The Art of Becoming

Because we live in St. Louis, my kids are growing up in close proximity to their cousins. They are roughly around the same age, and they are all in the same grade level at the same school. It's pretty idyllic. The second grade teacher this past year told me that my daughter and nephew often function like twins in the classroom - both the familiarity and comfort, and then sometimes the desire to break away from that familiar person to do their own thing. As luck and genetics would have it, for each child I have, my brother and sister-in-law have the same age child, but of a different gender or sex. I see gender as a socially constructed reality, and I see where stereotypes about the differences between men and women come from. I don't see anything wrong with naming the ways boys are different from girls. Part biology, part genetics, part nature, part nurture, there are millions of reasons why our kids display the personalities and talents they do. However, I do think it's ...

Our air conditioning was broken for a week: it was the first week of July in St. Louis. Thankfully we had a couple window units that could help us limp along until we secured a company to install a new one. We closed off many of the larger rooms, completely abandoned the third floor, and lived out of 4 rooms on our main level. Though we tried other configurations, the kids settled on sleeping in our room every night. Only once did I wake in the middle of the night and step on a child. However, a child woke me up every. single. night. The lack of functioning A/C, the extra heat floating around the house, and the confined space put everyone in a crabby mood. One of these days, I was hoping to coax our oldest child out of a bad funk by purchasing the supplies needed to make slime (his idea). As soon as Sean had his focus and felt more excited about his day, then the middle child threw a fit about something. We had just arrived home from purchasing the slime supplies, and Audrey was so a...

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...