family life – Page 3 – it is making me

daffodils mid-winter

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we just got hit with a surprise February snowstorm. My first thought was for our flower garden. Because of some previous irregularly warmer winter days and sun (which I welcomed eagerly), the daffodils had emerged from the wintry mud at the close of the Christmas season. I knew there would be a chance of frost, but never did I imagine snow and ice in February. I figured the flowers were goners.

I have planted bulbs everywhere we’ve lived (and we’ve moved quite a bit). At first, I favored tulips, with their thick, sturdy stems and bold-hued petals against the gray of late winter. It was my husband who requested daffodils. I think they had made an impression on him during his time in England; we have a photograph of a certain field of bright yellow daffodils in the midst of the gray English sky and gray, stone ruins. When we finally bought a house and felt we had settled for a while, I planted several daffodils.

Daffodils seem delicate, compared to other spring bulbs: their stems and leaves are thinner and the petals are paper-thin. Yet the bloom has a curious shape, the kind that inspires one to ponder a Creator. A sculptor could perhaps make a single one, but for thousands to grow year after year and look just as intricate each time is a marvel. And while I love the bold-colored hues of tulips and the pastels of hyacinths, the daffodil is a beacon of light in a dreary part of winter, a snapshot of nature’s beauty and grandeur.

My favorite character of daffodils is their resilience. As this recent snowfall melted, those optimistic daffodils that had sprung too soon were still there, bent over a bit by the weight of the ice. Now the tulips are quickly following suit, and I expect will bloom in a few weeks, in spite of this cold front. When the sun does peak out during this rainy season, the daffodil will lift her head and follow that light. Even though she grows in a darker time, she loves the light. Her life is brief, but radiant.

I’ve definitely been in a funk, a minor depression, the blues, you know. There’s no rational cause or real worry, and it’s not unusual for me this time of year. There are always going to be things around me, whether it’s with family, friends, church, or politics that feel like a debilitating frost over my psyche, over my heart, over my ability to love, hope, and have faith. I absorb the gray around me. These resilient flowers of mid-winter by virtue of their existence glorify their Creator. For we humans, it is an act of the will to turn our face upwards, to orient our lives towards the source of light and warmth. The hope is that we Christians will, as St. Gianna Molla said, be “living examples of the beauty and grandeur of Christianity”: noticeable, resilient, even stubbornly growing, organisms of beauty, standing out against the gray, testifying to the light.

God knows I am not good at that; I like to sit in the mud and say, “Look at all this mud. It’s gross. That sucks.” It seems to be the small things, things that are easily overlooked or forgotten, easily trampled underfoot, that remind me to look upwards. The daffodil is certainly one, a herald of hope for the spring to come.

the sending forth

One of my daughters, whom I call Little Bird here, is in the process of applying to a summer program. She is so excited about the possibility; it’s in an area she has a great deal of interest and will prepare her for what she would like to study. I am excited for her—even just for a chance to practice applications and interviews, which are a skill in and of themselves. Underneath the surface, I think we’re both excited about it as a step into young adulthood: she, ready for more freedom and individuality, and I, to watch her do what I’ve been preparing her for, with a healthy degree of anxiety. And like everything has been with this first child, it reminds me that we’re about to do this several more times with our subsequent children.

I sense we are at the beginning of the sending-forth. Little Bird will be in high school next fall; it feels like the tide is going out, and we’re about to watch her set out with it. I know we’ve got a few years, but I also know it’s going to go by quickly. It’s an exciting time as she begins to think about her high school years in context of what will happen afterwards—colleges, degrees, programs, travel, vocation, etc.

It’s like a curtain has been pulled back, only slightly, not enough to see details, but enough to see that there’s a lot behind that curtain, a lot of life where her dad and I won’t be with her. This is as it should be. But with that comes so many unknowns. When I was a teenager, I saw how my parents, who had grown up in the wild and free ‘60’s, looked at the world I was growing into with confusion. And now I am looking at the world my children are growing into with a similar feeling. I can’t possibly prepare them for everything that will come their way. My job has been—and is—to give them the resources so they know how and where to look for the answers, God help me.

This is where it gets real. She’s about to embark on the part of her life that she will actually remember. Her years with me under this roof will be a blur in a decade or so, though it will always be her foundation. I am suddenly standing still—looking ahead, and looking behind—reflective about the past and prayerful about the future; I am aware that there have been victories and failures as I have reared this child, this firstborn who taught me how to be a mother. I am aware of the grace that is paramount in parenting, and the knowledge that she has always been God’s girl first. I am keenly aware that she was born for such a time as this, and goes nowhere alone.

baby Jesus in the mess

We bought a Nativity set that little hands could touch without us worrying about pieces breaking. We like to keep it up through the Feast of the Presentation, February 2. What I love about the Fontanini set is that it’s resin so it has not broken (yet), and it’s quite extensive, so we’ve been adding to it through the years, acquiring a new little piece each Christmas season.

Our first several children were very traditional in their arrangements, and would come by and rearrange the last child’s set-up (which led to a few scuffles). But our youngest (I call him Buck here) has been a bit more creative, even adding a John Deere tractor. Since the new year, I’ve been finding it like this:

Yes, baby Jesus is at the bottom of a scrum. And during evening prayer, he will often go re-arrange it, lining them all up, or putting a cat in the manger with Jesus.

It reminded me of why I am writing this blog. We all want our families and homes to look like the first photo: all put together in the right place, peaceful, holy. But we all know the reality of Jesus’ birth, that he was born in the stinky muck of a stable. And we don’t do our friends (or our ourselves) any favors to pretend. Sometimes, and maybe even more often than not, our homes look like the bottom photo, jumbled together, one hot mess. But Jesus is there, in the midst. His presence in the mess is what makes our homes holy.

the January blues

It was a relief to leave the hospital after having a baby (except the first time, I was mostly shocked that those professionals were sending me home with a new human). I was anxious to get through the transition of having a new baby, which I could only really start in our own home. But there was also a sense of dread as I anticipated the sleepless nights, aching body and breasts. And there’s the actual, clinical sense of dread that accompanies anxiety and depression, the onset of which I always felt as I crossed the threshold from the sliding doors of the hospital into the parking lot. I didn’t want to go back, but I didn’t really want to go forward.

The same kind of feeling, though not as strong and over-powering, comes over me in January. Christ has been born, the shepherds and wise men have dispersed, now the gifts are safely in the care of a little family fleeing for their lives into Egypt. It’s as though my heart is with the Holy Family as they transition from the stable, only they have something real to dread (which they probably didn’t, because they were, you know, holy, and totally trusted in God’s providence). My sense of dread isn’t for something real, like a madman hunting me down (like, Herod); it can probably be explained away with chemical mis-firings in the brain, hormones, or whatever. A piece of it is probably the shorter days, less light and a lot less sun. Maybe it’s the let-down of an exciting Christmas season—joy and stress jumbled together in my mom-brain.

And so the new year looms before me, a stranger: another adventure to live, joys to experience, sorrows to bear, laughter to hear, tears to shed, piles of laundry, loads of dishes, meals to cook, new shoes and coats to buy as those humans keep growing. There are people who are blessed with optimism and are able to look ahead at a strange new world with energy and excitement; I’m just one of those other kinds of people who looks ahead and thinks to herself, Steady the buffs, old girl. I think it’s something like, Hey, didn’t we just wrap up 2018? as though there should be an interim period of nothing-year where time stands still and no one has to do laundry.

In the meantime, regular exercise (or, irregular also has to work) getting a few precious quiet moments to think, the Sacraments, some great reads, old and new tunes, as well as a healthy diet (plus chocolate) all help with the chemical mis-firings and anxiety levels. And putting the year in perspective. (Also, it doesn’t hurt to chase a capsule of Vitamin D with a shot of whiskey.)