To the kindergarten parent on the first day of school

To the kindergarten parent on the first day of school

by | 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.

Dear Teacher: Please take care of my boys.

Dear Teacher: Please take care of my boys.

by | 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.

Dear Memaw: Even after all this time, I still miss you.

Dear Memaw: Even after all this time, I still miss you.

by | Wing Chair Musings

It’s been seven years since you left us.

Well, seven years since you died. You left us six months before you died.

I remember the day clearly, because we were coming up on my firstborn’s birthday, and I got the call right when we were taking him out of the bath. Mom said you’d had a bad fall, that you’d bled yourself to death while nurses and doctors watched, or didn’t watch, maybe. They gave you so much blood to make up for the losing, enough blood for a whole new body.

You died on the table. And they brought you back. Except you didn’t get a new body. You just got your old one, now ruined.

That’s what did it. That’s what beckoned your dying.

Because it wasn’t really you they brought back. It was a smaller version of you. A you who couldn’t walk, a you who couldn’t talk, a you who lay shrunken in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over your face for the times you forgot how to breathe.

And what kind of life is that?

I remember the first time I saw you after that fall. I took the day off, drove all the way to Houston, all the way to a hospital I never wanted to visit, and then I walked in, holding the hand of my almost-1-year-old. And while he played in the waiting room where all the family members smiled over how cute and smart and aware he was, I went inside a room that smelled like death and held your hand instead. You looked at me. I looked at you. I cried. You cried. I prayed, out loud where you could hear, and you made noises, like you understood, like you agreed with the words I called down from heaven.

I leaned down close. “You’re going to make it, Memaw,” I said.

“Yes,” you said.

“You’re going to try?”

“Yes,” you said.

I swear you talked. I will swear it forever, even if the doctors say there’s no physical way you could have spoken any words, because you were frozen inside your body. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t say any words after that. It didn’t matter that it was not medically possible.

I knew the possibility of miracle. I’d heard it. And I believed it. You would get better. You would.

Except all those days passed and you didn’t get better. No one tried to figure it out, just accepted it as fact, just chalked it up to another victim of stroke and blood loss and all those things that can take a life while we aren’t looking.

We weren’t looking. Or at least I wasn’t.

Sure, we knew it could happen, because it’s what took your mother, too. But so soon? So young? So fast?

Doctors urged you to change your eating ways. Reduce your cholesterol. Eat fewer hamburgers fried up at 11 p.m. when you finished that challenging crossword puzzle and discovered you were hungry because you’d worked right through dinner. Get rid of the chocolate covered raisins you kept in the green jar beside your dining room table.

But you were always so stubborn. So resilient. So focused and determined and right.

So of course you kept your eating ways. And who can you blame you? You lived out your last days in pleasure. At least there is that.

It’s just that I wish you were here. I wish you could have seen that little boy you only got to hold once while you were well. I wish you could have seen the look on his face when his baby brother came home from the hospital and he threw the most epic tantrum in the history of tantrums because he didn’t want another baby in the house. I know what you would have done. You would have pulled him into your arms and held him until he stopped crying. I know because it’s what you did to me, all my life, even when I was too big for a lap. You would hold me with words, then.

I wish you would have been around to see number 3 and the twins and this last one. You would have been as shocked by the large family I decided to have as I am myself.

“Rachel,” you would have said. “Who would ever have thought?” And then you would have smiled at them all, and your eyes. It was always your eyes that spoke the most. They would have said, Love. Proud. Joy.

It was on the way home from a worship retreat in New Mexico when Mom called to say you’d passed peacefully. I cried the rest of those 643 miles home. Every time I looked out at the dunes and thought about how you would have loved to hear the little boy singing in the back seat. Every time I saw a fast-food chicken place and thought of Hartz, your favorite. Every time I saw the color purple.

Your funeral was two days before Valentine’s Day, a celebration of a life well lived, even in the midst of heartache and sorrow and so much disappointment. There was a failed marriage and the single life thereafter, and there was a lifelong career crunching numbers at the local school district. There were coworkers who cried and family who cried, and you couldn’t really tell who was who, because they were all family to you. They all knew you the same. They all called you stubborn and immovable but also kind and generous.

A cousin shared about how much she would miss you. We listened to your favorite hymn. Your grandson-in-law read a poem I’d written about your purple slippers and candy jars and books of crossword puzzles stacked in the corner of a dining room. And then we all gathered to eat casseroles and fried chicken and mashed potatoes covered in southern gravy.

You would have loved it, I think.

They say years heal wounds. But it’s not so much that they heal those wounds as they make them easier to bear. Because now, even after seven years, there is still a giant hole where you used to be. I know because last year, as we crept up to what would have been your 80th birthday, right at the tail end of summer, I found my throat tightening. Still. After all these years. Thinking about how we’d thrown that 80th birthday party for your mother and it was like a giant family reunion with everyone showing up we hadn’t seen in years and years and years, even though Nana was confined to a wheelchair and lobbed a lopsided smile at everyone and hardly knew who was who.

I know because this year we’ve been creeping up on your 81st, and I’ve found myself missing you when I look at my oldest and wish I could tell you what he says he wants to be when he grows up and about the handwritten books he leaves lying around everywhere and the way he talks about his future, so we could laugh about how he’s just like me. Missing you when I look at the second boy and think about how you might have exclaimed over those brilliant blue eyes that haven’t been seen in our family for a while. Missing you when I look at the third one and see your eyes and smile and the stubborn will you passed along without even knowing it.

Missing you when I think about how we used to talk.

But what I miss most are all the little things. The way you’d argue that Vince Gill was the greatest country singer in the world, but Garth Brooks was a fake, and how I hardly knew what you were talking about because I didn’t listen to country music. How you’d beat an argument to death because you knew what you thought, and no one was going to change your mind. The way you’d laugh until the sound just disappeared and then you would shake the laughter out of your eyes and we all worried you’d pass out.

I miss those nights playing Trivial Pursuit around a raucous table that me and my brother and sister and cousins weren’t invited to, as persistently as we asked, how you’d argue over those answers, because everyone wanted to win, how we’d laugh just to watch.

The sound of the news you’d watch every evening at 6, without fail, and the way you’d curse the remote when you accidentally switched the channel and couldn’t figure out how to get it back.

I miss your wrinkled hand in mine. I miss those brown eyes so full of laughter and love and the smile that could set the whole world right again. I miss your notes, written on yellow paper in all caps, because that’s how you liked it. I miss your e-mails. I miss talking. I miss just sitting, you pulling out the local newspaper, me pulling out the latest Victoria Holt novel I’d found at the library.

I miss who you were to me. I miss who I was to you.

My memories with you are filled with bright yellow, and some of them are piercing blue, and others are foggy gray, but in and out and through the years there is something that was woven undoubtedly into all the days and hours and minutes.

Love.

You loved like it was all that mattered in life. You taught us how to love like that, too.

Thank you.

I wish you could have seen this.
I wish I could have asked you what you might have done.
I wish you could have read this thing I wrote.
I wish you could have met him. Known him. Loved him.

I wish my boys could know you. I wish they could learn from you. I wish they could be held by you as I was held by you.

But you live on.

Every now and then, when my boys are looking through the photo albums that line the top of our bookshelves, they’ll see a picture of you (not enough of them, of course. But who ever knows the day you won’t be around to fill albums?). “Tell me about Memaw,” they’ll say, and the first thing I say, every time, is, “You would have loved her.”

Because most people did.

And then they’ll settle in, snuggling closer, because they know a story’s coming. And they know it’s a good one.

You live on in these stories.

I miss you. Happy birthday. We’ll have a hell of a celebration when I see you again.

Dear anorexia: You will not win.

Dear anorexia: You will not win.

by | Wing Chair Musings

I met you early in life.

I was just a girl. Just a girl looking for life. Just a girl looking for perfect.

Just the right kind of girl for you.

You whispered your lies in my ear one night when a crack split right down the middle of our family.

Make him love you, you said.
Make him come back, you said.
Make him choose you, you said.

I did not know then that there is no easy answer for divorce. So I took your hand.

I skipped lunch that first day, sat out by the picnic tables with those friends who always brought their lunches so I didn’t have to smell the chicken noodle soup and cheese sticks inside the cafeteria.

I forgot mine, I’d say when they asked. The truth is, I was poor enough to qualify for free cafeteria lunches, poor enough not to have anything in the refrigerator at home to even pack. But they didn’t know that.

They’d offer to share theirs, because we were all trying to have the best body, even then, and maybe if we all ate the same thing one of us would not be skinnier than another.

No thanks, I’d say.

I was only 11, back from a year spent in a state 1,000 miles away from my home one, and now we were back, except it was all different, all broken, because it was middle school where looks mattered, and there was no dad telling me how beautiful I was.

Would I have believed him anyway?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that you made it easy to believe you. And once I did, you had me.

Our love affair began slow, with a stomach rumbling over lunch. But a stomach gets used to the hole after a while, and it didn’t take long before it just stopped talking about the better way I pretended didn’t exist.

You moved into the empty space. You gave me three years of skipped lunch, and then there was high school and early morning volleyball practice, and you threw out that innocent question: You don’t really feel like eating in the morning after those intense practices, do you? Wasting all those calories you worked off?

I started “forgetting” my breakfast at home.

There came a day, an early-morning tournament day, when a coach brought homemade monkey bread to give us an extra boost. I could smell the honey and the cinnamon, and it was all the things I loved most. She handed everyone a plate. All my teammates ate while I excused myself, left my plate on a counter and sat on the toilet until I was sure they’d all finished and I could pretend I’d forgotten where I’d set down my plate.

No one even noticed.

It was really too easy.

I had energy reserves. I told them eating right after an intense workout made me sick. I told them eating right before an intense workout—like the 12:30 p.m. athletics class—would make me sick.

I was sick. But no one knew about you.

Mostly because my mother saw me eat. My friends saw me missing. I didn’t waste away, because there was still dinner. You and I covered all the bases.

After graduation, when those stories started rolling in about the Freshman Fifteen, the extra pounds most freshmen come home with after their first year of college, my heart thrashed.

Don’t worry, you said. We won’t let that happen.

And we didn’t. Because college meant fewer eyes watching for when I should eat. It meant abnormal (or nonexistent) eating hours. It meant freedom to hold your hand and run away.

“Two hundred meals will be enough, right?” my mother said. “Two hundred fifty?”

“Two hundred will be fine,” I said.

I ended that semester with one hundred seventy-three meals left on my student ID card.

Mostly because you fascinated me. I enjoyed the me you carved from who I had been. The thin legs that had always been a little thigh-heavy. The arms that had always been a little tricep-flabby. The chin that was never as defined as I wanted it to be.

The new me was almost just a little bit maybe pretty.

So I let you keep doing your work. And when my college roommate noticed all my clothes sagging and dragged me to the cafeteria with her and the girl across the hall, I let your sister slip in for a time. We conducted our clandestine affair in the dorm bathroom, where I’d get rid of the chocolate cake and the mint chocolate chip ice cream and the pepperoni pizza and the enchilada casserole and the mashed potatoes with brown gravy and the hot rolls with a stick of a finger or the swallow of a pill, even the night that cute baseball player came looking for me and I forgot my toothbrush.

That year ended and I came home not only without the Freshman Fifteen but without another twenty-five. I looked good. So I cut ties with you for a while, mostly because I lived with my grandmother that summer, and she cooked for me every night when I got home from my city job. I felt guilty not eating. And I couldn’t purge, because the living room was right next to the bathroom, and she would hear. She was smart enough to know. I could see it by the way she looked at me.

A year, two, three passed, and then you came back ready to play the summer before I got married.

I didn’t give up eating completely, because I was more interested in health this time around, but that interest in health didn’t stop me from packing my lunch of one cucumber and calling myself satisfied at the end of it.

“That all you eat for lunch?” a coworker once asked.

“I eat a big breakfast,” I said. Eight large strawberries was a big breakfast, in my book.

And then came marriage to a man who actually cared whether or not I ate and you and I lost touch for a time. You came to visit sporadically over the years, after the first baby, when I was appalled that my body did not immediately shrink back to its former acceptable proportions; after the third in four years, when baby weight stacked itself like it was going to stay.

After this last one and a broken foot.

It happens quickly, that sliding back into your arms.

I told myself it wasn’t going to matter this time. I told myself I would be unaffected. I told myself I was better than you.

And yet the six-week scale told a story I didn’t want to read, and those weeks after the weighing with a broken foot and a walking cast that made burning calories next to impossible I found myself skipping lunch because “I forgot” or because “the kids eat so early and I’m just not hungry when they eat” or because “I’m working and can’t really spare the time right this minute…”

Because “…”

So this last week I scheduled time to eat, and I ate. You looked on. You sneered. You shook your head. You pointed out the pooch. You laughed at my legs. You reminded me of the scale number.

But I ate.

You have been in and out of my years, whispering your untruths, pointing to your solutions that aren’t really solutions at all, luring me in.

Making me stronger.

Because, you see, every time I look you in the eye and say, “No. You cannot have me today” is another day I get stronger. You didn’t count on this.

I don’t know how many times you will visit me in my lifetime.
I don’t know if I will ever look in a mirror and completely like—or love—what I see.

I don’t know.

But there is something I do know: You will not win.
I am stronger than I used to be when you came knocking. You don’t look quite so attractive anymore. Or fascinating. Or worthwhile.

Keep trying (I know you will), and I will keep saying no.
No.
NO.

For as long as it takes.

Dear Concerned Reader: As Far as I Know My Vag Doesn’t Drag the Floor

Dear Concerned Reader: As Far as I Know My Vag Doesn’t Drag the Floor

by | Crash Test Parents, General Blog, Wing Chair Musings featured

I have a large family. Six children. In a world where people are choosing to have fewer children (or none at all), this can seem weird and crazy and, for some, unacceptable.

These people always come out to play when I mention anywhere in my article that six kids live in my house.

I get it. Six kids is a lot. Many people can’t imagine having that many, let alone choosing to have that many. It seems like a crazy, why-would-anyone-want-to-do-THAT kind of thing.

Their concerns range from whether these kids are all from the same dad (yes) all the way down to what my uterus looks like. So, since I don’t plan to stop writing about my large family, I thought it would be fun to have a page of FAQs and FCs (Frequent Comments) where I could just send them to save time. Because I’m considerate like that and wouldn’t want anyone to die wondering.

“You do know how they are conceived and (that) there are methods of preventing said conception, correct.”
-I’m Real Original

Dear I’m Real Original: This is certainly the mystery of the century. And, to be honest, I really have no idea. You know how people joke about that woman whose husband just looks at her and she’s pregnant? It’s not a joke. It’s me.

Please tell me how this happens. I really don’t want any more of these…things…wrecking my home. So let’s go get a cup of coffee and you can tell me the whole conception story. The more details, the better.

“I’d like to sit down with her and ask her exactly what she thinks she’s giving society by having six kids. These people are so selfish it makes me sick.”
-I Have No Kids

Dear I Have No Kids: Huh. That’s weird. I didn’t think I owed society anything.
(Also: My boys are awesome. I could care less what you think.)

“I think you have enough kids.”
-The Child Police

Dear The Child Police: I’m glad you noticed. Thanks for not being afraid to tell me, because now I can finally stop. Because I truly do care what you think, even if I don’t care what I Have No Kids thinks. You are the police, after all.

“I prefer a dog. I’ve always wondered why someone would bring another awful human into the world.”
-I Hate Everyone

Dear I Hate Everyone: I want to be offended by your words, but I just feel sad. I wish I could find you and let you know how important you are to the world. My guess is you didn’t have anyone to tell you that as a kid. Growing up in a world like that stinks. But not everyone is an awful human (I’m not. My husband’s not. My boys aren’t, either.). I hope you find some not-awful humans soon.

“Children can be taught to take care of their things. A quiet home may be impossible, but it can be a controlled noisy.”
“Do some parenting and much of that nonsense will stop.”
“Manners and chores are taught, not everyone who has boys has a torn up home.”
– Perfect Parent

There you are Perfect Parent! I’m so glad you could come around. I know you’re super busy raising your perfect kids. Can you do us all a favor and start a parenting class for the rest of us dopes? We could learn so much from you. Just tell us where to sign up and I’ll try to make sure I can’t find a pen anywhere.

“It just sounds like they run free, without any constraints. If something were to happen to the mother, who would want to care for them?”
-I Don’t Get Humor

Dear I Don’t Get Humor: Your name says it all. We’re speaking a completely different language.

“Take a step back and figure out routines to control their acting out behaviors.”
-I Know Everything

Dear I Know Everything: That sounds way too hard. I’d rather just let them run wild and terrorize the world while I lie on the couch and dream about my life before children.

“Why on earth do parents saddle their kids with ridiculous names?”
“What a bunch of bizarre names you’ve selected for your boys, lady.”
-Names Are My Business

Dear Names Are My Business: I didn’t realize I was in violation of the “Acceptable Names According to Society” list. Next opportunity I have, I’ll march on down to the courthouse and change their names to something that might be easier for you to stomach.

Or maybe I’ll just take a shower. Because it’s been a while, and opportunities are opportunities.

Shower or courthouse? Shower or courthouse? Shower or courthouse?

Aw, dang. Shower won.

Welp. Guess you’ll have to get used to those ridiculously bizarre names.

“What were you drinking when you named them?”
-I Know Names

Dear I Know Names: That would be peppermint Schnapps, straight from the bottle. Because, you know, they allow that at the hospital during a woman’s childbirth recovery. By the time the birth certificate official came around I couldn’t feel my tongue anymore. You know what happens next.

Let that be a lesson, people. Don’t drink while naming children.

“If they are anything like the Duggars…”
“Is she related to the Duggars or just another dimwit breeding for the heck of it?”
“Trying to be like the Duggars or something?”
-I Can’t Count

Dear I Can’t Count: I know, I know. Six is so close to 19. Scarily close. Turn around, and I might have more children than the Duggars tomorrow.

Truth be told, we’re trying to be like another famous family. Just call us the Weasleys.

“What I learned from six boys: have a vasectomy.”
“Should’ve had an abortion at some point.”
-No Tact

Dear No Tact: What an educated, insightful answer. I’m so glad you could contribute something valuable to this discussion.

“Maybe booze has something to do with you guys getting pregnant so many times?”
-Stay Away From Alcohol

Dear Stay Away From Alcohol: I don’t really remember. All I know is every day I had to buy a new bottle of red wine from the corner store because the old one just kept mysteriously disappearing.

“She should have told her husband to put that thing away after birth #3.”
-Sexpert

Dear Sexpert: I did. Didn’t work. Mostly because I look dang good in yoga pants and an unwashed-hair ponytail.

“She is discusting.” (stet)
-The Educated One

Dear The Educated One: Sorry, I don’t take insults from people who can’t spell. Maybe that’s snobbish. But I’m just being honest. Come back to visit once you learn how to spell the word “disgusting.”

“They sound like the worst parents ever.”
-I Share Opinions

Dear I Share Opinions: We are the worst parents ever. Just ask any of our kids when they have immediate lights out for getting out of bed for the third time and someone’s not dying (which constitutes an emergency). Just ask them when they get an extra chore for getting down from the table without being excused. Just ask them when they aren’t allowed to watch the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie like all their friends do because the content is too mature.

“No wonder there’s not a husband in the picture. She’s ugly.”
-Fugly and Fffffpppsmart

Dear Fugly and Fffffpppsmart: I know it’s really hard to understand, but there is this thing that happens when someone takes a picture. It’s called Standing Behind the Camera. You see, someone has to stand behind the camera in order for a picture to be taken (unless you set an auto-picture, which I have no idea how to do. Technology’s not my strong point. Having babies is.). Husband was behind the camera.

Please don’t let your brain explode with this amazing revelation.

“I know your hands are full, but you chose to have a large family, and it is time for you both to step up and be responsible. Do them a huge favor and try to have them become gentlemen. Make them pick up their own clothes instead of leaving them all over the floor. The world will thank you.”
-Concerned Non-parent

Dear Concerned Non-parent: Well, this just dashes all my parent-hopes. I guess I thought my boys would leave their clothes on the floor forever, or at least until they found a wife to pick up after them. I definitely didn’t plan on teaching them to find the hamper or clean up their own messes or do their own laundry. Mostly because I LOVE BEING A MAID.

(Said no mother ever.)

“Her uterus must be dragging the floor just like her vag.”
-Crude Dude

Dear Crude Dude: Kind of you to be concerned. As far as I know, I haven’t tripped over either yet, so I think I’m doing okay.

“Women like this keep popping out kids to try and remain relevant because they have no skills or talent. Get an education, lady…they will teach you how to keep ur legs closed.”
-School Fixes Everything

Dear School Fixes Everything: I must be dumber than I thought. What does “ur” mean? I’ve never come across that word in my study of the English language.

Oh, wait. Study? I’ve never done that. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that I did not graduate valedictorian of my high school class, and I didn’t get a full ride to a university of my choice, and I most definitely didn’t graduate four years later with a 4.0 GPA and a degree in print journalism and English. Because, you know, women like that don’t have trouble keeping their legs closed. They know where babies come from, and they make sure they don’t have six of them.

I’m sure it also wouldn’t surprise you to know that I’ve never, ever, in all my life, won a writing award or been recognized for any of my work, because, of course, I have zero talents.

Now I feel sad that I didn’t do more with my life. Guess I’ll go open that new bottle of red wine and have another baby.

Thanks for commenting! If you have any personal issues with any of my answers, please email idontcare@babymakingfactory.com.

See you next time I write an article about my big family!

This is an excerpt from Parenthood: Has Anyone Seen My Sanity?, the first book in the Crash Test Parents humor series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.

(Photo by Helen Montoya Photography.)