by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
We have this fancy chalkboard hanging in our kitchen with “This Night” written in wannabe hand lettering, because I’m nothing more than a wannabe artist. Beneath those words, we have each of the boys’ names and their subsequent chores listed. Those chores change every week, although if you ask our boys, they’re always on wipe-the-table duty, because it only takes 30 seconds to flick a sponge around and dump food scraps on the floor.
We’re diligent about teaching our boys how to do chores, because one day they will be married, and they need to know how to do things like sweep the floor and load a dishwasher (or whatever nifty invention is around then) and wipe down counters until they’re squeaky clean (no, that’s squeaky clean, kids. Not sticky clean.) so their significant other can take a little break every now and then. Also so we can get a break for the next eighteen years, but that’s not really the point. Okay, it is.
Normally doing the chores looks like the 3-year-old putting the silverware in the dishwasher tray and pouring the liquid soap and closing it and pushing start, but not getting to touch anything else (because glass in 3-year-old hands is like a death sentence. Also, speaking of a death sentence, you should make sure there’s not a butcher knife in the silverware tray, because even if it’s already safe and snug in its place, that 3-year-old will pull it back out. “Not here, Mama. Here,” he’ll say, waving it like he’s writing the ABCs in the air. Except he doesn’t know how to write letters yet. So he’s really just passively aggressively threatening you for all those times you took the plunger away from him even though it’s his favorite toy that’s most definitely not a toy.).
“Doing chores” looks like the other 3-year-old singing while he’s wiping down the table, which really just means he’s sweeping all the leftover food (because boys eat like raccoons) onto the floor the 5-year-old is complaining about sweeping. It looks like a 6-year-old “wiping off counters” by maneuvering the sponge around all the papers they unloaded from their school folders and spread all over the available surface space so there’s really nothing at all to wipe.
And then there is the 8-year-old on trash duty.
When this boy is on trash duty, I regret all the times I talked to him about environmental issues like saving water and recycling everything we can recycle and not wasting energy by leaving lights on. The only thing he heard was…nothing. He read in a book somewhere that most trash can be reused, and this is his mantra:
Everything can be reused.
(Because he likes absolutes.)
This mantra is a little overly simple, to my mind. I remind him of this every time he’s brushing his teeth and walks out of the bathroom with the water faucet still running because he’s thinking about how he could reuse his toothbrush and all his brothers’ to make a little toothbrush family with drawn-on faces and homemade clothes and handmade arms and how about we get started right now. I remind him every time I run upstairs before we leave for school and four lights are blazing because he was trying to find that one book to show me what someone made out of old shoes. I remind him every time I throw something away and it ends up back on my bed.
Take, for instance, the baby’s old pacifiers. Pacifiers are pretty gross. These things have been through five boys, and the last baby decided he didn’t like them, so we thought we’d just toss all the old ones. I didn’t really want to give them away because five boys and all that slobber—who in the world would want them? I tossed them all in my bathroom trash can and thought I was done with that.
Imagine my surprise when I wanted to go to bed and there were four pacifiers staring at me from my pillow.
“What in the world?” I said, to no one in particular.
“Oh. Those pacifiers can be reused,” said the 8-year-old, who always seems to be behind me, even if it’s time for lights out.
“I threw them away for a reason,” I said. “I do not want to reuse your old pacifiers.” I then explained that we didn’t want to pass the old pacifiers along to another family when they had already been used by him and four of his brothers, because sometimes people can be a little weird about that kind of thing, since pacifiers go in boys’ mouths and, if the twins have anything to say about it, other unmentionable places.
“Then I’ll take them,” he said. He held out his hand.
“I don’t want old pacifiers all over the place. We’re already fighting a losing battle with tidying up,” I said, because I’m a positive person like that. “And we’re not having any other babies.”
“I know,” my boy said. “But I can use them to make something.”
And he did. He made a pacifier yo-yo that lasted all of three days before he got tired of playing with it.
When the environmentalist is on trash duty, we can’t throw anything away. The leftover food scraps can always be used to feed the birds out back. The plastic strawberry cartons can be used to hold cloth napkins and keep random things organized (just get out of my house, random things. I don’t even want you here.). The old socks with holes in them can be reused for cleaning cloths—except they’re my infant’s socks that the 3-year-olds cut holes in and are about as big as my thumb. I guess I can…clean the baseboards. With one finger. And an old infant sock.
I’ve come up to my room to find old makeup boxes and papers I no longer need and soap-scummed shampoo bottles lying on my bed because he thinks I can “find a way to reuse them if I just think hard enough.” Problem is, I don’t really have much of a brain left to think outside the box, because children are like zombies except way cuter, so you don’t suspect that all they really want to do is eat your brain out.
I know I should be glad he cares. But when you’re slipping into bed and find an old pair of mangled underwear because he saw it in your trash can and decided you probably needed it and didn’t really mean to throw it away, and you know exactly what the skivvies were touching in the trash, I think it’s time to close up the environmentalist shop.
But the thing is, I don’t want to squash that spirit. Because the way he can so clearly see something new out of something old is a great quality to have. It doesn’t happen for all of us, and many of us lose that ability, anyway, when we become practical adults and too much stuff is a very real thing. Right now, he loves seeing what he can do to create something new and fun out of something old and worn. This is valuable experience he’s getting with play and invention and creativity. I don’t want to discourage that.
I also don’t want to try to imagine what I could possibly do with my old Physician’s Formula organic mascara tube that you’d never be able to clean out. Just get rid of it, son. Trust me. That thing will start smelling worse than your feet in six months.
So we’ve reached a compromise. As long as his reclaimed items have a place, he can keep them. As long I’ve put something in the trash, he’s not allowed to put it back on my bed with his “imagine what else it could be” challenge.
It’s working, for now. At least until the next time I throw away a pair of blown-out-soles shoes and he decides we can probably figure out a way to use all that rubber for something like a homemade Honda Odyssey tire. Which is just around the corner, I’m sure.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Sometimes raising five children feels like a giant, immovable mountain.
This morning my husband and I led the music for our beloved church after months of take-it-easy and watch-from-the-sidelines and attend-and-leave. This summer we have rested from ministry as we have never done in our almost ten years of married life, and I have felt refreshed and renewed and almost fully rested.
And yet we have missed it greatly. So we have eagerly anticipated this Sunday for a month now.
Our church has an amazing program for older children, part of the reason we go, but that program only meets during the first service. We knew this going in and had decided our first-grader was old enough to handle himself for the twenty minutes we’d play on stage during the second service.
So before the second service began, we told him that he would need to sit in the sanctuary’s art space, where we could see him, and draw until the music finished. I explained, probably too many times, that it was really important for him to stay exactly where he was and not go anywhere I couldn’t see him.
Apparently, in his 6-year-old mind, not going anywhere else did not apply to the stage.
He scaled those steps twice, once to ask his daddy something, and, when his daddy didn’t answer because he was singing into a microphone, he came to me.
Thinking he needed something important, like permission to go to the bathroom or a bandage for the scab he’d picked, I backed away from my mic and leaned down close to his face.
Me: What do you need, Jadon?
Jadon: What’s ten divided by ten?
Me: Jadon, we’re trying to lead worship here. Please stay off the stage. It’s one.
Sometimes even one child feels like a giant immovable mountain when it comes to these dreams.
God has very clearly and many times audibly called Ben and me to share music together. This is one of our two-becoming-one ways. We have spent years singing our heart-prayers and our soul-musings together, approaching the throne of God with voice linked to voice, sharing this God-intimacy purposed for us.
But there is a mountain, and this mountain is a great, lovely, matchless gift, but it is also a great big intimidating mound of dirt.
We did not begin our marriage knowing we would have five children. After two years, the first baby came along, that little one with olive skin and black-brown eyes, and then two years later number two was on his way, only I was so convinced he was a she that I bought a whole stack of little girl dresses and skirts and way-cute shirts. And then five months after welcoming that little blue-eyed boy, number three summoned forth a plus sign on that pee-stick, earlier than planned but welcome all the same.
Three boys filled the rooms in our house, and we thought one more. Just one more.
One more was a girl, but she slipped away, and then the longing for a baby become almost unbearable in the months after that devastating loss.
We tried again. And got twin boys.
These boys are rowdy and wild and awesome, and even on the worst days I would never, ever, ever trade my life for another, because this one is brim full of laughter and revelation and delight that far outweigh the work and frustration and impractical of it all (most days at least).
And yet, on days like today, I wonder how unveiling our dreams and then chasing our dreams and then living our dreams is even remotely possible. On days like today, all those numbers feel like one more layer stacking the top of that mountain.
Husband and I occasionally will use a date night to hear local musicians play, and I have found that when I’m listening to these who are playing their gigs several nights a week and traveling outside the local area, my first thought is, “They obviously don’t have children.”
This qualifier, or disqualifier, should not pass my lips.
All these times we’ve shared our dreams with others, our dreams for living artistically and sharing music and writing and art, the cynics race from their hiding, lending their how-in-the-world voices to our five-kids reality and speaking world-wisdom in place of God-wisdom, and sometimes it’s just too much to handle, because I was thinking the exact same thing.
Apparently people with five children aren’t allowed to live their dreams.
And days like today, I guess I agree, because it feels like a mountain I can’t climb just to get out the door on time with enough margin to set up and sound check and run through, and it feels like a mountain just to focus on bass notes and voice notes while eyeing my unsupervised children, and it feels like a mountain that I can even attempt praying from the stage while I’m distracted by the child care or lack of it.
It feels like a huge mountain to pack them back up in our car and drive them home hours past lunchtime and naptime and still try to maintain some sort of schedule for the rest of this tired-and-grouchy-kids day.
And yet I know this Savior who moves mountains, because He is the same Savior who protected number 3’s head during a church nursery accident and then healed that fracture so his little brain was unharmed, and He is the same Savior who spared my daughter a shell-life in this world and instead gave her paradise, and He is the same Savior who held my hand through the tension of a twin-pregnancy and all its risking and bleeding and thought-we-were-losing.
He is the same Savior who wrapped my heart in peace during a thirty-six-hour hospital stay, who wrapped my heart in love after my daughter’s death, who wrapped my heart in joy when those much-prayed-for twins entered our world six weeks early.
Mountains, all of them. Mountains moved.
[Tweet “Our dreams may seem impossible. They’re not. Because Someone Else holds them.”]
This Author of salvation is also the Author of our dreaming, the Author of our very living, and He has called us to this place and this time and these amazing little boys, and He does not call where He will not help, “For the God who calls you is faithful, and He can be trusted to make it so.”[1]
[Tweet “God can still move mountains. So we can dream in spite of our mountains.”]
And so tonight, when we are back in this church sanctuary worshiping with a crowd of teenagers, I steal a glance at my husband, and I lift my hands for the yield, and I close my eyes, because this is my favorite part of the song:
“I give my life to follow everything I believe in. Now I surrender.”
[1] 1 Thessalonians 5:24, The Voice.
This essay is an excerpt from Family on Purpose Episode 9: We Unveil Trust. Dreams. The Kingdom of God. The Family on Purpose series spans the first year Rachel and her examined their family values. She spent a year writing essays on her family’s journey–all the failures and all the small victories along the way.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
Last week I shared the summer reading list for my 9-year-old. This week I’d like to share the list I made for my 7-year-old, who goes into second grade this year.
Again, I chose seven books for him, and he will be choosing eight of his own. I’m only going to share the seven I’ve chosen for him, for the sake of time, but at the end of the summer, he’ll be telling you all about the books he chose as well.
1. The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown
2. Raymie Nightingale, by Kate DiCamillo
3. The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
4. Wonder, by R.J. Palacio
5. Red Butterfly, by A.L. Sonnichsen
6. Pax, by Sara Pennypacker
7. Just My Luck, by Cammie McGovern
I also promised last week that I’d share with you the audio books we’ll be reading together this summer. They include:
1. Harry Potter the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling
2. The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling
3. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
4. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
We’re going to try to watch all the movies after we finish the books, which will make a fun reward for the end of summer reading.
I hope you enjoyed these book recommendations. Be sure to pick up a free book from my starter library and visit my recommends page to see some of my favorite books. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, contact me. I always enjoy adding to my list. Even if I never get through it all.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
“I wish I didn’t have so much to write this week,” I said. It was exhaustion speaking, since I haven’t slept in days because of pregnancy-related discomfort.
And it’s Christmas, so it’s a short week and I still have gifts to finish and wrap, and all of that hangs over my head in these moments when my guard is down.
“I’m sure your followers would understand,” my husband said, and, yes, I’m sure they would.
But it’s not as much about the people who read as it is about me, because what if taking a day off moves too quickly into taking more time off, since all that extra time to sleep and read and sleep and play and sleep might be nicer than I want it to be, and then it will all snowball and I’ll never find my way back into the routine of writing?
There was a time, two years after I got married, when I just folded up my writing and set it on a shelf, thinking there was no time to pursue it and it didn’t make any money anyway and I had responsibilities to my family. It was whole years before I picked it back up.
What if that happens now?
I’ve worked hard to establish a routine, rough draft of this today, final tomorrow, along with a rough draft of that, and every day builds on another day so if one day is skipped, I fall too far behind to ever catch up.
But what about when we need to take that time off? What about when we can feel the burnout creeping in because we’ve been working so hard for so long? What about when our mind feels fatigued and overworked and ready to quit?
Our writing is better for the resting.
[Tweet “Our writing only gets better when we work rest into our schedules.”]
Sometimes we can work ourselves so hard, and we can have all these impenetrable pieces of time we have set aside for creating time, with boundaries that say, “No trespassing,” and that’s all well and good, but there comes a time when rest is necessary.
If all we’re ever doing is cranking out words on a page, and we don’t allow a cushion for those needed days off, we will wear ourselves down to a half-version of ourselves. I want to be a whole version of myself every time I pick up the pen.
And so sometimes that means putting down the pen and letting that notebook rest for a day or two or a whole week.
I have been in a place of not creating anything, and it is stale and stuffy there. I have been in the place of creating too much, and it is stale and stuffy there, too. The secret to unleashing our greatest creativity is to find balance between the work and the rest.
[Tweet “The secret to unleashing our best creativity is to find balance between work and rest.”]
That’s not easy for someone like me, because there are so many ideas and so much to do with so little time.
The other day I sat in a music service, and my kids were in childcare and I had an hour and a half of uninterrupted time to create. I opened my writing journal and readied my pen, and I could not write a thing. Maybe it’s something that happens often to other writers, but usually, when I open my notebook and ready my pen, I always find something to write about.
That block got me thinking, about how I am creating all the time, because it’s something I must do to keep from exploding. But there is something else I must do to keep from imploding: Rest.
Working rest into our schedules is one of the most important things we can do—for ourselves and our art.
[Tweet “Practicing rest is one of the most important things we can do—for ourselves and our art.”]
For some simple ways to work rest into your schedule, try this:
1. After every task you complete on your to-do list, take a break.
Do whatever you want on that break. Read a book you’ve been wanting to read. Watch a quick video. Go kiss you kids or your partner. Put in a few stitches on that product you want to make. Catch up on social media (but be sure to set a timer, because the Internet can be a black hole). Do what will fill you up and help you get back to work with a greater focus and fresh creativity.
2. Take a day off.
This is harder than it sounds for people like me. I really enjoy my work (as most writers do), which means taking a day off feels a bit like a chore. Sometimes it’s necessary—like when there’s a doctor’s appointment or something necessary. Sometimes I just know I need it, because I’ve been biting off the heads of everyone around me. Even though we enjoy our work, it’s important to step away from it.
What I do on my days off: read, sew, take my kids to the park and play freeze tag with them, play Apples to Apples with my friends, record some songs in the studio, organize my closet. When it’s a day off for pleasure, I try not to do anything like laundry (which I really hate) or cleaning (which I hate even more). I try only to do what I enjoy.
3. When you’ve mastered the above, try scheduling a whole week off.
Every seventh week, I take a whole week away from my work. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the middle of a manuscript. It doesn’t matter if there are things left undone that really need to be done. I put down the work, and I rest.
It’s too easy, when we work for ourselves, to let that work take over everything. It’s a worthwhile practice to shut the laptop, slide it under our dresser, and forget about all those projects. Oftentimes, I’ll find, after a week off, that a difficult plot line has completely resolved itself without my even trying. So not only does time off allow us to rest, but it makes us more efficient writers.
You may not be successful the first few times you practice rest. But keep trying. It’s always a worthwhile pursuit to learn how to rest well.
Week’s prompt
Write what comes to mind when you read the following quote:“We wear the mask that grins and lies.”
-Paul Laurence Dunbar
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
We can learn a lot from kids. But sometimes their teaching is hit or miss. Like in the example below, which are all lessons I’ve learned from my kids.
How to put on your shoes:
1. Try for 10 seconds.
2. Cry.
3. Throw the shoe.
4. Ask your mom.
Lesson learned from: a 3-year-old in velcro shoes.
How to break your camera
1. Take it to the zoo.
2. Don’t listen when your parents say, “You should put it in your pocket.”
3. Drop it.
Lesson learned from: the 9-year-old who likes to do things his own way…and reap the consequences (well, he doesn’t like that part so much.)
How to sweep a floor
1. Get the broom.
2. Wave it around at the ceiling.
3. Hit a light.
4. Done. (Now your dad has to sweep up the glass.)
Lesson learned from: the 9-year-old who either didn’t hear us telling him to stop swinging the broom or who thought it really wouldn’t hurt to defy our instructions.
How to drive someone crazy
1. Tell them to “guess what.”
2. Make them actually guess.
3. Seriously, don’t tell them the answer until they guess.
Lesson learned from: the 7-year-old, who is a master at the guessing game, because there are no clues.
How to have a serious conversation:
1. Look at the person.
2. Pretend you’re listening.
3. Do whatever you want anyway.
Lesson learned from: a stubborn 4-year-old.
How to find a missing shoe
1. Stand in your room.
2. Look at the walls.
3. Complain that you don’t see them anywhere.
4. Ask a parent.
Lesson learned from: the 5-year-old who must have something wrong with his eyes.
How to flush a toilet:
1. Unload your bowels.
2. Forget to flush.
3. Tell your parent it smells gross in the house.
4. Totally don’t get the irony.
Lesson learned from: five potty-trained boys.
How to talk quietly
1. Yell.
2. Keep yelling until someone says use your inside voice.
3. Use your “inside voice” to yell and tell them this is your inside voice.
4. Keep yelling.
Lesson learned from: both 4-year-olds. Their whisper is also a yell. I’ve never heard anyone whisper so loudly.
How to read a book
1. Open.
2. Read.
3. Remember you’re hungry.
4. Put the book down.
5. Eat five pounds of bananas.
6. Forget about the book.
Lesson learned from: the 7-year-old who doesn’t know when to stop.
How to cook a dinner they’ll all like
1. Just order pizza.
Lesson learned from: six boys complaining about what’s for dinner before they’ve even tried it.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
During my Sabbath week I finished two adult memoirs that I really loved. The first was The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson. This book is a love story. It’s a meditation on what it means to be a family, what it means to be male and female. It’s a candid look at gender biases, motherhood, parenthood, the daily moments of life and what it means to be human.
Nelson has a very poetic style, which was engaging from the moment I started reading. There were moments where I was completely captivated by her prose and her storytelling. She alternated storytelling with her deeper, poetic meditation, and I found it gripping and beautiful.
What I liked most about The Argonauts was that while it was a shortish read, it wasn’t light material. I had to take the book in pieces. Fortunately, it was written in pieces, a few paragraphs here, a few paragraphs there, so that made it easy to step aside and really think about and process what Nelson was saying.
The Argonauts is sort of a controversial book and has won all sorts of awards. And while I might not necessarily agree with every point of view she laid out in the book (she gets very philosophical at times), I found it refreshing and encouraging that Nelson made herself vulnerable enough to not only share her life as the wife of fluidly gendered artist Harry Dodge but also share her thoughts about that life and the biases we all face in our society today.
The other memoir was Geoffrey Wolff’s 1990 classic Duke of Deception. This book was fascinating through and through. Wolff grew up the son of a professional con man. His father, who called himself Duke, made up everything he was and everything he did. He got jobs as an engineer by telling lies about where he’d gone to college, and then he quit them and went somewhere else, with a false identity ready for anyone who would hire him. Wolff idolized his father for a time, and even went through a stint where he tried to be like him, before he came to his senses.
Duke of Deception was an interesting look at a father who could never truly become what or who he was but, instead, became what and who he made himself to be.
It took me a while to read this one—not because it wasn’t engaging or because it was really long, but because some of the passages were just so unbelievable that I had to stop and process them for a time. That someone could exist who lied so frequently and so believably was a bit unsettling.
I enjoyed reading the whole book, but the end and the beginning were my favorite parts. I loved that Wolff used so much specificity in his prose; he set up his world around the reader. He presented his father truthfully, as the scoundrel he was, and yet you couldn’t help rooting for his father to be better and do better, because through it all, Wolff wrote with love and a sense of understanding, as is demonstrated in this passage:
“It was my father, though, who taught me that we should distinguish in this life between what we feel and what we feel we should feel. That if we can distinguish between these things we may have access to some truths about ourselves.”
I hope you enjoyed these book recommendations. Be sure to pick up a free book from my starter library and visit my recommends page to see some of my favorite books. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, contact me. I always enjoy adding to my list. Even if I never get through it all.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
I’ve never really cared much about Independence Day—not because I’m not incredibly grateful to all the people who fought for my freedom—but because here, in Texas, Independence Day falls right smack dab in the middle of a time when the air outside boils up to a thousand degrees before the sun even comes up, and we’re all just about done with summer, except we have about six more months of it.
I have a kid who has a birthday four days after Independence Day, and that was a delightful pregnancy, let me tell you. I begged my husband to let us move somewhere cooler that year. Like maybe Antarctica. But, obviously, I couldn’t travel to another continent when I was eight months pregnant, so, instead, I lounged indoors, where the air conditioner rattled to keep up, and poured my sweat all over the couch, hoping the sauna would somehow induce labor. It didn’t.
As we were nearing this day, which is about the time when I start planning for my son’s birthday party, I thought about what it would be like to have a Parents’ Independence Day. I considered what freedom would mean to parents.
Husband and I get a little taste of this every now and then, when our parents take the kids for a weekend. And here’s what I’ve noticed about what freedom from children looks like:
Getting in the car, starting it and accomplishing rubber to road within a minute, start to finish.
As it is, it when Husband and I announce to the kids that it’s time to leave, it generally takes us another half an hour (if we’re lucky) to get out the door, because someone will misplace the shoes he had on two seconds ago, someone will decide he needs to drop a load (and it’s always the one who takes twenty minutes to finish and ten more minutes to wipe—with half the toilet paper roll), someone will slip on a banana peel his brother threw down on the driveway (because it’s biodegradable!) and face plant into the hood of the car—a damage hit that will need a giant Band-Aid across his face to staunch the bleeding (which really isn’t bad. He thinks it’s worse than it is)—someone will play musical chairs with all the empty seats in the van instead of just getting in his own, and someone else will realize he forgot to put on underwear.
Going to bed whenever you want.
I didn’t appreciate this enough before I was a parent. I just went to bed and didn’t think about the fact that there could be someone waiting just outside the door, breathing underneath the crack (because I locked said door), trying to let me know that his brother stole his blanket and he doesn’t want any of the four others that are already on his bed. And no amount of ignoring him will make him go away. He’s like the worst imaginary friend, because he’s not imaginary.
Sleeping in on the weekends.
Even though, when my boys are in school, they rarely get out of bed even when I wake them up at 6:30, during the summer and on weekends, they’re sure to be up by 5:45 at the latest. I just try to pretend I don’t hear the noise of feet. But anxiety usually pulls me from bed, whether I like it or not, because I know what happens when my boys are unaccompanied for any amount of time. Someone will try to fly off the top of the van with a kite strapped to him (even though he saw his brother get mangled yesterday for the same thing) or challenge his brother to a duel with steak knives or pour himself a giant bowl of oats with milk and leave it for the flies.
A perfectly tidy house.
I don’t know if my house was ever perfectly tidy, honestly. I have a Husband, after all. And also a me. I’ve been known to put a book down somewhere and lose it in the stacks that follow me everywhere.
Eating in peace, while it’s still hot.
It never fails. I bring out some leftovers from a date night with Husband, and the kids are immediately circling me like scavengers. “Can I have a bite?” they’ll say.
“No,” I’ll say.
“Why not?” they’ll say, their faces falling into their saddest pout ever.
“Because it’s mine,” I’ll say.
“You’re mean,” they’ll say.
“That’s right. I am,” I’ll say, because I’ll do whatever it takes to eat my ziti al forno in peace. I deserve this.
Cooking for two.
I don’t even remember what this looks like. That’s probably why, when Husband and I send the kids off for a quiet weekend, we mostly eat out. Because how do you cook for two when you’re used to cooking for a small army? And, perhaps even more importantly, how do you enjoy a salad without someone complaining about it for you?
Silence.
I love silence. I love sitting in a room and hearing nothing but my own thoughts. It doesn’t happen often, because someone at my house is always talking. Usually at least four at a time. I get to the end of a day with my boys, and there are so many words stuffed up in my head that I feel like I might explode. Just the other day, I told the 9-year-old that I was on word overload and just needed a few minutes of quiet, and he said, “Well, you haven’t exploded yet” and kept right on talking about the next stop motion movie he was going to make—which is super cool, but words. So many words.
I know these freedoms seem really nice on the outside, but, truthfully, by the time a weekend without my boys ends, I’m ready to get them all back, because there’s something about silence and easy road trips and eating in peace that feels a little eerie now. I’m glad for the madness that kids bring to my life, because it’s not the freedom that matters so much as the living. And my boys show me how to live every moment of every day—by “accidentally” throwing dodge balls at my face and sneaking bites of my date-night leftovers when I get up to pour myself a drink (it’s just water, I promise) and gathering the wildflowers in the front yard, which they’ll try to put in my hair, dirty roots and all.
My boys have shown me how to play, how to dream, how to love. They have freed me in a million ways.
So my Independence Day? It happened when I had kids.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
You came into the world on a hot summer day, and you were easy and tiny and so very beautiful, snuggled tight in my arms. And it did not take you long to find my face with those eyes that I knew would remain large and brown. You snuggled into my chest, skin pressed against skin, and I knew this one would be a special bond, just like the one I had with the ones who had come before.
We took you home, and your daddy had to leave immediately for a youth camp. You were only two days old, and I felt a little anxious at being left behind with a newborn and two others, but a good friend of ours came over and tended to your brothers while I slept a bit with you beside me, and then, when you slept longer than I needed to, I spent some quality time with your brothers, tried to show them that life wouldn’t change all that very much, even though it would. And in the nights, when you woke with hunger on your mind, I would feed you, lying in bed, wrapped around your warmth.
Year after year, I have watched you.
I watched you turn one. You still didn’t have any teeth, and I worried that it was because of a head injury you’d gotten in a church nursery (we still don’t really know what happened), when I spent a whole night by your bedside at a children’s hospital, until your daddy sent me home to see your brothers, because I missed them, and, as soon as I drove away, I missed you, too. But the pediatrician said, no, the lack of teeth was not because of your head injury, and your teeth would come in on their own time table, and they did, at 15 months, when you got eight of them at once and there were days of crying hysterically because it hurt so badly. I watched you grow that year—grow and grow and grow, and I watched you explore your world with a fearlessness that made me marvel and also, just a little, worry, because I knew that I would not be able to to keep you safe forever. You had your own ideas about how the world should taste and feel.
At two, when you still hadn’t spoken anything other than simple words—and you hardly ever even did that, because all you needed to do was point at something and make a little noise and your oldest brother would interpret what it was you wanted, so you never had any cause to speak, I worried that you would fall behind and never discover the beauty of words. So we got you enrolled in some speech lessons, and once those words were unlocked, you never stopped talking, vying for a place in the constant conversations that happened in our lives, and it pained me to see how deflated you’d get when it seemed like no one was listening (even though a mama always hears). Finally, we had to tell your brothers to let you have a few words in all the margins, and they did, of course, because they’re good brothers, and you turned brave in your speech, where you had been wary before.
Your third year, you were keeping up with your brothers on the playground and kicking a soccer ball with as much precision and skill as they had, because you’ve always been gifted in all the physical things. You’d slide down the stairs head-first, and you’d hang upside down on the monkey bars and you’d swing so high I thought for sure you would turn those chains over their steel bar and fall off, but you never did. You just giggled in glee at the feel of flying.
When you turned four, you learned how to read, and every day I got to hold you on my lap and teach you those words that would soon become second nature to you. And even though you didn’t like it, exactly, you knew that it was only for about ten minutes and after that you’d be able to play. You were so mature, so responsible, that we’d let you play outside in the front yard, with your bothers and without us, because you knew about the rules, like staying in the front yard and watching out for cars and never going into another person’s yard or house. I could even leave you for your quiet time without any supervision, because you always stayed where you were told and did all the hard things with a gusto that was inspiring. You’d read books and draw amazing pieces of art, and I remember how excited you would be to show me that impressive fox you sketched in a notebook. You’ve always been good at everything.
This last year, I sent you off to kindergarten with a face full of tears, because even though you fall in the middle of a tribe of boys, you’re still my baby, the one I carried and held and snuggled, and I couldn’t believe you were in school, already. I couldn’t bear that you would leave our home for seven hours every day, and I couldn’t help but feel sad that I would not have you with me all the time anymore. I knew there would be a hole when you left home, just like there was a hole when your brothers left. I could only think about (I know it was silly) what it would feel like when the three of you left home for good. But, over the course of the year, I read all the stories you wrote in your “differentiated learning,” and I kept every one, because I knew they would be treasures for later years, to gather around and remember.
You have such personality and spunk and persistence. This year you even got an award for that persistence, and even though we didn’t tell you, because we don’t want you to rely on awards for who you become, your persistence really is remarkable. It is this that will carry you through all the rest of your days.
In your persisting in this first year of kindergarten, do you know what you have taught us? At the beginning of last year, I lost my job, and we were in a pretty scary situation, because we didn’t know what we would do for jobs, and a little child—you—led us. You showed us that we could do whatever it was that we could dream up to do, because that’s just the kind of person you are.
You have shown us our salvation, the strength of our hearts, the courage that we carry at all times but sometimes forget—because you do what needs to be done even if it terrifies you. You keep going, even when the odds are downright impossible. You do what needs doing. You don’t turn aside. You put your hand to something, and you finish it until it’s to your standard, something you can be proud of—and in all of this, you have taught us how we can overcome. You have taught us how to keep going, how to persevere, how to do all the hard things, because in your trying, you have done the hard things, too. In your trying, we saw your bravery, and we became brave, too.
In a way, you saved us. When we thought about giving up, there were all your bothers. There was you, the boy who kept trying no matter how difficult it was, no matter how far you were knocked down, no matter what came up against you. You are in inspiration to everyone whose life touches yours. You are a wonder. You are a marvel.
I am so glad I get to be your mama, Hosea Jude. So very glad. Happy sixth birthday. I love you
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Several years ago I began a project with a photographer friend who, every week, sent me a picture, and I would write exactly 40 words about it—some condensed make-believe situation that I could “see” in the picture.
I pinned a 15-minute time constraint on the creative exercise.
I spent a year writing 40 words in 15 minutes for every picture she sent, writing and rewriting and rewriting again until just the right 40 words remained, and instead of feeling limited by the small number and ticking timer, I felt liberated.
It’s hard to explain.
So much could be said in 40 words. So many unnecessary words were eliminated within the constraint. So much focus could be pinpointed at just the right words, instead of grasping around for the millions of words available.
Not only did my productivity increase, but my creativity felt stretched and challenged, because I had 15 minutes to come up with a whole back story about the picture and then write only what was necessary.
It was a tremendous, fascinating learning experience for me.
And I started to think that maybe there was something to this constraint.
So two years ago, when I had finished my 40-word experiment, I decided to challenge myself by writing an ongoing story with the pictures my friend sent me. This project also had its parameters: tell a story with 104 pictures in the course of a year.
I enjoyed it so much I started another one the following journal.
This year I am writing my third one, this time challenging myself one step further and writing a story from three points of view.
All three of these stories have been crafted with constraints—time restraints, plot restraints (plot must weave in the picture), length restraints (the whole story must be told in 104 pictures and “chapters”).
And all of them have made me a better writer.
Here’s how I’ve come to understand it: focus is important to our productivity as creative people. If we’re given too many options, our focus ends up fragmented.
Creativity does not like fragmentation.
[Tweet “Creativity thrives within constraints, because constraints give us the gift of focus.”]
Recently an acquaintance told me about Tim Sachs, an artist who sets parameters on his work—like limiting the colors he uses (no purple, orange must be a natural orange, only one particular shade of green) because he believes it makes him a better artist. Research even suggests that people who spend eight hours a day working really only spend about half of that in focused work—so those of us with time constraints? Makes us better workers and producers and creators.
My husband and I recently watched a TED talk about choices. The speaker had spent years doing extensive research to figure out whether more or fewer choices were better for us.
Guess what? Her research found that the fewer choices people had the better choices they made.
I think of this scientific reality in light of creativity, in light of my 40-word experiment, and it all makes sense. If we are offered a wide-open world, we can quickly become overwhelmed. So we must narrow it down. Make the world smaller. Embrace our constraints.
[Tweet “Those of us with time constraints? Perfect. We’re becoming more efficient writers.”]
I wonder how much more productive and effective we could be if we put a few more constraints on our creativity. How much would we grow and improve? How much would we learn about ourselves?
I think we might be pleasantly surprised.
3 Constraints to Put On Your Writing
1. Time.
Set yourself a timer. The reality is, not many of us are full-time writers. This isn’t all we do. We have children to raise or jobs to work. So set a timer on your writing. Give yourself fifteen minutes a day. Or two hours a day. Or, if you’re fortunate enough to have nothing else in the world to do, set a timer for four hours and see how long it takes you to grow too fatigued to make sense anymore (my limit is about three hours). Training ourselves to create in short bursts is actually beneficial to building deep focus, especially if we gradually increase the time we set on the timer and do nothing but write for the time we have.
2. Word count.
Set a goal for a specific word count. Don’t worry so much about what the words are or whether or not they make sense. Just write. And when you’ve reached your word count goal, congratulate yourself. Gradually increase the word count and track how many words you get in fifteen minutes or half an hour or a whole hour. Keeping track of our word count gives us a good measure for how our constraints are helping develop our focus–which, on the difficult days, can be encouraging to recognize.
3. Strict parameters
Say you’re writing fiction, and you challenge yourself to write something about two characters who have gotten into a fight and whose lives were changed because of the fight. That’s a parameter that gives you focus. Say you’re writing poetry and you want to write a poem about the blooming roses in front of your house and how they remind you of how your life bloomed when you learned how to forgive a storied past. That’s a parameter that gives you focus. Say you need to write an essay and you come up with a headline first. That’s a parameter that will give you focus.
Open a book, read the first line and write a song about it.
Take the word “slippery,” open your journal and pen a poem about it.
Find a picture, write a story about it.
These are all parameters that will constrain you and give you a laser focus on what you’re writing for the day.
So don’t be afraid to put constraints in place. They all serve to make you a better writer.
[Tweet “Constraints make us better writers. They challenge our creativity and hone our focus.”]
Week’s prompt
A picture is one of my favorite ways to generate inspiration. Look at the picture below. Write whatever you want for as long as you can.
Photo by Frankie K.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Every now and then Husband and I will treat our boys with a Family Movie Night. Usually this happens on a Friday, because boys don’t have to get up for school the next morning, and we can all take our time getting to bed once the movie’s done.
Sometimes Husband and I will sit on the couch and snuggle with our boys during the movie. Sometimes we’ll take the opportunity to catch up on a bit of work that needs doing, while the boys laugh their way through the newest Pixar or DeamWorks release. This means that sometimes our boys get to watch a movie before we do.
The most recent movie our boys watched without us was The Good Dinosaur. Husband and I were trying to get ready for a book launch, so we sat in the kitchen while our boys crowded on the couch and asked for popcorn. By the way they laughed through much of the movie, I knew it was one I wanted to see.
So, another week, we sat down to watch it with them.
We settled onto our couch, and I tired to ignore the elbow that was jabbing into my side, but it didn’t take me long to forget that annoyance in light of another. It soon became quite clear that I would not be able to watch The Good Dinosaur without a running commentary from all three of our older boys.
“Don’t worry. This isn’t where he dies, Mama,” one of the boys said early on in the movie, in a particularly tense part where a dinosaur is trying to outrun a storm. “He dies in another place.”
Well, thanks for letting me know he dies at all. I appreciate the spoiler.
Not only would they spoil just about every tense scene in the movie, but they would also insert things like, “Watch this,” as if we weren’t already watching the screen, and “This is a funny part,” as if we wouldn’t know we were supposed to laugh, and “he’s not very nice,” as if we couldn’t figure it out for ourselves.
[Tweet “Watching a movie with kids is like having your own personal narrator, complete with spoilers.”]
They would explain jokes to us and tell us what was happening or would happen and introduce the characters before they’d introduced themselves on the screen, and it was like having my own personal narrator, which would have been nice if I were visually impaired, but I could see the screen just fine, and the only thing my kids’ commentary did was make it really hard to hear what was said during the movie.
I get it. The boys had already seen the movie, and they remembered every part where they felt a little afraid or a little sad or a little concerned. They didn’t want us to go through the discomfort of all that. They didn’t want us to feel as shocked as they did when someone died or as sad as they did when someone remembers the someone who died. It’s sweet, when you think about it.
It’s just that I’d like to watch a movie, please. I’d like to enjoy the tension of not really knowing what’s going to happen. I’d like to hear the dialogue the first time it’s executed. I’d like to be surprised now and then.
But I guess I do sort of get to be surprised, because I remember that, at one point, a boy said, “There’s another storm coming,” so I was waiting, on the edge of my seat, to see if someone else gets hurt in a storm, and it turns out the storm wasn’t coming for another forty-five minutes. So I got to sit on the edge of my seat for forty-five minutes. There’s nothing like sitting on the edge of your seat for forty-five minutes, let me tell you. I got a ridge line in my cheeks I was clenching so hard.
Still, at the end of the day, I have to admit that watching a movie with my boys is one of the best things about being a family. To have a seventy-five-pound kid crawl into your lap because this part makes him a little nervous is priceless. To have a 4-year-old snot your leg when he doesn’t want to get up to get a tissue because he doesn’t “want to miss this part” is priceless. To have a 5-year-old whisper in your ear that the dinosaur makes it back to his family in the end (whoops. Sorry about that. Spoiler alert!) is priceless.
If anyone needs an aid for the visually impaired, I learned that my boys are quite proficient a play-by-plays. They’re so good at it, in fact, that by the end of the movie, I became good at something, too: The Art of Not Listening to My Children. For those of you who haven’t learned how to do this yet, I just sort of turned off the ear that was facing a boy sitting next to me. They didn’t seem to notice, because the drone in my right ear kept right on buzzing.
I also figured out that this is the very same skill I use when the 9-year-old starts talking about Pokemon.
The things you learn during Family Movie Night. Priceless.
