I’m standing just a few feet away, and there’s this boy, bigger than mine in every way, hanging on the swing my son is using, so my son can’t even move.
He’s glaring at my boy, so I walk closer.
“Get off,” he’s saying. “This is my swing.”
And my boy is trying to swing, oblivious to the bullying going on, so I step in and say, “What’s going on here?”
The boy looks me right in the eye, and he says, “This is my swing. He pushed me out of it and took it from me.”
I look at the boy, hefty and stout, and my boy, all skin and bones, and just when I’m thinking there’s no way, my son’s friend, who’s standing just beside us, speaks up. “Jadon had it first,” he says. He points to the bigger boy. “He was trying to take it away.”
I feel the anger burning my face and my neck, because this is my son, and he’s just been bullied on a first-grade field trip, so I grab Jadon’s hand and say, “Let’s go line up, Jadon,” because it’s time to go anyway, and I have nothing more to say to a bully.
I forget, in that anger-moment, about the opportunity I have to teach another love and honor and respect.
The other boy moves away, into another group, and I fume all the way back to my son’s group, all kinds of assumptions moving through my brain.
His parents are probably bullies. They probably let him watch lots of violent TV. They probably don’t teach him a better way.
And, just like that, I’ve turned into one of those people who assume and judge and condemn before I know even one of the facts. I forget to teach and I forget not to assume, and these are the values I champion, so who am I to be teaching them when I can’t remember what to do, how to spread kindness and love and grace in a heated moment?
Sometimes we can be the biggest bullies to ourselves. Because the thoughts that swarm my head sound a whole lot like this:
You sure did a great job teaching that bully a better way. Stupid. No one should ever listen to you. Look at you and all your assumptions. Hypocrite. You walked away instead of engaging, you who know all about this emotional and social intelligence. Pathetic.
The chorus plays on, and we’re walking to a fishing pier when I flash back to my dad, storming out the door of a church, flinging the “hypocrite” word behind him at all those church people I, up until then, loved, and he spoke with such derision that I never, ever, ever wanted to be them. I see me in high school, when I walked with goody-two-shoes standards while my insides were crumbling because perfection was just too hard and heavy, and those girls were good at pointing out all the places I’d failed, all those gaps between the way I wanted to live and the way I did. I see me in college, when a best friend betrayed, and she threw those words into the yawning chasm between us: “I just want them all to know you’re not perfect, that you’re a hypocrite.”
Shame can burn a heart black.
[Tweet “We practice every day what we believe, but we only move toward perfection. We never reach it.”]
And the promise that stands at the end of a day is that we always get a do-over.
So maybe I got so caught up in my emotions that I forgot to teach a bully a better way. That doesn’t mean I can’t do it next time. So maybe that tangle of emotions carried me too far into assumptions. That doesn’t mean I can’t claim victory now and call them what they are: lies. So maybe I didn’t practice what I preach this time. It doesn’t mean I won’t ever win.
After all, our mistakes can be our biggest teachers.
This is an excerpt from We Believe in Jesus. In Ourselves. In All People, Episode 4 of the Family on Purpose series. The episode, along with Episodes 5 and 6, will release May 4. Get a free guide to family values by joining the Family on Purpose list.
In this episode, Rachel highlights some of her favorite poets, a book full of practices that help eliminate stress and worry, the challenge of parenting twins, how reading widely helps make her a better writer, and a very entertaining audio book series.
I had every intention of playing a bunch of April Fools’ jokes on Husband and the boys today. I was going to steal all the underwear out of Husband’s drawers (dresser drawers, that is) so when he got out of the shower he’d be mystified as to why there was no underwear waiting for him when I’d just done laundry. I was going to steal the right foot of all my kids’ shoes and hide them somewhere. I was going to add a little vinegar to their milk so it turned into buttermilk when they went for that swig.
And then, when I tried to find Husband’s underwear, it wasn’t in his drawer, because it was, instead, strewn all over the floor of our bedroom, because he’d never put it away after laundry day (I would’ve had to embark on a treasure hunt to find them all, and, unfortunately, I didn’t have the time for that). And when I thought about trying to locate all the right feet of my kids’ shoes I felt too tired already (and they probably wouldn’t even notice the joke, since they lose their shoes every morning). And the boys didn’t want milk this morning. They wanted water.
And, also, the 4-year-old twins were up at 4:45 a.m., shrieking like banshees—which was good, because it alerted us to the fact that there were unmanned terrors loose who were looking for anything else they could throw down the potty. I lost all hope of winning April Fools’ Day after that, because, clearly, they took the trophy and the cake.
But Husband did start his own dancing web site and let people know that expressing his creativity through dance is now his new dream and passion—a joke which, by extension of the whole two-becoming-one thing, means I did pretty well for April Fools’ Day.
Doesn’t top the year we told everyone that the boy we were expecting was really a girl, but, hey. You can’t win them all.
As parent writers, we can often feel like we have to apologize for the work we do. Because work is taking us away from our children and our families, and it’s cutting into the time that we might spend together, and it’s distracting us from the thing we’re supposed to be doing, which is raising our kids, right?
I am not immune to apologizing for my work.
This usually happens when my husband and I are having a budgeting meeting, and we’re talking about all the budget needs that a family of eight can accrue, and we’re trying to see what’s what, and I realize, yet again, that what I’m doing, this writing thing, isn’t contributing a whole lot to that overall what-we-need number. I spend four hours a day writing and another half hour working on business things, and I find myself apologizing for that time I’m taking away from my husband, who is the real breadwinner at this point in our lives.
Fortunately, my husband is a pretty exceptional man who understands that if I’m not pursuing my passion, I’m not the best version of myself—but that doesn’t mean I stop apologizing.
There are times he’ll take me by the elbows and shake me a little bit and says, “What you’re doing is important,” but until I can do that for myself and really, really believe it, then I’m not going to stop apologizing.
I’m going to notice how the baby is being especially fussy this afternoon, and I really should be down there taking care of him instead of holed up in my room finishing this story, and I’m going to apologize for it when the dinner bell clangs and I snap my laptop shut. I’m going to hear how the 6-year-old needs some help with his homework and I’m his mother, and I should really be down there helping him, even though my husband is a competent caregiver and fully capable of helping him do first-grade homework, but I’m still going to apologize for not being there. I’m going to miss that little school assembly that didn’t really mean much at all, because I had a deadline I needed to meet, and I’m going to apologize for not being there.
When will we stop apologizing for our work?
[Tweet “Let’s stop apologizing for choosing work over every-second-presence with our kids. Our work is important.”]
Something I’ve learned in my full-time writing pursuit is that when I’m creating stories, when I’m mapping out my life on a page, when I’m crafting my essays that celebrate the crazy life I have with six boys, I’m a more whole version of myself. I’m a better person for my separate pursuit, and it doesn’t matter how much or how little money I make at it. That’s not the measure of a whole life. The measure of a whole life is what we’re doing to cultivate the passions and talents we’ve been given—mothering and writing and creating and contributing and teaching and (fill in your own blank).
Sometimes choosing a whole life means not being in the audience of our kid’s reader awards, because there’s something we have to do, and, besides, we were there last year. Sometimes it means not volunteering at a school Christmas party, because Fridays are our busiest days and in order to stay on track, we really need to take this one as a work day. Sometimes it means working during Family Movie Night, because we need to get that one thing edited so we can get it out on the market. We don’t have to apologize for those times. We’re still spending time with our kids. We’re still nurturing, we’re still loving, we’re still present with them in all the ways that matter most.
Something my husband has told me over and over again is that it’s not about the quantity of time we spend with our kids, it’s about the quality. I know this. Fifteen minutes of quality time is much better than a whole hour of distracted time, and our kids notice the difference. So when I’m with my children, I’m with my children, and when I’m working, I’m working. I try to separate them as much as I possibly can, because if we’re always thinking about one when we’re doing the other, we’re not going to be great at either.
It’s not exactly easy to get over this apologizing habit, but it’s something we’re going to have to do if we want to ease into this writing and creating fully and completely. We’re going to have to believe that what we do, the work we produce and create, has value,and that it’s just as important to release out into the world as it is to raise our children. We have to nurture it and spend time with it and love it, too, just like we do our children.
And if we never make money or only sell a few copies of that book, or maybe none at all, we can still take comfort in the fact that we have at least brought value to one person in the world—ourselves.
[Tweet “We love best when we’re creating. That’s all the value our families need.”]
Some things to think about when guilt comes knocking, asking us to apologize:
1. What writing does for us.
For me, writing helps me clarify my world. It doesn’t take long for my world to get all fogged up with expectations and disappointments and to-do lists and things forgotten or remembered, and writing helps me take a step back and figure out what’s important and what’s really not. Writing has healing properties. It has many benefits beyond just the simple act of getting words out on a page. So one of the best ways to combat the need to apologize is to figure out just what writing does for us. I’m a more balanced person, a happier person, a more optimistic and hope-filled person when I’m creating. My kids get a better version of their mom when she holes up inside her room and creates.
2. The time we’re actually spending with our kids.
Sometimes we have an deflated sense of how much time we’re actually spending with our kids, but if we were to evaluate it, we’d see that we spend 10 minutes reading to one boy here and fifteen minutes snuggling with that one and five minutes looking into that one’s eyes in the mornings. Remember, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality. So even if we evaluate that time and think we’re not spending enough of it with our kids, it’s important to evaluate whether that small amount of time is fully focused on our kids or fragmented with all the other things on our mind.
If we find we need to carve out more time, then put away the distractions, tuck away the to-do list, and just hang out.
3. The impossibility of “all things to all people.”
Our kids will always take more time if we’ll let them. They’ll ask us to come have lunch with them at school, and they’ll ask if we’re going to make it out to their end-of-school dance party, and they’ll ask if we can take them to the store this afternoon so they can buy that new book that just came out, but the reality is, even if we’re not making money at it, our creating time is our work time. It’s not easy to see it this way when we’re not going into an actual office, when they can just knock on the office door or (more likely) barge right in, but we wouldn’t leave a normal 9-5 in the middle of the day so we could take our kid to the store. We shouldn’t do it for our creative pursuit, either.
This will make us want to apologize. But if we can remember that waiting is a necessary skill for our child to learn, maybe we won’t feel quite so guilty about it. Rushing out to give our kids everything they want at the drop of a word doesn’t teach them about things like patience and perseverance and ingenuity.
We’re going to have to miss some things along the way. We can’t be all things to all people. We can’t be everywhere at once. No one else can, either, so we can take the pressure off ourselves.
Kids have amazing imaginations. They can listen to a story and ask to see the pictures, even though there are no pictures to see, because their brains are constantly working out what it is they’re seeing in the words. They’re able to imagine things like a cross between Batman and SpongeBob Square Pants, which we’ll call Squatman for our purposes, and they’re able to imagine what they’d like for dinner instead of this nasty spaghetti squash, and they can efficiently imagine a better world without parents like us telling them to go to bed and put those LEGOs away and eat all their vegetables.
But sometimes their imaginations can come back to bite them. Say, when they’re in trouble and they are locked in an erroneous belief system.
Here are some of the most ridiculous things that kids believe:
1. They’ll never find out.
Every day, when I lay my twins down for naps, I post up a spot right outside their room, mostly because they cannot be trusted, even at 4 years old, to be in their room by themselves. Sure, we’ve cleared it of everything but beds and blankets and pillows, but I tried it out last week, that leaving them alone for nap time, because Husband and I were trying to design a book cover for a new book release, and they managed to pile their blankets and pillows on the floor of their closet, and, even though all the clothes are hung fifteen feet in the air, pulled down all their brother’s 12-month clothes and tried to squeeze into every shirt.
What I’ve noticed about my twins is they believe that if I’m not in the room with them, I’ll never know what they’ve done. If I so happen to leave my post for a minute, because I’ve finished a passage of the book I wanted to read and I’m going to get another one, they will sneak on silent feet out of their room and into their brothers’ room. They won’t even have the foresight to shut the door, so when I come back out, there they are standing by their oldest brother’s desk, next to the forbidden art supplies he got for Christmas. They’ll look at me like a deer in the headlights and go completely motionless, as if maybe I won’t see them if they stand perfectly still.
Kids believe that if we’re not right there with them, we’ll never know what it is they’ve done. Well they’re wrong. I know every time, kids. I know when you pee off the side of the van because you think it’s a great idea; and I know when you’ve had a couple of extra treats, even if you round off that cookie so it looks like a mouse has nibbled the sides of it; and I know when you sit down and stand up and when you’re awake and asleep. I’m like Santa Claus on steroids. I have eyes everywhere. So don’t even think about it.
2. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.
So many times this has happened. The twins are in their room, I’m sitting right outside their room, but I’m hidden behind the crib, and they can’t see me. So they think that means I can’t see them. I get a kick out of this, because they’re usually headed into the bathroom to try to find another tube of that yummy mint toothpaste they ate this morning. I’ll let them come all the way out, still oblivious to my presence, and when they’re dead even with me, I’ll call out their name. They’ll startle and go screaming back to their room.
Gotta do what you gotta do. Natural consequences and all.
3. Even though we’ve done the same thing every night for the last six years of my life, tonight is probably different.
This is just ridiculously ridiculous. We run our house on a strict routine. Every single night we have dinner time and after-dinner-chores time and bath time and then story time and then mama-reading-a-chapter-book-out-loud time and then silent reading time and then prayer time and then snuggle time and then bed time. We’ve done this every single night since the oldest was born nine years ago. And still the boys seem to think that somewhere in there is a jump-on-the-couches-naked time and a play-freeze-tag-in-the-house time and a throw-books-in-the-air time. Nope. That’s never been a part of the routine, kids. Get back in your chairs, open your books and read.
4. If I complain/scream/whine enough, I’ll get exactly what I want.
You know what complaining/screaming/whining actually makes me want to do? It makes me want to take away anything I’ve ever given my kid in the first place (life being the exception. I don’t want to take away their lives). Doing it longer or louder or more annoyingly is only going to guarantee that the crazy will come unleashed. And I can’t be held responsible for whatever happens when the crazy is unleashed. Whoops. Sorry I just threw away all your LEGOs. You were complaining too much about how all your friends have the newest Minecraft set and how you really think, because you’re so great at school and all, that you should be able to get the new one, too, and can I take you to the store right this minute so I can buy you the latest $90 set?
Whining/screaming/complaining doesn’t work.
5. Making myself into a boneless puddle means they’ll let me stay at the park longer.
“Let me stay at the park” could be replaced with anything a kid wants. It’s just that the park experience happened more recently than anything else.
You know, we get these crazy ideas sometimes, like, “Hey, let’s a have a picnic out at the park and so the boys can play after they’re done eating.” Which ends up more like, “Hey, let’s have a picnic out at the park so we can drag one of the boys kicking and screaming away from the slide he wanted to go down one more time.”
With six boys, it’s highly probable that I’ll have at least one of them who’s not ready to leave the park when it’s time to go home. It doesn’t matter if we’re going home to eat dinner or if we’re going to another friend’s house for a playdate or if we’re doing something fun like seeing a movie and we’re going to be late if we don’t leave right this minute. They’re not ready to leave, so they’re going to collapse into a boneless puddle, at which time their daddy or I will drag them to the car, trying to ignore the way the asphalt is tearing at their jeans—not so much because we’re concerned about scraping their knees (natural consequences and all) but because those jeans still have to make it through one more kid.
What turning into a boneless puddle really means is that I get to work on my strength training for a second time today, and, also, we’re not coming to the park again for at least a year.
6. That’s not going to hurt me.
There are so many times this comes into play when you’re the parent of boys. But the one that sticks out most, right now, today, is when my boys are sliding head-first down our stairs, just for the fun of it. When the stairs snap into their rib cages, they shout their laughter, and they can’t stop. It’s the most hilarious thing ever, apparently, to have a rounded bit of wood jab into their internal organs and bruise them from the inside out. I watch this, horrified, from the bottom of the stairs. Someone is going to break something, but they are disturbingly unafraid. They have no idea how much it will hurt if this little slide goes wrong.
This erroneous thought also drives them to play bounce-wrestling games on the trampoline and ride bikes without helmets and soar down our cul-de-sac hill lying flat on a skateboard.
7. Vacuum cleaners can suck you up (or other crazy terrors).
When our oldest was little, around 3, he was scared of the vacuum cleaner. He would have nightmares and tell us all about them. In his nightmares, there was such thing as a vacuum cleaner that could suck up a person, and he was terrified that our vacuum cleaner would come into his room in the middle of the night and suck him up inside it. The vacuum cleaner could not be anywhere near his bedroom or he would spend sixteen hours awake instead of sleeping. We could not turn it on without one parent being very near him so that he could clutch an arm or a leg or whatever appendage may be closest. Ear, eye, lips. Didn’t matter. As long as he was assured someone was there protecting him.
I remember being more terrified of escalators than a vacuum cleaner, but maybe that’s just proof that I need to get my kids out more.
Fortunately, as kids grow older, they give up these ridiculous beliefs. They learn better. They do better.
So maybe it’s cute while it lasts. Or something like that.
Every time I got on Amazon, there was this book that kept coming up as a recommended item: Kenneth Oppel’s The Nest.
I’d been hearing good things about this book, because I read a lot of book reviews and try to stay up-to-date on the newest releases, particularly in middle grade literature, so I finally found some room in my schedule and decided to pick it up.
It’s a really short read, but it’s packed with quite a bit of stuff. The main character is a kid whose baby brother was born with some metabolic issues. The boy, whose name is Steve, suffers from mental illness—anxiety most notably—and the book raises some great questions about what’s normal and what’s not, which was probably my favorite facet of it.
The Nest is considered a psychological thriller, which is unusual in the middle grade genre, but I found it to be tastefully written, scary but not too scary, weird but not too weird, fantastical but not too fantastical. Oppel writes very darkly, which I tend to love.
The main conflict in the story is centered around Steve’s baby brother and all his problems since birth. Steve feels a little forgotten by his parents, and he feels conflict within himself, because he loves his baby brother but he also wishes his baby brother were different so that he would have his parents and his “before” life back.
Early on, it becomes clear that Steve deals with some kind of mental illness, demonstrated in this passage, where Steve is telling his parents about a dream where he conversed with a giant wasp:
“I didn’t want to talk anymore, because I saw the fear in their eyes, and that made me afraid. Someone told me once that if you worried you were crazy, it meant you couldn’t be crazy. Because crazy people apparently had no idea they were crazy; they thought it was normal, walking around naked and yodeling. As I’d told my dreams aloud, I knew how insane they sounded—but I also remembered everything from those dreams, and they seemed real.
“Dad took a breath and tried to sound casual. ‘Maybe you should talk about this with Dr. Brown.’
“‘You think I”m crazy again,’ I said, and this time I was crying.
“Mom squeezed me hard. ‘You were never crazy. You were anxious, like a lot of people, like a lot of kids, and you’re also imaginative and sensitive. And wonderful.’ She kissed the top of my head. ‘So wonderful.’
‘I felt tired suddenly, in her arms. ‘I’ll go talk to Dr. Brown,’ I sighed. ‘But I want you guys to get rid of the nest.’
So he has been to this doctor before, but he clearly doesn’t really want to go back—mostly because what he wants, at the heart of him, is to be “normal.” This is such a sad reality for children with anxiety. They worry that they’re crazy. They worry that something is terribly wrong with them.
Steve also washes his hands compulsively and has other quirks that speak of anxiety and other neuroses:
“On the drive in to school, I used to silently name the same landmarks so I wouldn’t have a bad day. I had a relaxation tape I liked to listen to in the car. At school I drank only from a certain water fountain, and I washed my hands between every class. I also had hand sanitizer with me, just in case. Pretty much every day I worried I might feel sick and throw up in the middle of the hallway in front of everyone, and then no one would be my friend anymore.”
What I found so endearing about Steve’s neuroses is that we don’t meet a whole lot of characters like him in middle grade literature, yet there are many children who suffer from anxiety and depression and other psychological issues. So Oppel’s bravery in writing a character like Steve helps all those kids with the same kind of quirks at least feel a little more normal (if normal is what they’d like to feel). At most, it helps them feel less alone in their everyday struggles.
In another passage, Steve lets the reader see his feelings about his parents’ preoccupation with his baby brother. He’s talking with his therapist, who just asked whether he missed his imaginary friend:
“‘Not really,’ I lied. It wasn’t so much Henry I missed; it was having someone like him, only real, to talk to. The perfect listener, the person who could help me sort things out.”
I found this so sad—his parents are practically consumed with making sure his baby brother has everything he needs that they sort of forget that Steve is dealing with some issues of his own. And because he doesn’t want to cause them more worry, he just doesn’t say anything about what’s going on inside his mind—or the reality that feels like it might be fragmenting.
One of my favorite passages was this one:
“Sometimes we really aren’t supposed to be the way we are. It’s not good for us. And people don’t like it. You’ve got to change. You’ve got to try harder and do deep breathing and maybe one day take pills and learn tricks so you can pretend to be more like other people. Normal people. But maybe Vanessa was right, and all those other people were broken too in their own ways. Maybe we all spent too much time pretending we weren’t.”
It was a profound thought from a kid. Steve begins his thought by saying that those who are different must try to change to fit in and make people happy, and then he twists it with a truth about humanity: that we are all broken in different ways and that we shouldn’t pretend we aren’t.
This passage alone makes the book worth reading for a kid who struggles with something like anxiety or depression or mental illnesses. I have a son who has been flagged for depression and anxiety. You can bet I’ll be sharing this story with him, because the truth that is laid out from the mind of another kid who shares some of his tendencies is life-changing. Sometimes we learn best from the people who are most like us, and Oppel has given us a character in Steve that can help teach kids that there is nothing wrong with them; they’re just a little different.
I’m so glad that people like Kenneth Oppel challenge the traditional world of middle grade books and write a story that empowers children who are different to embrace who they are.
People are fascinated by twins. When my twins were young, people would stop me in the middle of the grocery store so they could touch the faces of these boys who looked exactly alike. And now that they’re 4, not much has changed.
Most of the time those people who stop us and exclaim over how cute our twins are say they always wanted twins. And I always find myself thinking the same thing: No you didn’t. Because, you see, everybody likes the IDEA of twins, but when it comes to the day-after-day-it’s-never-going-to-end work of getting two babies through the first year of life and potty training two at a time and dealing with 3-year-old twinanigans? You don’t even know what you’re saying.
My twins are identical. They share the same noses, the same eyes, the same skin, the same DNA. One of them has a mole on the backside of his left arm, near the top, and that’s the only way you can tell them apart—unless you’re their mother, of course. One of them writes with his right hand, the other writes with the left. They complete each other in every way.
That’s part of the problem. Since these guys were tiny little babies, they’ve completed each other. Our first night home from the hospital I tried feeding one while the other slept, and as soon as the first one started slurping, the second one woke up and screamed his head off for half an hour because he was starving. I changed my strategy after that hellish night.
Our twins have always shared a room, because when one is without the other, they go wandering, looking for whatever is missing that they can’t quite place. And then, when they find each other, their world is complete again.
But let me just tell you. Don’t let those cute little smiles fool you. These guys can be little devils.
They will tear apart a room in three seconds flat, before you even have time to high-tail it up the stairs to see what all the thumping is about. They will destroy something right after taking it out of the box. Just ask their remote control cars they got for Christmas or the 9-year-old’s silly putty he brought home from school. Ask Husband what they did to his iPad when he wasn’t looking, even though they’re not allowed to touch it.
When they were still in diapers, my twins thought it was funny to wait until after we’d tucked them in and closed their door for just a minute of peace and quiet, to poop and then sit up in their beds and quietly paint all the walls they could reach brown. I’m not sure which of them had this brilliant idea, but I bet the look of horror that painted Mama and Daddy’s face like their droppings painted the walls was probably the most hilarious thing they’d ever seen. And we never learned our lesson, because we’re foolish and, also, desperate for a little peace and quiet, like I said, so they did it for three days straight before we decided to put them in footie pajamas so they couldn’t do it again. They were thwarted for two days and then they figured out how to wiggle out of those footie pajamas. We cut the feet off and zipped them up backward so they couldn’t let themselves out this time. That’s when they figured out how to unzip the back just enough to wiggle out of the neck hole and do the deed again. So we cut slits in the neck of the pajamas and zip-tied the zipper to the neck so they couldn’t possibly, no matter what they tried, get it off. That’s when they figured out how to climb out of their cribs, meet each other in the middle and wriggle, fantastically, out of a three-inch hole and do their deed yet again. I thought we were never going to get through that mess. Pardon the pun.
And then we were finally, finally, finally out of that fun stage, and it was time for the potty training. I’ve blocked that from my memory, it was so traumatic.
Now here we are, trying to find our way through twinanigans that have grown much more sophisticated since the paint-with-poop days. Just when we think we’re one step ahead of them, they’ve figured something else out. We fixed their sliding door closet with a door hinge that would keep them from opening it, and they pushed their dresser across their room to reach it. We took the dresser out, removed the doors of the closet and raised their clothes so high I have to stand on tiptoe to reach them (and I’m five feet, nine inches tall), and they figured out how to stack their pillows and folded-up blankets to climb up the wall and reach the hangers (I think they’re part Spider-Man.) so they could fling them all over the floor. So we took all their clothes out of their closet. Problem solved.
I opened the door after nap time that day I thought the problem was surely solved to see one 3-year-old dressed in his 6-month-old brother’s shirt and pants, unaware that the five inches of leg sticking out below the pants was a dead giveaway that he’d gotten into the clothes again.
I have no idea how they do all this. It’s not like I’m not paying attention or something. I mean, sometimes I’m distracted by other crises in my house, but I’ve always got one eye on the twins, because I know what twinanigans can do to a house and a life. I know they are the ones who will steal out of their rooms when we’re not looking so they can bring back their brother’s LEGO creation balanced precariously on the banister and play with it in bed. I know they’re the ones who will stash a permanent marker under their mattress and, when the lights have all gone out for the evening, will take to painting the place with their spider-people. I know they are the ones who will wander in the middle of the night and eat a whole tube of toothpaste or a whole container of vitamins that’s clearly not child-proofed while the rest of the house snores blissfully on.
I know they are the ones who will try to play with their favorite forbidden toy—the plunger—and end up flinging potty water all over the bathroom walls. I know they are the ones who will be set free from their backpack leashes, for only a couple of seconds, and disappear into an elevator in the blink of an eye and stay missing for half an hour before the elevator finally dings and they come running out talking about a sister they met. I know they are the ones who will run out into the middle of the street when a car is coming and not feel the least bit afraid, because they have no sense of impending death.
They’ve pulled over tables on themselves; they’ve tried to climb up bookshelves to get this one book they wanted, because they wanted to do it by themselves; they’ve marked their face with my mascara and lied about it, they’ve stuck their hand in the toilet with floating poop and then wiped their hand all over their shirt (every other day), they’ve figured out how to open a medicine bottle, they’ve helped each other reach the cookies I hid in the microwave, they’ve stood on each other’s shoulders to empty the toy cabinet, they’ve hit each other across the face and then hugged each other in the very next second.
They are relentless.
I didn’t have a single strand of gray hair before I had my twins. Now I find a new one every day, and they’re only 3. We’re in for a long ride.
But even though they’re hard, even though every day I wonder how much more of their twinanigans I can take, there is something else that twins bring to a life, and it is this: bright spots here and there, when they’re laughing hysterically with each other over some inside joke or when they’re coloring together and one keeps the other from marking on the floor so he doesn’t get in trouble or when they’re climbing into my lap for a story.
In moments like these, it’s easy to see why so many people tell me they always wanted twins. Twins are glamorous. They’re special. There is nothing like it. And, when it’s all said and done, it’s fascinating to watch two people who look exactly alike discovering their world, together, in their completely separate ways.
I did not expect twins to be so difficult. I did not expect them to be so wonderful, either.
You were unexpected, to say the least. We walked in the door of my doctor’s room, and I felt hopeful, even though I tried not to, because we’d just lost a baby, your sister, and I really just wanted to know that you were still alive and still developing and still a promise on the calendar, marked in pencil this time in case…
And then the doctor said there were two, and I laughed hysterically and your daddy almost passed out with the fear of it, and we didn’t know what else to do but call our family and tell them the shocking news: a family of five would become a family of seven.
Two babies. What would we do with two babies? Those were the thoughts that chased us home.
And this one: Please don’t let me lose one.
After losing your sister, I was terrified that I would lose one of you, because when a mama loses a baby, it doesn’t take her long to believe that’s all she’s ever going to do.
You grew, and your growing was a roller coaster, every day a precious gift. I could feel you moving inside, and I thanked God that you were still there. And, just when I’d allowed myself a small glimmer of hope, the bleeding came rushing, and we raced to the hospital on an anniversary trip, because we thought for sure we’d lost another one—or both—and I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t. I sat on that cold hospital bed while the technician checked everything out and your daddy looked at the screen, and I did not even dare to look at the screen, because I would not survive it if you were gone. But the screen showed two hearts beating, and your daddy held my hand and smiled, even though I could hardly see him, because of all the tears.
You were okay, you were just fine, you would continue your growing. I spent the rest of that nine months on modified bed rest. You bent my back toward the end of it, because both of you never stayed put, always fighting, even in the womb. We passed the safe barrier, and then we passed a few weeks after that and then we neared the end of it all, and I started settling into my new reality: I would be the mother of twins.
Then you were born in a flash of cramps and water and effort, and you were pink and tiny and perfect. Your lungs were perfect and your heart was perfect and all of you was perfect, but you had to stay in the intensive care unit so you could learn how to eat. You spent twenty-one days there, the only ones of my babies I’d ever left behind when doctors discharged me from the hospital. Every night we’d leave your older brothers with someone, and we’d drive up to the hospital to visit you when the unit had quieted, because we never knew which skin-on-skin touch would be the one that would make you eat enough so you could come home and our family would be complete. It was traumatic, that leaving you, putting you back in those incubators every time we needed to get back so we could wake and do it all over again the next day.
And then, of course, you came home, and I had no idea just how hard it would all be. But it would not take me long to learn.
That first night, your daddy and I didn’t get a single minute of sleep, because you were in a new place, without the heart-beeps of other babies, and neither of you wanted to sleep. We spent the whole night on pins and needles, trying to make sure you didn’t stop breathing in the middle of the night. Of course you didn’t, and we felt the foolishness of our fear the next morning, when three other boys came knocking into our room asking for breakfast and the two of you looked at us and screamed for your own breakfast. It was night after night after night of much the same, and we were so tired we didn’t know what to do with ourselves except keep moving, because as long as we kept moving, we probably wouldn’t fall over and die.
It was but an introduction to what life would be like with the two of you.
This year has been a hard one, hasn’t it? We haven’t gotten along so well at all for a full three hundred sixty-six days, because you are both curious and intelligent and relentless, and it’s made life a whole lot more complicated and crazy. But I want you to know, dear sons, that in spite of all the misbehavior and all the attitude and all the complication you bring to our lives, you are deeply loved.
It’s not easy to come at the end of a family, especially when there are two of you. Your daddy and I don’t often get to snuggle with you individually, because there’s not enough time for anything but sharing. We aren’t often able to listen to what you have to say, because your brothers are always talking about something or the other. And I hope you understand that this doesn’t mean that what you have to say is not as important as what your brothers have to say; it only means that we are stretched a little too thin, at this point in time.
I’m afraid that we haven’t spend as much time with you, as individuals, as we possibly could have, and for that I’m sorry. It wasn’t easy to feel like the bond between us was as strong as it should have been when I spent twenty-one days without you, and then you came home and life turned so crazy I barely knew what I was doing or who I was anymore. And then life just kept snowballing, because you learned to walk and then you could get into everything, and then you learned to take your diapers off and it was every other day that we’d open your room to a brown masterpiece painting the walls and then you learned how to escape from your room, and we could never rest, ever.
And there were always two of you.
There were always two of you, and that made it never easy. There will always be two of you, and that means it will probably never be easy. It’s a miracle and it’s a hardship. I still cannot separate one from the other.
I made myself feel guilty about that for a time. I wanted you. I got you. And now I was complaining that I had you?
I felt guilty that I didn’t have the time, that I didn’t have the energy, that I didn’t have the patience to mother two at a time. I felt guilty that while it was wonderful, at the same time, I hated it, because it was too, too, too hard. But here’s what I’ve learned in my life: Nothing worth doing is ever easy. The most transformative experiences in our lives also happen to be the most difficult.
It’s not easy to raise twins to be who they were made to be, individually. That also means it’s worth doing. More than worth doing. And you have transformed me in your challenge. You have deconstructed me. You have remade me.
So here we are. Year four. I know who you are. I know one of you likes to play with the light sockets when you think no one is looking, because you’re curious about what happens in there. I know that one of you likes to try to sneak out that puzzle when my attention has been turned to washing the dishes, because you want to dump out all the pieces and try to figure them out on your own. I know both of you will grab those treats and shove them into your mouth if they’re left anywhere near the counter you can reach.
I love you anyway. I love you because.
I know that in this next year of life, you will do greater things than you have already done. I know you will become more of who you are. I know that our love will continue blooming so that it becomes a fragrant offering between the walls of our home.
Welcome to four, my loves. You are exceptional. You are wonderful. You are beloved.
In this episode, Rachel looks at two middle grade novels that are completely different from each other, a self-editing book that’s helpful for writers, the importance of memories, word count goals and the movie Maleficent.
Woman: Are you guys four yet?
3-year-old: No, I’m three.
Woman: Is your birthday coming up?
3-year-old: Yeah.
Woman: And then you’ll be, what, seven?
3-year-old: Yeah. Because we eat a lot of food.
9-year-old: I feel really angry that you guys are hovering around me like bees hover around flowers.
Husband: You have to ask two serious questions and one silly one.
9-year-old: Like when was the last time you tooted?
Husband: Sure.
9-year-old: Two seconds ago is how I would answer that question.
Husband:
9-year-old:
Husband: It’s time to evacuate the dinner table.
9-year-old: Daddy, I’m feeling really sick. Can you squeeze the toothpaste out onto my toothbrush?
Husband: If you hurt one of your brothers again you lose technology time indefinitely.
9-year-old: If I’m angry, can I tickle them instead?
Husband: I think you should just not touch them.
9-year-old: I think I’ll tickle them.
6-year-old: I think I would like that better.
