Thoughts on Love

When Chad saw the farm for the first time we was smitten. I had seen it 2 days prior, I am the one who found the listing online and drove down 65 miles into muddy Southern Iowa to see the house. After getting the car stuck on a grade B road, 2 feet sunk down in the mud, hauled out by a neighbor and the realtor, walking the pasture in the rain, and touring the house (by then soaked to the bone, wet clothes, cranky babies) I had decided that the collapsing roof and flooded basement were too much for us and we'd keep looking. I sent the pictures to Chad to convince him. All he saw was this:

And he was in love.

I argued that the commute was too long.
I argued that the house was too much work.
I worried about small town living, shopping, bleeding to death while stuck in a giant slurping mud hole. Rodents of unusual size. Fire swamp.

He said to me, quietly, "Do you think you could make this our home?"

Quietly he looked at me with intent and I knew, as I always have, that home is whenever I am with him. Wherever. Whenever. Always.

That was that. Here we are. Home.

I am blessed to have a love like ours.

A few years back I shared our love story here on the blog: Love Story.

I think though, it doesn't do the real thing justice. We've been together 17 years now, married for almost 15. 2 apartments, 3 houses, pregnancies and births, 3 babyhoods, starting a business together, farming, 20 sheep, 3 cows, 100's of pigs and chickens, a llama ect, and constantly growing and learning and figuring it all out: together.

Not to say we don't fight. We do. Sometimes it is loud and horrible, but that is rare. Sometimes the silence that falls between us is worse. That passes too. Sometimes I make cream soup for dinner because I am pissed at him. It happens. Yet, through it all, I can count on him to come when I yell out in the dark with a fevering kid or when the window fell in during a storm and I somehow caught it with one hand while nursing Isaac, but the rain and wind and how I was sitting had me trapped- all I had to do was yell out, Help! and there he was. He reads my blog. He reads and comments on my social media pages. He encourages me and knows me. I try to keep up with his social media as well, we co-admin a couple groups, but as much as I veer toward creative mothering he is interested in agri-politics and I cannot keep up. Try as I might, I prefer poetry and babies to cowboys arguing over manure and corn. Yet, somehow we come together everyday, share what we are grateful for (sometimes even over creamy soup), and make it another day.

17 years ago, I looked up at the August sky and saw my first falling star. I made a single wish, To be loved. That night I stood on the edge of Saylorville Lake and watched my 11 year old sister get cranky with Chad and lose half of his fishing gear in the rocky waters, probably on purpose. He was calm and patient. My wish was not specific. At that point my heart was so broken that I did not believe that I could ever love again. That was why my wish was not for me to love, but to be loved. I did not care who or when, but I was tired of being used and resented and disliked. I was tired of fighting so hard to be seen as a person and not some midget freak show, not as a body with boobs, not as a nuisance, but as a person. My heart was broken in a way that took years to grind away and not even Chad could love it back to whole. He led me there though. He prayed with me. He was gentle. He saw me me struggle and was patient.

And it was from that that I grew to love him. He's upstairs sleeping now. When I came home he was holding Isaac who was thrashing in his sleep. Chad has wrangled kids while I caught up on work in the afternoon so that I could be finished at a decent time and maybe have time to write. As I was listing my three things I am thankful for today via Project Happy, I realised that the basis of all of them are the foundation of my family. Love. This love. That even though my proclamation that I would marry the DJ on the radio back in 1994 came true and that makes a fantastic story to tell the kids, the truth of it is that our love is so much more than that. I can count on him to come when I yell help. I can count on him  to hold the baby and rock away the thrashing nightmares. I can count on him in the darkness to lift the brokeness off me in the storm. Always. While the storm rages on outside, he tucks the warm dry quilt around me and the children and re-secures the windows.

When Holly asked me if I really believed in star wishing magic, this is what swirled up out of my memories. Oh yes, Holly, yes I really do.

That One Time I Called My Child a "Stinker"

Isaac is adorable. It is his super power. He doesn't throw tantrums. He begs sweetly instead and no one in this house can resist his signs please and sweet puppy eyes. He recently learned where we keep the free access snack and fruit. One morning he pushed a chair up and got out three bananas.

I exclaimed, "Oh my, you little stinker!" I did not do it in a scolding voice. Rather admiration. He melted. He just melted into a pile of silent and brokenhearted sadness. Holly ran to him, looked me in the eyes and scolded, "Mama, he is NOT a stinker. You should not call him names!" He looked up at me, tears rolling down his cheeks, and my heart broke a million times. I scooped him up and we sobbed together.

Children do not understand name calling as an affectionate exclamation. They only see it as someone they love is calling them something that is a bad thing.

That is when I stopped calling him my little stinker and Holly my sweet monkey butt and Lily so very impossible.

Now Isaac is my little super hero! Holly is sweet ballet dancer! and Lily is the impossible astronaut! (Her idea.) It is just as easy to use a positive name in the situation as it is to use a derogatory one.

Holly later explained to me that Isaac is a big boy trapped in a baby's body and he is so invisible sometimes that we forget how big he is inside. She's spot on. That's pretty much sums up Isaac. He is so sweet and silent too that it is easy to forget that he has these HUGE emotions going on, like all almost 3 year olds do.

I want my children to know by my words that I love them, to know by my hands that they are loved, to know by my voice that they are heard, and that they will come to know how much I love them by my writing. Someday they will find this, maybe I will be there and maybe I won't. Life is like that. I want these daily exercises in recording our activities and my thoughts to be my love letters to them. This writing can't be that if I call my children lazy or stubborn or fat or any other words out of frustration with them. They may have moments when they are tired and refusing to participate in what we are doing, but that is human. They may have breakdowns or bad days, but don't we all? I do. Less and less though the more I model for them centering myself and gaining control over my own words and actions because they see that, they hear that- not empty words but the action of my being. I am their mother after all.

So if I seem overly adoring of them, this is why, I love them so very much. I want them to know me and know that. I would not want their future employers to read this and say, "Wow, no way and I hiring that lazy brat who refused to do their spelling worksheets and take out the trash! No way!" Not that we do spelling worksheets like that. You know, unschooling. Ha!

No, this is a record of sorts, as are my public facebook pages, for all to see into our lives. Sometimes it isn't pretty, but it won't be ugly like that. It will be brilliant and sparkly and three kinds of awesome.

Holly's Grateful Today.....

Was That I Spent Time in the Fort House With Her....

We played with collected cicada carcasses, sang itsy bitsy spider and twinkle little bat, and snuggles while wishing on summer breezes. Today was good. Get Mugged made a fantastic cuppa with added caramel and whipped cream, a friend brought me some house plants (which Lily claimed for her own), and dinner was good. Today had some frustrating phone time, but overall, a perfect summer day. There seem to be a lot of these lately. Can't say I have a problem with that. :)

Comparing Blessings

Which one is more full? Can you tell by looking?  Nope.

 

One of the things I found myself doing as a new mom when Lily was born was I compared her to everyone elses' babies.  Her cry was distinctive. She could talk very early. She crawled late, walked a little later, she was gorgeous and funny. Potty trained herself at around 13 months old. Was I happy enough? Was she happy enough? Did she make friends easily (I do not)? Was she eating enough, often enough.....she was a clothes size over her age sometimes 2!

Holly came along and was the quiet one, but she crawled early. She then walked late. She refused to talk until she was two. She refused to potty train. Refused. We cloth diapered. We wore her. We gave her watermelon. Constantly measuring her progress against my peers kids and the child development books. Also a HUGE baby and child. (No one panic, she is now 5 and uses the potty.....) I slowly learned that each kid is their own person, their own timelines apply, and I would just need to roll with that.

Then Isaac was born. I knew from Holly's babyhood that sometimes kids just take their time. As it became more and more apparent that Isaac was falling behind in milestones and growth, he stayed in premie clothes and then in newborn, 3-6 month sized at a year old. He was diagnosed with 22q deletion syndrome at age 5 months. As a baby it is easier to pass at the playground. Everyone we don't know just assumes he's actually a newborn. As he got older, even crawling, the playground introduction is always followed by, "How old is he?" and the answer is greeted with politeness, but the shock or realisation on their faces says enough to make my gut drop out and make me want to throw up. At that point I usually blurt out his dx and start making excuses, explaining hypotonia.....but it makes me feel ill. It does. Random strangers don't have a right to his medical information. His life should not be his mother making excuses for him. Eventually, he'll begin to understand what that means and it isn't good.

Still when my friends were posting pictures of their 9 month olds walking, cheering with joy at these first steps, I held back tears and my own fears as Isaac was still just crawling at 28 months. I would sob at night. I would question the decisions I made for his therapies. It would consume me at times and block out all other joy in my life.

I stopped doing that. Isaac started walking and I've been too busy trying to keep up. That day was so full of wonder and happy that I thought I would have a heart attack and my face would fall off from smiling.

It got me thinking about my own internal dialogue though. Stop comparing to other "healthy" kids. That part was easy, all I had to do was embrace and rejoice in how adorable Isaac is and how amazing each and every milestone and every day is full of love and happy. Isaac IS healthy, he is making progress, he is amazing.

What is harder is to stop comparing to other special needs children. This goes two ways actually. I found my heart reeling with fear when another kid, a full year younger, with a more severe diagnosis was walking when Isaac was just still struggling to crawl.

Then we'd meet a non mobile 14 year old on a ventilator and I would feel relieved about our situation. Then I would feel guilty for feeling better about ours by comparing to someone else's struggles. How horrible of a person could I be? Then I would get whirled up into fundraisers and fanpages of kids with Isaac's diagnosis who were actually very sick. I felt out of place. How could I offer our story to the collective support groups when Isaac, while slow on physical and verbal milestones, has never had a single surgery and never been hospitalised with an illness, not even RSV even though he had it last winter (just an ER visit). I'd do my part offering prayers, all the time guilting myself into sleeplessness because my kid is healthy. Compared. Someone would get another diagnosis or hospitalization that would send me into another guilt spiral. Why them and not us? Why do we keep escaping the symptoms of Isaac's diagnosis?

I'd read books about special needs families, hoping that folks that I don't know in real life might offer me a more objective perspective, a 22q adult narrative, a therapy book. I kept coming back to comparing what we do, what options there are, Isaac's current health state. Comparing statistics, comparing politics.

Compare.

That's the snare. I don't want my joy to be stolen by guilt and every time I compare in either direction I am racked with guilt and horrible feelings.  There will always be kids healthier than Isaac and there will always be kids sicker with greater struggles than us. We will slide between, walking the line and stumbling, slipping like it is wet sloppy mud. Just like Holly and Lily fighting over who has the most orange juice in their lunch cup, the fighting stops when I assure them that if they drink all they have, they will get more as they each need. Their needs will be met to the best that I can provide. They can relax and settle into saying what they are thankful for and eat and play. Their jealousies forgotten. I can meet my families needs and prepare so if they get worse we can be ready, hopefully.

Since being in this much better place in my own mind, I have found a depth of relationship I had never known with other families. I have found my voice.

That doesn't mean our struggle isn't real and it doesn't mean our joy isn't also a blessing. I used to think it was this grey area we fall into, this fog of in between, but that's not it at all. The world is not black and white with shades of grey and no one is promised perfect health always. We all have our own stories and our own struggles and we do the best we can to make the best life we can manage. Isaac is not a fog of grey, he is orange monkeys, and sea glass green, and bright neon pink Dora sock puppets, yellow bananas, melting raspberry Popsicles, summer peaches, and bright sparkling silver trumpets, and delicious blue skies thick with fluffy clouds laughing as he swings too high on the tire swing! This is the life!

Through my children I have learned  to stop comparing and be with them in that sparkling moment, their fleeting childhood, that magical place where their mother's love is enough and then some.