The Art of Becoming

My father is a lawyer, so legal jargon has been a part of my vocabulary for a long time. That and watching Matlock reruns on weekday mornings as a kid. Attorneys make their arguments to the jury or the judge, and when they're finished, they often (anecdotally anyway) say, "The defense rests" or "I rest my case." I'm adept at rebuttal and making my case. Frankie: Why can't I have a cheese stick right now? me: Because we are about to eat dinner. Audrey: Why can't I bring milk in the living room? me: Because if it spills, then it will be a huge mess. Sean: Why do I have to put my clean clothes away? me: Because otherwise Penny comes up and lays on them, thereby making them no longer clean. Frankie: Why do I have to wear underwear? me: Because you're wearing a dress and we're going to church. Frankie: Why can't I have a cookie? me: Because you already had ice cream. Audrey: Why do I have to clean my room? I already did...

I took our kids to the new MADE space in St. Louis. It has multiple areas dedicated to Makers, Artists, Designers, and Entrepreneurs and loads of hands on activities for kids. I walked around the 7,000 sq. ft. space reading about entrepreneurs and artists who have harnessed the power of their creativity into a career or business. Many of these people found a creative seed inside their childhood, nurtured that seed, watered it, and eventually that seed led to what they would become professionally. I imagined each one of my children doing creative, exciting work as adults, and we spent hours there. Initially however, I feared that our time would be cut short. At many points Frankie ran to a station excitedly. She found materials to begin building, her first attempt tumbled, and then she became discouraged. Her brow stayed permanently furrowed. She panicked, raced to another area, and began a new project with vigorous energy. When the second attempt proved more difficult than her first id...

One day while walking the kids to school, Sean was telling me how his brand new tennis shoes allowed him to run really fast. I smiled, agreed with him, and continued schlepping Audrey's violin on my shoulder while holding the leashed dog in one hand and a dog-poop-bag in another. Sean: You know, Mama. I bet if you put on your tennis shoes and tied them really tight, you might actually be able to run. I scoffed. me: I can run! Sean: You can? me: Of course I can! You just don't see me run very much because I have all this stuff weighing me down. Sean: Oh. Yeah, (almost to himself)  I just never see you run... me: I am able  to run. I just choose to walk. His belief that maybe I could run if I just tried was endearing, but I suddenly felt very alien to my own child. I dropped the kids at school and as I walked home by myself, a half block from our duplex, I began to jog. I started to pick up speed, sprinting, and our dog happily raced alongside me. The air whipped...

I’ve often wondered what kind of a parent I am. I’ve heard the labels of “helicopter parents” or the more lackadaisical among us who raise “free range kids.” I can see aspects of my personality present in each of the labels, and yet I’ve not been able to determine which one pertains to me. There are pros and cons to each label, and neither one really captures the kind of parent I want to be. A recent experience forced me to think about these two labels again. I was enjoying a pleasant morning with two other moms. I brought scones over to my sister-in-law's house, she had coffee for all of us, and we each had a toddler. The toddlers played in the living room and we sat at the dining room table in the adjacent room. Moments arose where two of the toddlers would begin to wrestle and fight over a toy, and the moms would break the conversation long enough to glance over our shoulders.   The moms paused to watch the aggravated faces of our toddlers as they duked it out with Nean...

My grandmother, Anna Leah Agniel, passed away on August 11, 2016. She was three weeks shy of her 94th birthday. I was honored to speak at her funeral. {walking up to pulpit, adjusting microphone, pulling out lipstick, applying lipstick without a mirror blotting lipstick on back of hand} ...and then she would gesture with it {taking lipstick and pointing out to the crowd} "now, we just need to move that table over here." Or if she was cooking and had a carrot in her hand, she would gesture with that, "please bring that platter into the kitchen."  I have so, so many great memories of Grannie. And yet when I started to put thoughts together for her eulogy, the memory that kept coming to mind was from down at the cabin in Shadow Valley. Often we would be down swimming in the lake when Pup and Gran would arrive. Their arrival came with great fanfare, honking of the car horn, and their voices, hellos, echoing across the lake. Though we were down in the water and the...

The children are obsessed with Star Wars. For that matter: the husband is obsessed with Star Wars. He and I saw #7  in the theaters and this started a tidal wave of hunting down the original three (4, 5, 6) and resurrecting the second trilogy (1, 2, 3). My chronological training in Star Wars is complete. Our three children make multiple light sabers a day. Frankie calls them "light savers." Star Wars character roles are divvied out: Audrey is Leia, Sean is Luke, and Frankie is Yoda. Which makes sense, right? Frankie is short, so she is assigned the seat of wisdom. Hers is the character that molds and culls the force in others. Frankie calls herself "Yoga" and when I try to correct her, she never capitulates. me: His name is Yoda. Frankie: No. YOga. One day the force was so powerful that they combined all their legos into one Jedi fleet. Sean brought out every lego set he has and Audrey enlisted the help of her girl-branded legos. They created worlds upon worl...

I love surprises. I love surprise gifts, surprise parties, and surprising moments. As I was telling this to a friend recently, he responded with, "so I should jump out and scare you sometime and you'll like it?" No. Definitely not. I have never enjoyed being scared: not by my brother in a werewolf mask, not by scary movies, and never by haunted houses. Never. This got me thinking: why do I love surprises but not scary movies? Surprises tend to connote something good. Whereas scary movies often lead to something bad happening.  Being scared fuels fear, paranoia, and doubts about the goodness of the world. Yet whether I'm talking about surprises or something scary, they both involve the unexpected. Unexpected situations in my life rest on a spectrum. On one end of this spectrum, we have good surprises. One morning, Seancito got up with his alarm clock at 6:30am, got dressed, and came downstairs to see me dragging the recycling out into -9 degree weather (real tempe...