by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Every year in Texas there’s this wonderful weekend where shoppers get to take advantage of tax-free shopping on school supplies and clothes. Hundreds of thousands of people head out in droves, hitting all the local stores and cleaning out school supplies and every rack of clothes those stores possibly have stocked—all within the first three hours of tax-free weekend.
I just love large crowds with all those excited kids who aren’t mine, weaving in and out of the guarantees-an-anxiety-attack-aisles, so, of course, I’m always one of them. Because, you know, tax-free weekend saves me $5.47. Totally worth it.
This year my mom offered to take my 3-year-old twins for the weekend so I could take the three going-to-school ones out for a few necessities and a handful of new clothes (because their jeans are now capris).
Strangely enough, I always look forward to this day. It’s sort of a tradition in our house now, the squeezing through sweaty crowds to get that perfect Spider-Man backpack, the yelling at my kids because they picked out five lunch boxes and they only need one, the robot-like explanation (because it’s so oft repeated) that their daddy and I have a thing called a budget, and this little personalized pencil with a neon green zipper bag is not in that budget. And every time tax-free weekend starts creeping up on us, I can’t sleep for days I’m so excited, almost as if I’m shopping for me (I’m not. I haven’t shopped for me in eight years).
Let me just tell you what you probably already know: Shopping with kids is like walking through hell with a checkbook.
And yet, every year I forget the horror that was last year, and I convince myself that this year will surely be different, because the boys are older and more mature, and they understand the whole budget thing and, because of all this, they won’t annoy me 12 seconds after we get to the store.
We started out well, a whole 600 seconds of not-annoying. We stopped first at an arts and crafts store, where we picked out a chalkboard and some chalk markers their daddy could use to hand letter their morning routines, personalized and artsy (incentive for getting out of bed on school mornings: they get to see art!). They helped me put the chalkboard and chalk pens carefully in the cart, and we headed for the register and paid with little or no fuss beyond their asking if they could please, please, please look at the Beanie Boos, just real quick. Okay, I said, because they were so good.
And then there was Target.
Now. I love Target. It’s the closest department store to my house, so it’s where I get the majority of things like paper towels and toilet paper and replacement toothbrushes after I caught one of the 3-year-old twins trying to scrub-clean the toilet with the existing ones and then putting them all in his mouth (“Look at my teef!” he said, and I threw up a little in my mouth.).
The first thing they asked when we walked through the sliding doors was whether we could go look at the toys.
Um, no. We’re here for school stuff, I said. We’re on a time budget. And a money budget.
My mom had already bought all the school supplies this year, so all we really needed were a few clothes, some shoes, a backpack and lunch supplies for all of them. We went to the lunch box section first and spied the Thermoses.
Two of them already had Thermoses, so we only needed one.
“But I want this one,” said one of the already-have-a-perfectly-fine Thermos boys.
“No,” I said. “You already have one.”
“But look at this one,” he said. “It’s really cool.”
“Well, too bad it wasn’t here last year,” I said and put it back on the shelf.
Half an hour later, when I finally pulled them away from the Thermos shelf, we wheeled over to the backpacks, where three other mothers were wrestling backpacks from their children’s hands.
“Only one,” they were saying.
Oh, God. Here we go.
I leaned against my cart, trying to empathize with all those poor mothers, while my boys pulled every boy-looking backpack off the racks—Transformers, Darth Vader, Batman, Superman, some dog I’ve never seen before, Super Mario Brothers, Spider-Man, everything you could possibly imagine—one after the other falling at my feet.
“Look at this one, Mama!” they would periodically say. “I want this one!”
They knew they were only getting one backpack, so I didn’t feel the need to repeat what we’d already explicitly talked through on the way here. So I just let them bring their choices and said, “Is this the one you want?” and when they said no, I’d hang it back up.
Fast forward another hour, and they had their backpacks stuffed with their lunch boxes and strapped to their backs, because they wanted to carry them instead of putting them in the cart. That lasted about three minutes, and then they tossed them into the cart. Mostly because, right between the school supplies section and the clothes, is the toys section.
Come on, Target. Give a mom a break.
I lost two of the three boys, but by this time, I was already so annoyed and ready to be done I just left them. They knew where we were going. So it was that only one hung to the side of the basket. Until he realized that his brothers were gone. This one got lost one time and gets really scared when any of his brothers disappear, so of course we had to go back to pry his brothers loose from the toy aisle.
They’d stalled on the LEGO aisle. Of course.
“Let’s go, guys,” I said. “Not what we’re here for.”
“Can we just get one LEGO set, Mama? To celebrate the start of school?” the 8-year-old said.
He’s clever, but we’ve never “just bought” a LEGO set for any occasion, so I said no.
They hopped back on the side of the cart, which collectively weighed 130 pounds. Have you ever tried to push a 130-pound cart with a screwy wheel (because I always pick the screwy-wheeled ones, even if the carts are brand new. It’s just a fact of life.)? People kept passing us giving us dirty looks, because we were, after all, on a shopper’s highway, and I was going well below the speed limit, using every muscle in my arms just to turn the corner.
Finally we reached the clothes. This is where it really fell apart.
I don’t even know what happened. I just remember one boy who wears extra small holding up an extra-large and saying he wanted to buy it, and then the boy who wears medium holding up an extra small and saying he wanted this one and then the one who wears small holding up a large, saying this was the one he most definitely wanted to take home, and I had the luxury of telling them all that they’d picked the wrong sizes.
The clothes had already been so picked over we had to compromise greatly. And when I say compromise greatly, I mean no one got what they wanted. The boy who wanted a minion shirt got a Jurassic Park one instead. The boy who wanted Darth Vader got R2D2 instead. The boy who wanted Spider-Man got a minion shirt the other one wanted.
By the time we made it to the sock and underwear aisle, I was done caring. The 8-year-old got a pack of boxer briefs a whole size too large, the 6-year-old picked out some socks he’ll probably regret choosing the first time he wears shorts and realizes how ridiculous he looks in green and blue stripes that come up to his knees. The 4-year-old picked up a package of socks you needed sunglasses to behold.
Oh, well. Lesson learned. Last time I’ll take my kids school shopping with me.
Although, now that I think of it, next year will surely be different, because the boys will be older and more mature, and they’ll understand the whole budget thing and, because of all that, they won’t annoy me 12 seconds after we get to the store.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
I mean, I can’t even get mad about it. THEY’RE LOVE NOTES. From my little boys. How is a Mama supposed to get mad at her boys when they leave her something like this?
This is a custom shelf my husband built for Mother’s Day to cover a terrible burn inflicted on the side of our living room chair by a house guest. We’re really good at starting, but not so great at finishing, so this shelf has been waiting for paint for three months now. Half of it is green and half of it…
Well, now the other half’s kid-handwriting art.
I’ve watched a progression of this art. One day I walked down the stairs and was met by a black love note on the corner of the shelf. Another day I walked downstairs and discovered the 6-year-old had gotten into the action, too, this time with red. Yesterday I saw the 5-year-old’s contribution, scrawled in red pen and all capital letters (not pictured here).
Now. My kids (at least the bigger ones) know and understand that it’s against the house rules to write on the furniture. But, in a moment of such deep and overwhelming love, they just had to express their feelings in a way that would forever and ever (or at least until it got painted) let me know their devotion. Like the picnic tables in junior high where kids would scratch their love notes and then scratch them out three days later. Like the desks in high school where couples would declare their undying love under a worksheet and then try to rub it off a few months later.
At least that’s the story I’m telling myself.
Because otherwise the story would be that my kids saw this bare piece of wood that was going to, eventually, be painted anyway and saw a prime opportunity to defy the rules and make their mark.
It surely can’t be that.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Tomorrow I will rise early and sit through reading and writing and praying and then I will steal down the stairs to prepare breakfast and then steal back up to kiss them from their beds and point to their chalkboard schedules. Tomorrow I will walk down a concrete sidewalk, my hand wrapped around the fingers of one and the hand of another, and I will watch the odd one out lag behind or run ahead, whatever his mood may be, because there are only two hands for three boys. Tomorrow I will take my time on my way to the building, half a mile from our home, where I will leave three of them this time.
This year another of my babies will join 125 other kindergarteners, on his way out the door of my house and into the door of the world. And it doesn’t matter that I’ve done this twice before. Doesn’t make it any easier.
So I already know that I will join the ranks of other kindergarten parents, stopping at the door to watch their little big kid disappear into a world we have no control over, a world that doesn’t follow our rules or standards, a world that could be dangerous and terrifying and heartbreaking all at the same time.
It’s true that tempers at home, as we neared this day, have ramped up, and their daddy and I have looked at each other more often than not in the last few days with eyes that said, “I can’t wait for school to start,” but the truth is, I don’t mean it. Not at all. Because school starting means they are gone from me, gone from my encouragement, gone from my presence, gone from my protection. Never gone from my love, of course.
And then today the three who will go have climbed on my lap periodically throughout the day, like they know what this last day home means, and their snuggles have whispered loud and wild and desperate into a mama heart: They can’t go. They can’t go. I can’t let them go.
Because what if?
What if they don’t make any friends and become the outsider? What if they don’t like their teacher and their teacher doesn’t like them? What if the time they spend outside our home breaks their spirit or their confidence or, God forbid, their whole heart?
Tonight I will wander through the hallways of my home, like I always do, and I will touch those backpacks hanging on their hooks, and I will slip into their rooms to look at their sleeping faces, so big and yet so, so small, and I will cry and beg and pray that this year will be a good one; that this year they will know, without a doubt, that they are capable of wading through the raging waters of life; that this year they will really, really believe, deep down in the places where it matters, how important they are to me, to their friends, to the whole wide world, just the way they are.
I can tell them this every single days of their lives, but they have to learn it for themselves. Away from home. Out in the world. Somewhere else.
I know this. And yet it is not so simple, this letting go. I know what breaking feels like, and I don’t want it for my boys. I know what defeated feels like, and I don’t want it for my boys. I know what cruelty feels like, and I DON’T WANT IT FOR MY BOYS.
It sounds silly, I know, because it’s all just a part of growing up—the pain, the disappointment, the heartbreaks. Don’t I want them to grow up? Don’t I want them to be their own people? Don’t I want them to learn they can do it all without my constant help?
Yes. But no. I mean, yes. Yes, of course.
It’s just that yesterday he was only days old and I was just learning how to be a mother. Yesterday I was holding his hand, cheering him on as he put one wobbly foot in front of the other. Yesterday he needed me to bathe him and pour his milk and tie his shoes and pick out his clothes and tuck him in.
Where did the time go? Where did the baby go? Now they are only big, only tall, only lanky and self-sufficient and excited about this step outside the home, and I am only grieving. What does one do with this grief?
Well. I will fall apart, just outside their rooms, where I can hear them breathing in a sleep that feels far away from me this moment. Because it’s just so hard. So hard to watch them go.
It’s only one of a thousand steps. I know this. Theirs is a gradual leaving. I know this, too, but it doesn’t ever feel that way. It feels jarring, like we just weren’t ready, like we haven’t had the last five years to prepare for this day and the 12 first days after this one. (That last day I try not to think about.)
Tomorrow I will walk them into this new step toward independence, and I will leave them in a place where they will learn about a world outside our home, where they will sit in classrooms with kids who can choose kindness or cruelty on a minute-by-minute basis, where they will watch their peers eat the cookies in their lunches first if they want.
Tomorrow we will stop just outside the doors of the school, where they will pose and their daddy will snap a thousand pictures for this momentous first day, and they will all smile so proudly, and I will weep so proudly, because they are my babies. Still. Forever.
And then we will walk to those classrooms, where two of them have done this drill before and one, well. One will turn at the door, and his eyes will ask that question, “Are you sure?” and I will have to make mine say what a mouth cannot.
“Yes, baby. I’m sure.”
Even though I’m not.
But he is ready. He’s ready to step out in independence. He’s ready to walk in the world. He’s ready to grow and learn and become his own person outside of me, and God it hurts, because he’s still my little one I pulled into bed with me those nights he didn’t sleep and I was too exhausted to sit up and feed. He’s still my little one I watched master the stairs before he even mastered walking. He is still my little one who hung upside down on the monkey bars before he could even speak complete sentences while I stood at the bottom with my arm-net stretched out, waiting for the fall I hoped would never come.
I am still standing at the bottom with my arm-net stretched out, waiting for the fall I hope will never come.
So I will let him go. I will let him walk in that classroom and greet his teacher, even though he probably won’t remember her name just yet, and I will leave him, and his daddy will squeeze my hand, because he knows just what this is doing to me, and we will walk back home with the three youngest who would fill a house for anyone else but make mine feel empty.
I leave him because I know he’s ready to try out those wings we’ve been building. I know he’ll crash-land sometimes and I’ll have to pick him back up and kiss those bleeding knees, but he will build mightier wings because of it. I know he’ll fly.
He will find his way into friendship, and he will learn the best games to play at recess, and he will love his teacher. He will be just fine.
He will be just fine.
Because he is stronger than I know. He is braver than I can even imagine. He is more than capable.
Tonight I will tiptoe into his room for one last look, one last touch, one last kiss on those dark lashes that only feel my lips in his dreams. And then I will leave, back to my room, back to my bed, where night will pull down the covers.
Tomorrow is a special day. Tomorrow my boy will make his first flight.
And I will be there, always, watching with proud tears and an aching heart.
by Rachel Toalson | On My Shelf
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
The Imaginary, by A.F. Harrold
Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down, by Dave Barry
Fiction Unboxed, by Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant and David Wright (not pictured—because it’s an ebook)
This week I’m reading a sci-fi novel by one of the masters (and, sadly, have never read the Ender series) and an interesting kid-lit book by a new author. I’m studying the craft of humor columnist Dave Barry and the writing prowess of Platt, Truant and Wright, who produce a billion words a week (not really, but they’re fiction writing machines). Great stuff this week.
Best quotes so far:
“Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
Orson Scott Card
“Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.”
Orson Scott Card
“Every year, hundreds of thousands of people try their hand at this demanding profession (humor columnist). After a few months, almost all of them have given up and gone back to the ninth grade.”
Dave Barry
“Today’s beauty ideal, strictly enforced by the media, is a person with the same level of body fat as a paper clip.”
Dave Barry
Read any of these? Tell us what you thought.
by Rachel Toalson | Fiction in Forty
Photo by Paul Green.
Maren and James sat in front, honeymooners to France with locked fingers and lips that met every few minutes. The plane shuddered and straightened. They smiled. And then, suddenly, it stopped, hovering, turning its nose to the ground.
Someone screamed.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Who can resist a face like this?
Every Tuesday, on my to-do list, I have a 30-minute block that says, “Fold laundry.” This is valuable work time I’m spending separating laundry so my kids can put their piles away. Every single week I have to do it, because when you have kids, laundry never, ever stops.
The problem is, it’s time I could be cranking out 1,000 more words on my computer, and I miss it. I mis sit every single time.
This week, the laundry pile was larger, because I just changed our my 5-year-old’s clothes, because he grew out of the old size, so there were hand-me-downs that needed washing and sorted. I ended up spending 45 minutes separating piles.
And when I finally made it back to my computer, cutting the cords of home-demands, I couldn’t help but think, “Something needs to be done about this.”
It’s not easy balancing life and work and home. Because my work is creative, there are so many times I have an idea kicking around in my head, and what I really want to be doing is fleshing it out, brainstorming how it might possibly work and putting it on my production schedule in a place that might make the most sense, but kids need to be fed lunch and read stories and put down for naps, and there’s just not any extra time.
Sometimes that idea living in my brain can make my vision dark and gray, like I can’t really be happy until it comes out on the page. Sometimes it just makes me walk distracted, so I fill up cups of water for the boys and leave them on a counter instead of a table, where they’re sitting. Sometimes it means I’m not really listening to my children or staying full present or engaging in conversation or play, because there’s something else pulling my mind away.
This can be frustrating. But the truth is, when we are artists, we are always working. Always. Even in the moments when we are caring for our kids, our eyes are still open to the realities of life, to the potential for story—a conversation here, a scene there—to the conversations we’re having and the feelings we’re feeling and the experiences we might be able to use later.
At first I tried fighting this. Because I wanted to stay completely present for my children when it was my turn to care for them. Because I wanted to stay fully present with my work when it was time to work. But it wasn’t ever easy to separate myself from my art or from my children.
I’ve thought long and hard about balance in the life of a writer parent. I’ve tried to figure out an exact definition or possibilities for what it might look like or how balance might be achieved, but what I’m coming to understand is that I cannot be the kind of mom my kids need if I’m separating myself from my art at certain times and from them at others times.
I see it like this: My children are like roots, grounding me to the earth of my life. My art is like a root, too, wrapping and twisting and growing all up under and around and inside the roots that are my children. Those roots are all connected, and they don’t look perfectly orderly or perfectly distinguished one from another, but they do look perfectly beautiful.
But because they’re wrapped all around each other, if I try to pull up one of them, they all suffer.
This balance is a complicated one. And that’s okay. There are seasons when our art needs more water than our children. There are other seasons when our children need more water than our art. But they cannot ever be fully separated.
Still, if I’m honest, there is a guilt that comes crawling to me on its knees, trying to whisper in my ear that I’m not doing enough to let my kids know I love them, and I’m not doing enough to make sure my art is perfect and wonderful and life-changing, and some days I can bend too far beneath its words.
So what does work and family balance look like?
Well, sometimes it looks like inviting our family into our work, because there are days we just can’t get the work off our minds. Sometimes it looks like walking our kids to the park and forgetting that work altogether, because what we’ll see and hear on that half-mile trek informs who we are, which informs what kind of art we produce on any particular day. Sometimes it looks like working an extra hour at night while a spouse takes the kids swimming.
The other day, I sat down with my boys and drew out a new work schedule while they worked on their summer projects, picture books they’re illustrating. I was helping them, but I was also helping myself. I told them I was working out a new schedule, and they came over periodically to see what that meant, and then went right back to their art projects. They drew for 45 minutes, all of us sharing in valuable creating time.
It was not wasted time. We were creating together. We were helping each other along in our separate pursuits. Something I don’t often remember, in the guilt of the moment, is that when our kids see us creating, they get to learn what it takes to pursue a passion—the hard work, the hits-at-a-moment’s-notice inspiration, the moments when we do something unexpected because creativity just hijacked our time.
What works for me won’t always work for you, but here are a few suggestions for finding balance in work and family life:
1. Enter into creating with your kids. One of our projects this summer is creating picture books. My three older boys told a short version of a story, I wrote it in picture book form, and they’re illustration 15-30 pages we’ll transform into a picture book. This helps me practice writing picture books, and it also helps me share the wonder of art (and publishing) with my children. We get to collaborate and sharpen each other in our work together (because kids have so much to teach us about creativity).
2. Make sure you get into the habit of rest. Resting is necessary in art. Our wells can run dry if we’re not filling them. I take weekly Sabbaths every seventh week, when I try to learn something new or just read books or spend more one-on-one time with my children. We do puzzles together. We play trampoline dodgeball out back. We sew and draw and paint and sing and dance.
3. Don’t even try to keep up with it all. The demands can be great in a household like mine. I don’t even try to keep up anymore. I used to want a clean and tidy house, but now I just settle for tidy. I vacuum every week, but I dust about every month. I haven’t scrubbed the baseboards in you don’t want to know how long, because who has the time? There just aren’t enough hours in the day to spend them scrubbing something that will just get dirty again in a day of living with children. One of these days, my boys will do all of that, and we’ll have a whole work force living in our home. But for now, we just live with it.
4. Invite kids into the home stuff, too. Our boys are responsible for doing after-dinner chores. The 5-year-old even knows how to take out the trash. They wipe the table, clean the countertops, sweep the floor and do the dishes (with supervision…they like those knives that are waiting to go in the dishwasher a little too much). We shouldn’t be afraid to ask our kids for help, because when they’re out on their own (which we don’t like to think about when they’re young), they’ll have to learn how to balance life and home and art, too. We’re just giving them practice.
5. Communicate your needs. Creating art and living with a family create so many needs for communication. When those seasons come around where you just have too much on your plate, communicate that to your family. No one wants to live with a stressed-out parent, and they’ll probably be willing to help with something, whether it’s writing with you in the evenings or doing chores so you have more time to write or reading in the library until you come out of your room in the mornings and tell them it’s time to get breakfast on the table.
Balancing our work and home lives isn’t easy, but it’s definitely not impossible. We simply have to work at it, like everything else.
And it’s in our best interest that we do.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
My boys are playing together just fine over in a corner of the dining room, on the glass table we never use for eating, (because it’s glass and kids have twelve thousand sticky hands). They’re occupied with the Contraptions, these really fun wooden planks they like to make into tracks, so it looks like the perfect opportunity to sneak into the kitchen and cram down another of those dark chocolate brownies I made last night, even though I just got done telling them, when they asked, that it’s too early in the morning to have one.
I should know better by now. I mean, I’ve been a parent for 8 years. I should know that in a household of kids, there is never, ever, ever a perfect opportunity. But sometimes I go a little wild and get my hopes up.
So I’m in the middle of cramming, hiding in the pantry just in case they come wandering into the kitchen, when the 8-year-old catches me, red-handed, with chocolate all over my fingers (the curse of gooey brownies).
He looks from my face to my hands and back again. And then he tosses out that bad word I just love to hate: “Aw, no f**r. You ate a brownie. You said it was too early for us to have one.”
I think fast. “Well,” I say. “I’m a grownup. When you’re a grownup you get to eat whatever you want in the morning.”
Real smooth, I know. Real good example of the way I DON’T want my children to eat. Well, parenting and paradoxes go hand in hand.
Hours later, when it’s time for lunch, I pile some strawberries and sliced cucumber on their plates beside their PB&J sandwiches. Off to the side, I put a handful of raisins on everyone’s plate except the 8-year-old, who doesn’t like raisins. I give him pecans.
His brothers notice, of course. “No f**r,” the 5-year-old says. “He gets pecans.”
“You have raisins,” I say. “Jadon doesn’t like raisins. I’ll take your raisins and give you pecans, if you want.”
He shuts his mouth and shakes his head, because, of course, he prefers the sweet raisins to the pecans.
I get so tired of the phrase, “No f**r.” They have several variations. They might sound like “It’s not f**r” or “That’s not f**r” or “You should be f**r” and so many more I can’t even remember right now, in my annoyed, flustered, I’m-so-sick-of-this state of mind. All I know is I hear them 15 billion times a day.
When someone goes out to play because he’s finished his after dinner chore: “That’s not f**r. He gets to go play already, and I’m still stuck here doing dishes.” When someone pours his own milk and it’s half a centimeter more than I gave the brother: “It’s not f**r. He got more milk than I did.” When someone comes down the stairs with a red shirt on: “No f**r. I never get to wear a red shirt.”
What I want to say every single time I hear these delightful words is, “Welp. Life’s not f**r. The sooner you can learn that and accept it, the better.”
What I usually do, instead, because I’m a good parent, is empathize with their feelings and then explain exactly why fair isn’t equal. Sometimes they understand. Most times they don’t.
But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take incredible strength of will to keep calm when they’re throwing out and kicking around the f-word. In fact, this is what it usually sounds like in my head:
When we’re eating dinner, and their daddy and I have a glass of wine:
3-year-old: “No f**r. You get wine.”
What I want to say: “If you only knew who I’d be without it…”
What I say instead: “Want to taste?”
He gets close enough to smell and picks up his cup of milk without a single complaint.
That’s right, son. This stuff is NASTY, because it’s cheap and it’s survival.
When we’re watching a movie and the boys get their cups of popcorn.
6-year-old: “Hey, no f**r! He got more than I did!”
What I want to say: “Wow. Aren’t you an efficient counter? You know fractions already? Because he has half a kernel more than you.”
What I say instead: “Here. Have another.”
Because, dang, I don’t want this fight. I know what it will look like. It will look like five cups of popcorn dumped onto the floor so they can count it, and the 3-year-olds can’t even count past 12, which means this will take ALL DAY.
When the older boys are sitting around during art time, and the 8-year-old decides he’s going to make the most epic paper airplane ever.
5-year-old: “No f**r. Jadon knows how to make a paper airplane.”
What I want to say: “Stinks to be you.”
What I say instead: “Here. Let’s learn how to make one.”
Forty minutes later we have a paper airplane that won’t even fly, because making paper airplanes is much more complicated than it looks.
When it’s almost nap time, and I’m telling the 3-year-old twins what they need to do next.
3-year-old: “No f**r. My bruvers get to have Quiet Time and I have to take a nap.”
What I want to say: “Only boys who know how to say ‘brothers’ get to have Quiet Time. Besides, I don’t need a break from your brothers. You, on the other hand…I need a thousand year break from you.”
What I say instead: “Do you want to crawl like a dog to your bed or run like an ostrich?”
During dinner, the oldest is sitting beside his littlest brother, watching me feed him.
8-year-old: “No f**r. You get to feed him.”
What I want to say: “What the—?”
What I say instead: “You can do it if you want.”
Two minutes later, the baby sneezed sweet potatoes all over his face, and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing hysterically. Not so fun now, is it?
Everybody in my house knows this bad word. Everyone uses it. We’re born knowing how to use it, I think.
Kids have such a messed up definition of what f**r really is. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the feeling of unf**r any less real to them.
The other day, when we were playing a game and one of his brothers drew a yellow card he needed, my 6-year-old said, “That’s not f**r.”
“What does f**r mean?” I said.
No one answered, because none of them knows. All they know is they want life to work for them right now. They want it to be perfectly smooth and perfectly easy and perfectly their way.
And, honestly, so do I. But I’ve been alive longer than they have, and I know it’s just not. I know it’s not f**r that some lose babies while others get to keep them. I know it’s not f**r that some business deals fall through and we suddenly can’t make our mortgage payment this month while others have more than enough. I know it’s not f**r that the store was out of raw oats so now I have to think outside the box for Wednesday morning’s breakfast.
So much about life is not f**r. So many times I want to stomp and complain and throw out those same words my kids overuse. Because it’s not f**r that my air conditioner broke and we had to try to sleep through four days of 1,000-degree heat. It’s not f**r that my kids don’t listen to what I’m saying 99.7 percent of the time because they have better things on their minds. It’s not f**r that last night, when I had just slipped into dreamland, one of them came knocking on my door to say he couldn’t sleep, and then it took me three hours to get back to sleep so I’m more exhausted than normal today.
In a child’s life, f**r means get-what-I-want. Everything they want to be f**r—a game, the ability to make epic paper airplanes, a treatment—is strictly for their own benefit. They want a f**r game, because they want to win. They want a f**r ability, because it means they wouldn’t have to ask Mama’s help and their paper airplane would actually fly. They want f**r treatment, because they’re afraid they’re missing out on something special.
We’re born with this complex. We all know adults who still have trouble accepting its reality in their lives. That, to me, means it’s good for our kids to practice surviving “unf**r,” because they get to learn, in the process, that life doesn’t end because something doesn’t go exactly the way they planned or even hoped.
That’s what develops grit.
So, today, when the 8-year-old plops on the couch and says, “I want to watch a movie,” and I answer in the negative, and he says, “It’s not f**r. My friends get to watch TV all day,” and it’s the sixtieth time I’ve heard those blasted words in an hour, I send them all outside to jump out their frustration on the trampoline. And when the last one gets out the door, I turn the lock. No one’s coming back inside until dinner.
Life isn’t f**r, after all.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
My Sabbath week got off to a fantastic start.
You see that thermostat? It’s not lying.
On Friday, after I’d logged the last writing hour I would log for an entire week (I practice a week-long Sabbath every seventh week to prevent burnout), after I’d sat through a 1.5-hour podcast recording with my husband, I happily went downstairs to feed the baby before we were scheduled to drop our twins off with my mom, who (THANK GOD) wanted to take them for a couple of days.
It was a GREAT day. And then I saw the thermostat.
Though set at 78 (about all we can ask from it in three-digit temps), it was hitting about 82.
“What’s going on?” I said. Husband was in the kitchen, getting some water before he would wrangle the boys into the van.
He looked at the thermostat. “It’s just having trouble keeping up,” he said. “Because it’s so hot outside.”
I had a feeling he was wrong. But, you know, he’s a man. He knows more than I do about these kinds of things.
My three older boys kept coming over periodically to distract the baby and make us leave three hours later than we would otherwise, and every time they opened their mouths, the thermostat climbed a degree. “Close your mouths,” I said. “Your hot air is canceling out the air conditioner’s efforts.”
Husband came in to see if the baby was finished, and I pointed at the thermostat again. “Look,” I said.
The numbers blinked 88 degrees. Husband blinked at me. I saw his shoulders sag a little. He disappeared out back, and when he came in, I knew it wasn’t good news.
The air was quitting. In the middle of a Texas summer, where temperatures reach 10,000 degrees. Summer’s the best, isn’t it?
He called around, because of course he was going to fix it himself, but the place with the part wouldn’t be open by the time we’d dropped the twins off and made it back to town. They weren’t open on the weekend, either. Which meant we’d have to spend an entire weekend without the modern convenience of air conditioning.
“We can do it,” I said when Husband got off the phone. “They used to do it all the time back before air conditioning was around.”
“They also used to die much sooner,” Husband said, in uncharacteristic pessimism.
But I, in uncharacteristic optimism, knew we’d be just fine. In fact, I proposed starting a project called “The Little House on the Prairie Project” wherein we’d spend the rest of our summer without air conditioning and I’d write a book about how we survived. Husband said it should be called “The How Long Until they Kill Each Other Project.”
When we got back to the house without the twins, the temperature was at 90, but the good news was, we’d passed the hottest part of the day. We opened all the windows and let the breeze through.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said. Husband shook his head.
“No,” he said. “We couldn’t.”
“We could totally do this, though,” I said.
“We’re fixing the air conditioner,” he said.
I’m glad I listened. Because by the second night, when there was no breeze coming through the open wide windows and we all just lay in our beds with sleep far, far away in some other country, I knew there was no way my children would survive a summer without air conditioning, mostly because my temper was all hot and bothered and so was Husband’s. It’s weird how heat can do that to you. I’m just glad the twins were gone, because one more straw…
Husband fixed the air conditioning. And we lived happily ever after.
(Mostly.)
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Every summer, it’s the same old thing. The school year creeps up on us, after more than two months spent playing together and resting together and just being together, and here comes my old friend anxiety.
This year three of them will go to school, and I feel the weight in my chest already, one week out from the start day marked on our calendar in red.
I worry that they won’t have the right teacher. I worry that they’ll spend a miserable year wishing they didn’t have to go to school. I worry that they won’t find friends this year or that their friends from last year will decide they don’t want to be friends anymore or that they’ll be picked on instead of liked.
I worry about bullies and about their hearts and about their futures and about their health and about their safety and about how much they’re hydrating in a day and about what they’re doing in P.E. this afternoon and about desks pushed too closely together and about lonely lunch tables and about playground politics.
There’s so much to worry about when your kids spend seven hours a day in someone else’s hands.
So, teacher, please take care of my boys.
I know I’m not the only parent asking. In a couple of weeks millions of parents will release their kids to public schools. They will watch their babies board a bus and turn to wave, or they will watch those babies drive away, or they will walk them down a sidewalk and hug them so tight at their classroom doors. The children will get to you differently, but they will all leave the same, sent off with that lump in the back of a parent’s throat, with those watery eyes we’ll try to blink away before our little one (or big one) sees.
Our babies will touch sleeves with other students and fill in the bubbles on math worksheets and breathe and slap colors onto a canvas in art, and it will all be new and exciting and wonderful and fun until it isn’t. It doesn’t take long for the first-day-of-school novelty to wear off, and that’s when those students need you the most.
I know it’s not easy. I know there are so many needs, so many hours, so many kids. I know there is only one of you, and sometimes it can get overwhelming. I know because I live in a home with six children, and I struggle on a daily basis to offer them the best version of myself.
I know it can feel like a lot of pressure on your back, all these parents looking to you to teach and train and mold their children in ways that line up with how they’re taught and trained and molded at home.
But the truth is, teaching is a great responsibility. So please, take care of the children. They are easily broken, and they don’t often forget. They need someone telling them, even in their most unlovable, annoying moments, that they are still loved, that they still matter, that they are still worthy. A child who doesn’t believe he’s worthy won’t try all that hard.
I hope you remember, in those hard moments, that a moment in time, a moment of misbehavior, a moment of sass, does not tell the whole story of who a student is. There are a lot of wounded children out there, but you can be part of the healing. What an amazing privilege.
When they’re acting out, when they don’t know what to do with all their overwhelming emotions other than what they’re doing right this minute, the crying or the flailing or the screaming, I hope you know. I hope you see more than the inconvenience. I hope you try to figure it out instead of chalking it up to just who they are. Because their behavior is not who they are, not even close.
You see, I’ve got one of those children. One of those children who could read Harry Potter before he was 5 and yet did not learn to control his emotions until he was 8. But he had a teacher. She made all the difference.
And there is me, too.
I was a fatherless kid, a girl who missed her daddy, a girl who could find no worth in who I was because someone important had left me without a second look back. Or so it seemed when I was 10. Right on the cusp of womanhood, I took it personally.
But I had a teacher. Many of them. They believed in me. They whispered who I could be, and even when I could not believe it for myself, I could believe them. Sometimes that’s all it takes—a teacher’s belief—to pick you up and carry you through. They saw writer. They saw brilliant student. They saw that I could be so very much more than I thought I could be.
So they called out the brilliance. They called out the good. They called out the “can” in me.
There is something strangely beautiful about a teacher caring and believing and speaking honestly about what she sees and what he believes a student can do. Makes you want to do it.
My teachers called out the best inside me. And you know what? I did it all.
You have the opportunity to call out the best in your students, too. Even in the “bad” ones. Even in the “difficult” ones. Even in the ones who should already know this but just don’t.
Every kid need a teacher who believes. Might you be the one?
Might you be the one to lift a poor kid from his poverty place and set him on the path to finding a better future? Might you be the one to speak life into the heart of a boy who feels nothing but death because of all the mistakes he’s made up until now? Might you be the one to set them free from the chains we can’t see?
Oh, I hope so. Because there are so many students coming from places we don’t even want to imagine. So many students who need to know that someone besides their parents believes the best about them. So many students who need your help.
They will come to you, leaving their homes, their safe place or not-so-safe places, and they will step into the scary public school world. They will need you to guide them through the roaring waters.
In too few days I will turn over three of my precious boys. One of them is highly gifted but still has trouble expressing what he’s thinking and feeling beyond tears and clenched fists and eyes that call for help. He needs a little extra care. Another is highly gifted in interpersonal communication and compliance. He needs a little help rebelling so he becomes his own person instead of who everyone wants him to be. And the last will start his first year of school as the third boy in a line of brilliant boys, and he’s not quite sure he got the brilliant gene (even though I know he did) so he gives up when things get hard. He needs a little help believing.
Please take care of my boys. Take care of their hearts. Love them with just as much love as you can call up from the wellspring of your heart. When they fall, please help them back up to a higher place than where they started. When they mess up, please remind them that everyone does, because there is no perfect. When they don’t know right from left or up from down, please be their compass and lead them toward truth.
Please keep constant watch and be fierce in rooting out problems and call up in them a desire to always do better. Teach them how to build their wings. Show them how to bare their hearts and their dreams and their gifts. (You can bet I’ll be doing the same.)
And then let’s watch them fly together.
by Rachel Toalson | On My Shelf
On my shelf this week:
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
Let’s Get Invisible, by R.L. Stine
Heads You Lose, by R.L. Stine
The School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani
How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, by Orson Scott Card
This week I’m reading a phenomenal audio book because it’s read by Jim Dale, the same guy who read all the Harry Potter books. It’s very entertaining. My boys are super obsessed with R.L. Stine, so I’m reading a couple of Goosebump stories with the 8- and 6-year-old. A fantasy adventure (because the best way to learn to write is to read) and a handbook on writing science fiction and fantasy by a master of the genre top the list. Good stuff this week!
Best quotes so far:
“…You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you’re right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They’re open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It’s a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell.”
Orson Scott Card
“Science fiction is about what could be but isn’t; fantasy is about what couldn’t be.”
Orson Scott Card
…and my personal favorite:
“The novelty and freshness you’ll bring to the field won’t come from the new ideas you think up. Truly new ideas are rare, and usually turn out to be variations on old themes anyway. No, your freshness will come from the way you think, from the person you are; it will inevitably show up in your writing, provided you don’t mask it with heavy-handed formulas or clichés.”
Orson Scott Card
Read any of these? Tell us what you thought.
