunlight. When she opened the lid I half expected brilliant light to burst forth from its depths. Instead, the smell of cedar wafted out into the room. I craned my neck to see inside better.

On top was a picture of a girl with BIG HAIR. I wasn’t sure who it was at first until Mom pulled the picture out and held it to where I could see. I knew immediately it was her. Her beautiful eyes still sparkled even under that big ol’ bouffant. There was a photo album entitled “Our Wedding.” Black and white photos of my very young parents made me giggle. My dad was super skinny. My mom under that seemingly ever-present bouffant looked radiant. There were pictures of Memaw and Papa’s dairy farm -  Memaw smiling in the backyard, young and happy before she got sick. Mom pulled out some very official looking slips of paper – savings bonds. Grandpa Glenn had bought them for Sis and me when we were born and she said someday they would be worth more money. I quickly planned all the things I would do with that money. (Whatever age I was, I was still young enough to think $25 was enough money to live like a queen.) There were old Avon bottles that smelled weird. Mom said those were going to worth more money someday, too. I didn’t see how and thought she was very silly for putting an ugly bottle shaped like an old car in her hope chest.

My own hope chest sits at the foot of my bed. It jumps out in front of me and stubs my toes in the middle of the night and makes me say bad words. It’s always covered in stuff. Right now I see a power strip, four bandanas, a set of Tupperware bowls for when Kady moves out and I have no idea where to stash them in the meantime, a curtain, and a Scentsy warmer I keep forgetting to take to work. My Senior picture doesn’t feature a bouffant, but that giant 1991 Aqua Netted, permed ‘do makes my girls cringe. Inside aren’t many pictures, but approximately 4,762 notes from DeLisa, Stacie, and Chloe, all folded intricately, some labeled “DO NOT OPEN – PASS TO KRISTIN *ONLY*.” I remember when the things in those notes were so important to our very existence. Now I shake my head over them and cringe a little myself. Stacie and I have been writing letters since college and they’re all in that chest. My letter jacket was in there until I cut off the letter and threw the jacket away. My Senior memory book, Senior shirt, one of my graduation announcements, and a few leftover wedding invitations are sitting atop the Bible Mom got for graduation and the Bible Nana gave me when I was Baptized. And if you’ve still got a cassette player you can borrow my Village People tapes that are housed in there, too.

I don’t get into it very often because that involves me having to clear the stuff off the top and ew, housework. When I do, though, I’m instantly sucked into hours of pilfering and remembering. And buried deep within are my share of Mom’s Avon bottles. They smell even weirder now. I don’t have much hope they’ll be worth a lot of money, but for some reason it just seems right to keep them there.

Liberating Plankton, part 1

So I'm 45. I haven't dyed or bleached my hair in years and have fully embraced being silver-haired. I have wrinkles - more so now that I've lost 75 pounds - and my boobs are definitely slacking these days. I am well-versed in crossing my legs to avoid the dreaded Sneeze Pee and I also think 9:00pm is a perfectly acceptable bedtime.

I've been doing an intricate and somewhat emotionally hot-flash-punctuated dance with perimenopause for the last six or seven years now. Both of my grandmothers and my mother had hysterectomies and I was determined to be the first to just fade out into an estrogen-less wasteland somewhere in my 50's. My periods had gotten angrier in the last year, but again, I wrote it off as age. Then about six months ago the proverbial shit hit the fan. In six months I had 10 periods. All lasting 10 days or more. All painful. All horrible. I was getting maybe one good week a month if I was lucky - one week where I didn't cry all the time, spend it in bed with a heating pad against my gut, or just plain feeling like I was going to bleed to death. One of my best friends and I would send secret coded texts to each other every time we were on the ledge contemplating a self-directed hysterectomy with a serving spoon. We nicknamed our uteruses (uteri?) Plankton. Yes, like the evil single-cell organism on SpongeBob.

At my regular six-month checkup with my PCP I mentioned all of this. She said it could be age, but it could also be a fibroid. She sent me straight to radiology where they did an ultrasound. And sure enough, a week or so later the radiologist confirmed there was a fibroid.

Because I use Indian Health Services for most of my healthcare, they said they wanted to send me for a surgical consult in Claremore. Claremore Indian Hospital is not where I wanted to have surgery, so since I have insurance, I asked if they could just send the referral to the doctor of my choice outside of the Tribal Health System. The choice was immediate: Dr. Billings. I work for his in-laws, Kady nannies for his kids, he delivered Petal. I trust him.

On June 12th I saw him in office. He looked over my ultrasound and agreed there was a fibroid and my uterus was very large and "not normal." He gave me options, all of which sounded like bandaids to fix an organ I no longer had any use for. Trust me when I say, ol' Plankton and I were no longer friends. He agreed that given my age and the quality of life (or lack thereof), a hysterectomy was a valid choice. He did some endometrial biopsies in office that day. He made sure my mammogram was up to date. He said my ovaries looked perfectly healthy and he'd like to leave them for hormone regulation. (Mind you, radiologist who read the ultrasound also concurred the ovaries were healthy. I'll come back to this.) I was in agreement. He said as long as the biopsies came back normal I could schedule the surgery with his nurse. She said she had an opening on July 3rd. If I were physically capable of doing a cartwheel, I'd have done one right there with my paper drape a flappin' in the breeze. As it was, I politely and maturely agreed.

That gave me three weeks to get my house cleaned, my family prepared, tie up loose ends at work, and probably have another period. But oh well. I was *this close* to freedom. I felt like I could safely stop googling "How to remove an angry uterus at home" at this point.

...to be continued...

We Were Nine

Nine of us. Seniors. Sitting on the front steps of Wyandotte High. We thought we owned those steps. Everyone else did, too. It didn't matter who was on them or how long they had been sitting there, when The Nine decided we were going to sit there, we sat. And no one else did. That was just how it was. Call it some strange hierarchy of the teenage universe, but when the Senior herd is dominant, the underclassmen get booted to the lawn or the hallways or the curb. No one questioned us. They would just get up and shuffle away. Maybe it was because we had our bluff in on everyone, maybe were bullies, maybe...just maybe...we were obnoxious. Probably a little bit of all of that.

This particular picture was snapped on a sunny day near the end of our high school adventure. I know it was May because The Teddy Bear and I were dating. Graduation was looming. We were smiling. Genuinely. There were no duck faces, peace signs, tongues, or goofy faces. It was natural. It was relaxed. It was happy. We were all thin, fit, our hair was dark (and for us girls it was BIG thanks to Aqua Net). We were 18 and we. knew. everything.

There were five guys (The Class Clown, The Aggie, Mr. All-American Nice Guy [who was my knight in shining armor the night I got stupid drunk on Boone's Farm], The Quarterback, The Quiet Guy/Teddy Bear) and four girls (The Most Popular Girl in School, The Athlete, The Ag Queen, and me, The Nerd). Six of us started Kindergarten together. The other three came in somewhere in junior high. We didn't hang out together until Senior year and to this day I honestly don't know how or why we even started. Because we hadn't before then.

After high school Mom, Sis, and I moved to town and I remember one night everyone came over to my new house to watch movies. I think that was the last time we were all nine together. The Teddy Bear and I broke up that summer and he went on to marry one of my best friends a few years later. He doesn't care much for me now. He's a biker with a cool beard. The Most Popular Girl and I moved to Stillwater together. I moved back home about six weeks later. I missed my momma. All four of us girls went out a few years after graduation, got in a huge fight while we were out, and didn't speak for years. Fortunately we grew up and three of us are Facebook friends now. One isn't on Facebook (or maybe she's blocked me) and hasn't lived in the area since shortly after graduation. The Class Clown is a teacher now and he and his saint of a wife own a snow cone business in town. The Aggie bought a fireplace where I work a couple years back. He's a farmer and on the school board. We both live in the 'Dotte. All-American Guy is still around, but our paths rarely cross. He served our country as a Marine. He used to be a golf pro and my husband was so envious of his job. The Quarterback stays to himself. He has a job down on the lake. A few of us have lost children. Three of us are grandparents. One hasn't married. A few of us are divorced.

And as it turns out, we did NOT know everything. I still don't. Maybe the other eight have gotten it together in the past 27 years, but for this ol' gal, I'm still living by the "fake it til you make it" way of life. We sat there on those steps that day never dreaming of the things we'd encounter. Pure, real love and true, deep heartache. Unimaginable joy and unfathomable loss. Ups, downs, and all the in-betweens. That inevitable changeover from cool car to sedan or *gasp* minivan. The expanding of hips and waists, the graying of hair, births and deaths, laughter and tears. I keep going back to that picture a lot lately. I wonder if that girl in the jean shorts and NEO t-shirt would want to know how her life will look in 20-some years.

Nah. She's still trying to figure it all out anyway.



Originally published in the Miami News-Record on June 22, 2018. 

Back in My Day

Originally published in the Miami News-Record on June 26, 2016. 

My oldest daughter, as you know, is expecting a sweet, precious, little girl (who has decided this week to behave and stay put awhile longer, thank the Lord). She is very active, has crazy long legs, and likes to lie on her back with her arms over her head or across her face – just the way her momma sleeps. This has proven problematic for ultrasound pictures because the little stinker refuses to cooperate and smile for the camera. And now Abby is just absolutely convinced she needs a 3D ultrasound so she can see this baby girl’s face.

But I think “need” is a bit of a stretch.

Back in my day, you got ONE ultrasound. It was at 20 weeks. Period. You had to go in with a bladder full to approximately the size of a watermelon, knowing full well someone was going to squish around on it for about 30 minutes. All of your friends warned you and told you to expect to either cry or pee yourself. Or do one then the other. There was no such thing as 3D or 4D ultrasounds back then. No, your baby appeared on screen as a grainy, skeleton alien monster. If you were lucky enough to have a cooperative child with some exhibitionist tendencies, they could sometimes determine the gender of your child. Then the technician would describe the child’s genitals as either a “hot dog” (girl) or a “turtle” (boy). And most of them wouldn’t give you any more than a 60% chance they were correct. You didn’t WANT a face shot because frankly, your baby was a frightening creature that looked like an alien and you were secretly afraid it was going to grab hold of and eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

This glamorous ultrasound session was usually done by a surly technician who felt their time and talent was being wasted on such frivolous things as, oh you know, YOUR BABY. Twice I got a tech that sighed through the entire ultrasound. Apparently they were bitter that they hadn’t been made famous yet by discovering a new and previously unnoticed organ or something during a routine ultrasound.

The price of your child’s first photo shoot was included in the all-inclusive delivery fee you were informed of on your first visit. You know, the first visit where they confirm that yes indeedy, you are quite pregnant. As if the 50 positive pregnancy tests you peed on and the barfing 24/7 weren’t big enough clues. You were shuffled from the exam room to an office where “the girl who does the insurance” held court. There she asked for your insurance card, did some magical figuring on an adding machine (this was pre-internet, mind you), and made a declaration of what you had to pay the doctor every month when you visited so your baby would be paid in full by delivery. (During my last pregnancy I asked if they would repo a couple – the two who were at that moment in a full-on WWE match on her office floor) (She didn’t get my sense of humor. She said no.) 

I get it, times change. My mom had nary an ultrasound with either of her pregnancies. Of course, my Nana also nearly had a stroke when she saw Mom hanging clothes on the line and running the vacuum while pregnant because both of those chores were 199% known to cause the cord to wrap around the baby’s neck. Daddies didn’t get to witness the birth of their children. Diapers were cloth, bottles were glass, carseats were virtually nonexistent.

So if my kiddo wants to pay for a glimpse of her baby’s face ahead of time, I suppose I won’t complain. I’m already so in love with this little blueberry that seeing her squishy little face early might cause me to go into happy spasms or an uncontrollable squealing fit, but I suppose I’ll adjust to the changing times. It’s what all the hip grandmas do. 

A Smarter Phone

Originally published in the Miami News-Record on April 10, 2016.

Right around the time we disconnected our satellite TV we changed up our cell phone plan. Just like with the TV, we were tired of paying an astronomical amount on phones as well.  Paul’s favorite tirade (right after his lengthy speeches about the unfairness of the turnpike tolls – remind me to tell y’all about that one someday) is when he starts in on how “Back in MY day, we didn’t take our phones with us everywhere because they were attached TO OUR WALLS.” And of course, then he’d take a deep breath and immediately say that for what we’re paying on our phone bill, we could make “a heck of a car payment”. Except I like my car and he likes his truck, so I’m not sure why we need to make a car payment… But, as soon as contracts started expiring, I started shopping.

I made a call to our carrier and just basically told them I didn’t want to  utilize another company’s buy-out deal but I would if I had to and that I really liked their service, I just didn’t like the price that kept showing up on the bill every month. Fortunately, it worked. She worked a bunch of stuff around, offered a lower price for more data than we were currently getting – IF we wanted to add a couple of smart phones.

And that’s where I balked. We let Abby and Sam switch over to smart phones a few years ago and Kady has just been counting down the days until she could have one. The kids would belittle my adorable little phone with the slide-out keyboard in attempts to bring me into this century. They would ask me to please not use it in front of their friends. Once while sitting in the parent room at our homeschool co-op I whipped out my little phone, slid out the keyboard like a boss, and proceeded to send a text – quite adeptly I might add. My friend nearly spit out her drink when she saw it. “Oh my gosh! I haven’t seen one of those in years!” When I told her my husband still had a flip phone I thought she was going to pass out from laughing so hard.

So when they said I could add two smart phones and upgrade Sam’s to the newer version than what he had all while lowering our bill to the tune of $100, I took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Let’s just do it.” She noted everything on the account and we headed to the store in town. Before I left I asked Paul if he wanted to upgrade to a smart phone. He said a word I don’t dare type lest my mother pass smooth out and my editor fire me. I asked if he at least wanted to lose the flip phone, maybe go to one with a keyboard. “What? I just learned how to use this one!” I reminded him that the phone he was currently stroking like a Persian cat was almost five years old. While he clutched it to his chest like it was his most prized possession he reminded me of the five hellish days he owned a slider phone and how he threw it across the room while cursing his large thumbs. I told him the next phone he got was going to be a Jitterbug made just for senior citizens. He gave me a dirty look and called me a whippersnapper. 

I have to say, I’m enjoying my smart phone. I’ve sent my share of horrible autocorrects that have left myself and my unfortunate texting partner laughing. I WAY overuse emojis. I text the kids and when they don’t reply immediately send, “Thanks to the fancy smart phone you insisted I get, I know you’ve read my text. Reply now or you’re grounded.” Then I send the angry face emoji. Then the kids roll their eyes. No need for an emoji there. They convey that face in real life just fine.

Oh, Blessed Slumber

Originally published in the Miami News-Record on March 20, 2016. 

Sleep is defined as “a condition of body and mind such as that which typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is relatively inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended.”

Unless you’re married.

I love sleep and I am really good at it. I am at a stage in life where I fall asleep, stay asleep, wake up feeling like a Disney Princess – except the closest wildlife out here is possums and armadillos and those guys are really bad at housework. They work nothing at all like the cute singing bluebirds and squirrels in the movies.  But I digress.

12 years ago Paul was in a motorcycle wreck. He was hit by a car. The car won. As a result, he has some issues with his back. A few years post-wreck we bought a Tempurpedic mattress in an attempt to alleviate some of his pain. We even got the ergo frame. That sucker will fold you up like a taco, sit you up like a hospital patient, or stand you on your head. There is no transfer of motion and it forms to your body. For me, it produces Sleep Nirvana. It used to produce the same for Paul, but after years of sedentary work at the casino and now factory work at his new job, his back muscles are staging a mutiny. The heavenly bed puts him through hell these days. Most nights he sleeps in the recliner because it’s the only place he can get comfortable.

Sleep is habit-forming. Not just in its frequency and duration, but also in how we do it. Paul works evenings, I go to bed well before he gets home at Midnight. Most nights he watches TV until 2 or 3 am and falls asleep in the recliner. I only see 3 a.m. if I have to pee. I get up early to see Sam off to vo-tech and start Kady on her schoolwork while we tiptoe around the recliner until mid-morning. It’s not ideal, but it works. On the weekends he tries to go to bed at a normal time and sleep in the bed, but he usually ends back up in the recliner. And typically, I’m glad when he finally goes.

Here’s the thing about my dear, sweet, darling, hard-working husband: he has the boniest knees in the entire history of forever. Oh, to look at him you’d never know he is a freak of nature, but trust me, when he lies down in a bed at night, those knees become lethal weapons. I have dealt with these killer joints of his for 23 years now and I think I have permanent nerve damage to the backs of my legs. 

Because see, not only is he the “big spoon”, he is also incredibly cold-natured. He gets cold, scooches over to me, wraps his big strong arms around me…..then proceeds to jab his killer knee joints into the backs of my legs. I’ve learned to mule kick his legs into submission, but then the other problem arises: I am not cold-natured. I am a 43 year old woman and we are subjected to these things called night sweats. And they ain’t for sissies. So he snuggles in, I think “Aw, this is nice. He loves me and I love him and I forgot how nice this……used….t—OHMYGOSH I AM GOING TO SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST IF HE DOESN’T STOP TOUCHING ME RIGHT NOW.”

Psalms 4:8 says, “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, will keep me safe.” I love this assurance and maybe that’s why I usually sleep so well. However, even the Lord may have a hard time keeping Paul safe the next time those knees jab me in the backs of the thighs. We are currently in talks of going full Ward and June Cleaver just in case I can’t find a doctor who will comply with my demands of knee softening surgery. We’re thinking a couple of nice twin beds with matching bedspreads. A fan on my side of the room, a heater on his.  

The Mothers Before Us

Originally published in the Miami News-Record on March 13, 2016. 

This past week after a funeral, as we were standing in the foyer, Sis and I had a moment. And I’ve been thinking about this ever since.

Without taking her eyes off Mom who was visiting with people as they came out of the chapel, Sis said, “You know…we had such amazing female role models growing up. I wonder sometimes if I measure up. Am I being the same kind of role model for our girls? Like the ones we had?”

She spoke out loud what has gone through my head and heart on many occasions. Am I doing a good job? Am I messing up? Have I taught them enough? And if I haven’t, is it too late? Did I ever get around to teaching Abby how to make gravy before she moved out??? (I don’t think I did!)

We both looked at Mom who was presently patting the back of a white-haired woman, smiling her beautiful smile, and agreeing that the service was truly a wonderful tribute. And tears welled up in my eyes.

Granny Glenn was eccentric, but she was the best person to go to for advice on homeopathic medicine and she believed tea tree oil could cure anything. Memaw was sick most of my life, but the stories I have heard tell about a hard working farmer’s wife who endured so much and loved her family. And she always smiled when she saw us, no matter how sick she was. Nana was a staunch Republican who spoiled her grandkids, salted everything she put in her mouth, and would call you on your birthday and sing to you whether you wanted her to or not. There was the aunt who fielded questions about mysterious rashes when Abby was little, and the one who made a bikini out of fabric scraps so I could swim in the wheelbarrow. The aunt who once told me to “never worry about how you look when you’re around family. We all love you and will always love you no matter what.” The three English teachers – Reid, Enoch, and Sharbutt – who instilled in me a love for words as a teen. Ella Lou Reynolds and Helen Merit were ever-present guides at Hudson Creek Baptist Church who taught us that you love the church because God loves you. And you didn’t dare run in the sanctuary when those two ladies were around.

There was a tribe of so many women who shaped my mother into who she is and she – and a whole slew of women – in turn shaped my sister and me to be who we are. And now Heather and I are muddling through this thing called Motherhood. Surely all those women before us had doubts, too?

No mother is perfect, but if Mom ever had doubts about her ability to raise us girls, she never showed it. She was always so confident and always had all the answers. Heck, she still has all the answers. Maybe I am too honest with my girls because I just flat-out tell them: “I don’t have a clue. Call your Gram.” That works for hemming pants. And how to fix decorator icing that won’t hold its shape. And how to handle your child who sometimes cries more than she breathes. Oh wait, that one is ME calling her for advice.

My daughters and nieces are wonderful. Sure, they act goofy sometimes. Sure, they sometimes decide to get married and give you seven days to plan it. Sure, they sometimes run out of gas, forget to unload the dishwasher, and can never, ever, EVER make it out of the house on time, but they are good girls. They’re smart, kind, respectful, honest, trustworthy, and so much more.

I hope Mom is proud of how we are raising our girls. I hope she’s proud of them as women. I hope she’s proud of me. Even when I take my crying 14 year old to her and “suddenly remember that I need to go to Walmart.” 

A New Beginning

Originally published in the Miami News-Record on March 6, 2016.

“Momma? We want to get married next Saturday. Can we make that happen?”

That was the Sunday before the proposed wedding date. And I, being the pleaser and task-conqueror that I am, in a moment of what can only be described as maternal insanity said, “Absolutely!” They only wanted immediate family, nothing fancy, very simple. I assured them it could be done. I sent texts to Mom and Sis and asked for their help. They were all in.

I hit the floor before the sun was up on Monday morning. I had lists going on multiple pieces of paper; I was drinking coffee as fast as humanly possible. I was one determined mother. Once 8:30am hit I was checking prices, making calls, sending texts. I was in the zone. By the time Monday evening rolled around, Kady, Mom, Sis, and I had secured the church, the preacher, flowers, food, photographer, and guests. If we hadn’t been so exhausted we’d have patted ourselves on the back. Instead, we all just collapsed into bed.

The next day when Abby got off work we headed to Joplin to shop for a dress. She is a pale little thing and has said for years she didn’t want to get married in white or ivory lest she look like a bottle of glue. She wanted pink. Very light pink. And that was all well and good – a bride should have what she wants, right? Well, this season’s colors consist of aqua, salmon, or burn-your-corneas HOT PINK. In the first store, she tried on a pretty aqua dress and we set it aside as a last resort. We scoured the mall from stem to stern. There were no light pink dresses. Well, there was one at Macy’s, but it nearly revealed her bum and we decided it wasn’t appropriate for a church wedding. Or any wedding. Or for wearing in public. We were headed back to buy the aqua dress when Kady ducked into a cutesy little dress shop we never even glance at because their prices are so high. Then we saw her arm shoot out into the doorway with THE. PINK. DRESS. And it was 20% off! Abby tried it on, fell in love, it was purchased, and we made a mad dash to look for ivory shoes. Apparently to go with the burn-your-corneas hot pink, only white shoes will do. We were again discouraged. Then, little sister to the rescue once more, Kady found THE ivory shoes. We exited the mall fifteen minutes before it closed. The bride was happy. I was happy. And tired.

 She had tears in her big brown eyes as she came down the aisle on her daddy’s arm. In my mind, I saw him holding her, swaddled and black-haired, mere minutes after she arrived. She smiled at me and blinked the tears away. Standing at the altar she looked at the same time a child and a woman. She is the same age I was when I said, “I do” to her daddy, yet wasn’t she only born a few days ago? I sat there feeling what I am certain my own mother felt 23 years ago: hope, joy, wonder, pride, excitement, and not the least bit sad. But probably just as tired. I am proud of who she is and love her endlessly. Her daddy feels the same way, too. She was a vision in that pink dress, her auburn hair nearly shrouding her face as she prayed with her husband’s hands in hers. God was in our midst.

Their Pops married them, their pastor prayed over them, their family was there to witness their beginning. We all love them. These kids have no idea the support system they have. Or maybe they do. Yeah, I think they do.

“Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.” Matthew 19:6 (NLT)

Another Year

Originally published in the Miami News-Record on January 24, 2016. 

I am writing this on my 43^rd birthday. By the time you read this I’ll be 43 and three days. Remember when age was able to be broken down into increments? “I’m 15…and a half.” Or when your kids were little you’d proudly say, “She’s two and three quarters.” At the age I am now, 43 is 43 for an entire year and there is really no point in halving it or quartering it. It is what it is: old.  

Being a January baby, it usually snows on my birthday. Sometimes it’s just rain. I think I can only recall maybe three years out of 43 that it hasn’t precipitated on my birthday. This year, as I look out the office window, I see…..bleh. There is  just enough moisture in the air to glaze the world with a dangerous sheet of ice – a scary thing for a woman who is at a stage in life where she is genuinely concerned about breaking a hip.

The first time I met one of my best friends in the world, the girl who would be my sidekick (and I, hers) for many a year, was at my 5^th birthday party. Mom opened the front door to behold a brown-eyed neighbor girl named DeLisa who was standing under a yellow umbrella with her mom in a torrential downpour.  We remain friends to this day. 38 years. I haven’t even known my husband that long.

It was probably my 8^th or 9^th birthday that school was canceled due to a major snow storm. I was devastated because school birthday parties rocked. You got to skip that last subject of the day, your mom brought cookies or cupcakes and Koolade, and you usually got to be the first “doggie” in a game of “Doggie, Doggie, Who Has the Bone?” To soothe the disappointment of having to stay home, Mom sat me up behind the loveseat at the sliding glass door with all of my Strawberry Shortcakes and gave me a present every hour. By day’s end, I was getting individual outfits for the dolls, a shoe here, a hat there (they were probably part of a multi-pack, but I think Mom had to get creative after about ten hours of presents), but it remains one of my most memorable birthdays.

For my 11^th birthday, my parents decided I was old enough to have a slumber party. Stacie, Chloe, Necia, the ever-present DeLisa, and I stayed up suuuuuuuper late (like, MIDNIGHT!) and began a tradition that lasted for many years: we drank soda from baby bottles. Do not ask me why. My kids have asked repeatedly and I cannot even begin to tell anyone why on earth that became a thing.  But I have photographs that seriously amuse my children regaling the entire weird thing. Thankfully, by the time we got to 9^th grade we let that one go. Whew.

Birthdays have lost a little of their excitement as the years have gone by. When the kids were little I was showered with crayon drawings on construction paper, kisses, hugs, and promises to not fight with each other and pick up their toys. Paul has been good to try and always take me to dinner, even during the lean years when money was tight. Those were the years when McDonald’s was a treat. He’d even let me Super Size. I don’t find myself struggling to fall asleep the night before anymore – in fact, I was dozing in the recliner by 9:30 last night. I intended to slouch around the house all day long, but am on my way to put on a little makeup because Mom is insisting I have dinner out. And I was thinking that maybe later, I’ll round out this special day by taking down my last remaining Christmas tree. Hey, don’t judge me. We old folks forget things. And sometimes it’s things like 6-foot tall Christmas trees in their dining room. 

Emptier Nest

Originally published in the Miami News-Record on September 13, 2015.

Last weekend we moved our oldest, Abby, into her own house. I didn’t shed a single tear the entire day. In fact, I have yet to cry over the whole thing. Now, her daddy on the other hand has had a significantly harder time with this than I have.

While I’m usually the cry-er, that wasn’t the case this time. So even though I didn’t “get” his sadness, I just patted him awkwardly and said, “Geez, it’s not like she moved to China. We’ll see her again next week. Good grief.” Apparently he viewed this as a bit cold. I tried. I really thought that was comforting. But he pats me awkwardly when I am hysterically crying over an episode of “Downton Abbey” even though he thinks I’m silly beyond measure. This time it was simply my turn to awkwardly pat him even though I didn’t understand why he was so upset. I suppose I should expect him to be a little less sympathetic the next time I’m crying while the Crawleys celebrate Christmas at the abbey. (And if you’ve ever watched “Downton Abbey” you know the Christmas episodes are absolute tear-jerkers.)

I have been nothing but elated for Abby since she first started talking about moving out on her own. When I was 19, I moved to Stillwater with a friend from high school and lived there all of six weeks. I was so homesick I ran back home with a bruised ego, feeling a bit of a failure. (It all worked out  – I met my Pauly a month after moving back.) So really, I have never lived on my own. I went from living in my momma’s house, a short stint with a roommate, back to Mom’s, to living in my husband’s house. And 23 years later, I’m still living in the midst of this glorious circus with these crazy monkeys I married and gave birth to. Abby’s getting to live monkey-free for awhile and that’s very cool.

I’ve had so many people console me and tell me “it’s going to be okay” and I’ll “get through it” and I’m like, “Yeaaaaaah … *blink blink*… I know. I’m excited for her….should I not be?” and then I usually get stared at like I’ve suddenly grown tentacles or something.

She’s learning that it’s okay to be alone. She’s paying her own bills, cooking her own food (mostly chicken strips and mac and cheese), going to her job every day, and has decorated her house the way she wants to decorate it. (The plethora of Eiffel Towers in virtually every room is testament to that.) She and her dog are settling in to this grand thing called Life on her terms, in her own way, and I am THRILLED for her. When she tripped a breaker the other day, she had to figure it out on her own. (Of course, she called her Daddy to help her, but she fixed it on her own while he talked her through it.) She is also fighting an ant invasion and has figured out that if she lets the dishes sit in the sink that is a very bad thing. She is potty training a year and a half old dog, proving the adage “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” wrong. She is decoupaging every light switch and outlet cover in the house pink and silver and polka dots. I am so proud of her, living this chapter of her life quite bravely and awesomely.  

Oh, don’t get me wrong – I miss her something fierce. But for now, she can’t afford cable and we can, so we know that every Sunday night she’ll show up at our house for dinner that is definitely not chicken strips and macaroni and cheese and to watch “The Walking Dead.”  I’ll get my Abby fix and zombie fix all in the same night. Life is good. Even if our nest is a little emptier. 

The Woobie

Originally published in the Miami News-Record on August 30, 2015

They were just cloth diapers, however we didn’t use them for that. I bought them second-hand from my boss at the time. His boys were out of infanthood and I was a newlywed with dreams of a family. So they were tucked away in the spare room until the blessed event occurred.

Abby was our most prolific puker. We ran the gambit of formulas in attempts to quell the fount of ...stuff that emitted from our baby. Those cloths were put through their paces her first year. While the burp cloths were ever present and actually a part of my wardrobe that first year, (seriously, every picture of me taken during Abby’s first year shows me sporting a cloth diaper on my left shoulder – it’s comical, really) she had no particular attachment to them.

Then her brother came along and once again we dragged out the burp cloths. It was a force of habit to start wearing a burp cloth on my left shoulder even though he wasn’t the projectile spewer his sister had been. But a funny thing happened when he wasn’t very old – we noticed that when we picked him up, he found that ever-present cloth and grabbed it up in his tiny little hand. He would clutch it and love on it and soon, he was our own little Linus. We started tying a knot in the end of one so we’d know not to wipe up slobbers, boogers, or spits with it. And it wasn’t long before it had a name: it was The Woobie. He went to bed with it, woke up with it, drove it around in his Tonka dump truck, and ate with it in his lap. After he was weaned off the bottle and no longer needed a burp cloth, Woobie still hung around. He had about three dozen to choose from and we just rotated them out when they started smelling weird or I felt they might start standing up on its own. I mean, they were all identical, so they were easily interchangeable.

Then SURPRISE! We found out we were going to have a Kady! And while we tried to convince brother that the new baby was going to need the burp cloths for actual burping, he didn’t buy it. We finally reached an agreement – he would keep three for himself and the rest had to go to his new sister. And because he was in the throes of stinky boy-ness, I promptly dyed them all bright pink so he would want nothing to do with the ones he donated. It worked. He said pink was gross.

Then a new generation of Woobie was born, all pink and girly. It wasn’t long before we were tying a knot in the end of one to keep it goo-free. And that sweet girl carried those pink raggedy hunks of cloth everywhere, even more than her brother did. By the time Kady was born, those burp cloths were in the neighborhood of 23 years old. They held up well, I think.

Tucked safely in their keepsake boxes are many things – locks of hair, birth announcements, etc. In Abby’s is a paci with no end (creative habit-breaking on my part). In Sam’s is a very dingy Woobie with a knot in the end. And in Kady’s, a tiny 4x4 piece of the palest pink, ratty, threadbare fabric that is all that is left of the very last Woobie. Sam’s was washed before I put it away and in my tenderest of Mommy moments, I will breathe deep into it and reminisce of the scent of his little boy noggin. Kady’s, however, was in such bad shape it could not be washed before it was put away. It would have disintegrated for sure.  I don’t sniff around on that one. I think it’s better to remember the smell of her little head without partaking of the Woobie. It’s probably just safer for my nasal passages. 

My First Ride

Published in the Miami News-Record on May 3, 2015 

My first car was a gold 1986 Chevy Cavalier. I drove her until I was nearly 21. I ran her completely out of oil once. I also wedged her driver’s side rear door into the tailgate of Jerry Friend’s truck in the school parking lot one morning. By the time we traded her in she was using a quart of oil a day (turns out, running a car out of oil is a bad thing…who knew?) and you couldn’t go up a hill with the air conditioner on because her four little cylinders were apparently very tired, but she got me where I needed to go. Sometimes it took me awhile, but I got there eventually.

I turned 16 in 1989. It was a glorious time of permed hair and giant bangs that jutted awkwardly off of our foreheads like unicorn horns, though far less pointy but no less rock solid. My bangs were so high-in-the-sky back then I had to drive slouched down in my seat because my bangs touched the headliner and I couldn’t have anything encroaching upon their airspace. Apparently the slouching weakened the seat support. One day, as I leaned back to smooth my skirt underneath my rear, the seat gave way and completely came loose from the car. I found myself looking up at the ceiling of my car, legs smashed into the steering wheel, rocking back and forth, in complete and utter shock at the abrupt change from vertical to nearly horizontal. It was then I also noticed faint shoe prints on the backseat ceiling. Turns out, my sister and best friend thought it would be completely hilarious to put those up there and then watch my mother have a full-blown conniption fit right there in my car if she ever saw them. After I righted my seat and found my way out of my car (all while making a mental note to scrub that ceiling ASAP), I retrieved my father who was coming in off of a night shift. He was exhausted and I was going to be late for school, so he did what any other Oklahoma father in his situation would’ve done – he propped the seat up with a brick and sent me off to get my daily dose of public school education. It worked far longer than it should have and it wasn’t until I was a newlywed that the brick broke and my new redneck husband drilled a hole through the floor of the car and bolted the seat right to the frame.

The seats of that car were particularly quirky and the passenger front seat would lie completely flat. One time while dragging Main in Miami, Sis and I were smack dab in the middle of downtown, cars in front, back, and to the side of us when she said something really funny and made me laugh out loud. While I was sitting in the passenger seat laughing like a loon, tears streaming down my face, she released the seat and laid down making it look like I was entirely alone in that car, laughing for no reason. When my laughter subsided and I opened my eyes to see her out of the view of every other teen on Main that night I then began trying to make her sit up, begging her to stop making me look crazy which only succeeded in making me look even more so because now I was talking to myself as well.

One day Mom said she had a headache and was going to lean the seat back and close her eyes while I drove us to town. About halfway to Miami she quietly asked, “Kristin Dawn, is there something you need to tell me…like why there are shoe prints on the ceiling of your back seat?”

And then it was Sis’ turn to laugh hysterically in that sweet little gold Cavalier. And I had some splainin’ to do.