Sometimes, I am the Old Lady in the Shoe

Really, it snuck up on me just like the transition from tubs of formula to jars of baby food.

Like when I turned away from a crawling baby only to spin back around to face a wobbly toddler.

When, I ask, did my four children start eating me out of house and home?

When did I go from one pound of meat resulting in leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch to nearly two pounds not being enough!

Once upon a time, a box of frozen waffles could last a week. Now it barely makes it through the morning A pound of bacon? Scarfed down like my yellow lab used to inhale a bowl of dog food.

Cookies? Fuggedaboutit. Anything with a chocolate chip doesn’t stand a long life in my house.

And ice cream? The scoop comes out and the cookie-dough devastation begins. When cartons shrunk a few years ago due to the milk crisis, the deal was sealed.

I’m back to the days when I used two grocery carts, one for the kids and one for the provisions. I’ll even go so far as to admit that sometimes the food was piled on top of the kids. Except now I need two grocery carts just for the food!

While the food is depleting at a rapid rate, other things in my home are increasing in size as the kids grow.

Laundry – no longer cute little piles of onesies and applesauce-stained bibs – has become enormous mountains of jeans and dirty t-shirts. A living organism, if you will, that no matter how much I throw into the washer, seems to replenish at the rate of gremlins.

There used to be a little pile of shoes in the bedrooms. Now, tiny sneakers have evolved into smelly clown-sized kicks. And kicked they are, all over the living room. According to the children, the boots and sneaks and loafers have all crawled to their random positions all on their own.

My dishwasher, once filled with tiny spoons, plastic sippy cups and bowls of discarded goldfish crackers and run a few times a week has morphed into a constant rotation of loading and unloading once or twice a day.

And then there are the problems. Those have grown too. It used to be the boo-boos were pinched fingers and scraped knees. Now they are related to misunderstood friendship rules, challenging homework and worries about life and death.

I’ll admit I struggle to keep up with it all. There are times when it all gains so much momentum that I feel like I’m chasing a rolling rock down a steep hill.

But then at the end of the day, there are the other things that have grown: the fun memories, the personalities that make me laugh out loud and the stronger hugs that say goodnight at the end of the day.

And that is food for the soul.

From March 15,2011 Patch.com

As a Mother to a Daughter

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about" – Angela Schwindt

“It’s good to be a girl,” declared my 8-year-old daughter last week.

She smiled from ear to ear as the stylist cut her hair into a shoulder-length bob with a slight flip. I smiled, too.

Sometimes, I think she doesn’t get that message enough. I don’t know if it’s because she has three older brothers or that society has already inundated her growing brain with innuendo. Maybe it’s other girls at school. Maybe it’s all of that.

But I know for sure she lacks the confidence in her gender identity, something the boys don’t have a problem with. Machismo is not in short supply at my house these days.

The other day I found her laying on the floor looking in a mirror at her stomach.

“This is how you know if you have a fat belly,” she explained.

Oh dear, I sighed. I sent her the message that being healthy is very important, not being skinny. Sometimes, girls get a little belly before they grow a few inches, I pointed out.

At this age, and pretty much throughout life, girls draw on their mother’s example. It’s both conscious and unconscious. I’ve always tried, maybe too hard, to stress the idea that beauty is inside. And I think she gets that.

But I want her to know that it’s perfectly fine to embrace being a girl, too. Taking care not to encourage vanity, I want her to know it’s not selfish to spend time and energy going for a manicure or pedicure. That exercise is good for her health and helps her feel good. That taking care of herself is not vanity, but self-love.

I want her to know that girlfriends make for important relationships. That shopping trips and dinners aren’t frivolous fun but bonding and research opportunities.

Women learn from other women. After all the competitive nonsense from her youth is behind her, female friendships are gems for later life.

I realize that now is the time to start using these teaching moments to get my message to the top of my daughter’s list of influences. The more I listen to her, the more I realize she is giving me the opportunities.

She’s been asking to go “spring shopping” and I’m thinking we need to make it a date. A little foraging and gathering can lead to discussions on appropriate clothing choices. A little lunch or a coffee break. Definitely some chocolate. Perhaps some new earrings.

You know what? My daughter is right. It is good to be a girl.

It's even better to be a mom to one.

---- This appeared in the April 12 edition of Suffield.Patch.com

Christmas Thanksgivings

Dear Santa,

I hope this Thank You Note finds you rested and well, since soon comes that sleepless night of reindeer and sleigh-ride. How kind of you to ride the stars each year to bring an often-hardened world a dash of childish wonder and hope.
For me this year was a wonderful year. By granting last year’s Christmas wish I was able to see the world anew. A fresh start, I asked for, remember Santa? New eyes with which to see my life, I requested.
And you granted me these things throughout the year: A chance to visit friends and family across the country. Time with my children - coaching soccer, helping at school, walks in the woods and splashing in the pool. Opportunities to make new friends and re-unite with old ones. Solid ground on which to stand steady. Confidence with which to pursue writing again.
I don’t know what the year ahead will bring. But this year, Santa, I wish for others to see the things I saw this year. Smiling faces, open and giving hearts, opportunity knocking, dreams fulfilled and magic.
And again, Santa, thank you for last year’s gift.
Thank you for my silver lining.

Many holiday hugs to you and the missus,

Wendy

Pilgrimage Passed

It's exhausting in Early November
When the leisurely pace of
Fall gives way to
The hurried bustle
Of Christmas

Poor Pilgrims have been
Forsaken this year, it seems,
A small shelf at Target
On clearance
More than a week
Before November 26

People pass by
That in between time
Crazy to be prepared for
Christmas

What are you doing for the Holidays?
They want to know
When I, myself, am still
Deliberating Thanksgiving

Chasing my calendar
Every week is exhausting
Weekends filling up with
visits and lists and to-do's

Instinctively, I resist
Rebelling, I resist
Content to watch
The last of the mums turn brown
And the pumpkins fade.

----- Wendy Pierman Mitzel

Thoughts on a woodstove

In my old house, my hundred-year-old house, the one I used to live in, the one before the divorce, there was a woodstove.
It was small and black and falling apart and a royal pain in the ass. For the kitchen in the old house never warmed in winter until that woodstove was fed properly.
That first winter I learned to order cords, properly seasoned, piles of wood dumped in the driveway. I learned to haul bundles piled high on the kids’ plastic snow sleds across the yard to both behind the garage and up near the back porch of the three story victorian.
I learned to start gathering early in the season the stray sticks and branches fallen from the stately oaks.
That first winter it took me many attempts at firing up the perfect morning heat so that when the kids tromped down the back steps for breakfast, it wouldn’t be an entrance into the frozen tundra. Eventually I learned to get up early, build the log pile just so crisscrossing the tinder-sticks with strips of crumpled newspaper. It had to be roaring in that little black box or any effort was futile. And the days it didn’t blaze I cursed that stove. That pain in the ass stove.
Back home, in Michigan, where I’d lived in the suburbs of Detroit, my friends would laugh at me during phone calls when I described my Laura Ingalls Wilder life. Hauling wood, making porridge…. No seriously I did heat up soup on to of the woodstove during a power outage that was cool.
They laughed when I said how the handle just plumb fell off one day and now I had to use a potholder to open it. And they laughed at my description of pouring the ashes over the rail into the back garden.
But then I came to love the woodstove (particularly when I replaced it with a newer model) and what it represented. This new New England life, on Main Street with a Town Green, where my children went off to school on a snowy day and I could sit in front of the fire, with my old Yellow Dog. A cup of tea. But for the occasional crackle and burst, a slice of silence. It seemed everything was going to be okay.
Today, in my new house, in my 25-year-old house, the one I live in now, after the divorce, there is no woodstove.
The little kitchen warms up nicely and stays that way, no 11 foot ceilings to suck up the heat. The radiators along the floor do their jobs and I no longer head out in my slippers and robe each morning to dirty myself with armfuls of kindling.
On many occasions I have found myself missing the quiet of the woodstove days. The are still children descending the stairs for frozen waffles, but there is no Yellow Dog since she died shortly after the move.
The kids still leave for school on snowy days, but I rarely now find the time to sit. Maybe because there is so much to do on my own. But maybe it’s just because there is no fire.

An Oda to Yoga

The goal today: Finish a 22 minute yoga segment on the DVR in the peace and quiet of the basement

It started out on target.
Yoga outfit- check. DVR on fitness tv - check.
PLAY
"Start in a kneeling position and draw in your..."
"Oh hi mom... just bringing down my sheets," says a twin tossing the sheets next to me where I will certainly take a downward dog digger if I step too far to the right.
PAUSE.
Collapse into resigned mom pose, with a smile of appreciation that yes he did get them off the bed as requested.
"Dude, think you could put it in the washer for me? Thank you."
"Sure, see ya later mom," he trots back upstairs.
"Hey, please shut the door so the dog doesn't come down, thank you!" I call up the stairs.
Deep yoga breath, PLAY
Two minutes later while comfortably swinging in ragdoll position, the basement door creaks open. Trot trot trot trot comes the neurotic canine. All smiles and slobbery tongue.
"Are we playing what are we playing am I supposed to lick you maybe knock you over huh huh what's this game?"
PAUSE
Disengage from pose, walk calmly upstairs, breathing deeply.
"Seriously, who let the dog downstairs. Guys, I can't do Yoga with the dog jumping at me."
"Ok mom," says twin #2 absentmindedly from the computer.
"Dude, where are your sheets?" I ask, now clearly off task.
"I'll get 'em mom," he says as I decide I might as well grab a water now that I'm up here.
Water - check. Door Shut in dog's face - check.
PLAY
"Flow into plank and now into updog," says my very patient instructor.
Ringggg, Ringgggg
I'll get it later, I think to myself, flowing gracefully into the next sequence.
But no, twin #1 is coming down the stairs. Any other day, nobody answers the phone around here but me.
"Yep, she's doing Yoga. Here she is," he hands me the phone.
PAUSE
A brief discussion on the trials of mom-ercise follows.
PLAY
"Plant your heels into the ground, lift your arms into tree..." she begins again.
Suddenly I'm on a roll, flowing this way and that, breathing unconsciously becoming one with my spirit...
"Oh hi mom, here's my sheets," twin #2 drags them by, and I, with a leg in the air, quickly direct him to the laundry room.
PAUSE. REWIND
Back to leg in the air. Sweep it forward into runner's pose.
"Shooty shoot shoot," I mutter realizing I forgot to make a wake-up call to a friend and am now about half an hour late. (Good thing someone brought the phone down.)
PAUSE
Brief discussion on my ability to lose track of time follows.
PLAY
It's now been 45 minutes and I still have 5 minutes left. Warrior pose to backward reach back to warrior (which incidentally I dig that pose) circle down to runners stretch finish with yogi squat (another awesome choice) and some deep breathing.
Strangely I feel relaxed.
I can only imagine what it would feel like to do it without the chaos.
Namaste
STOP

Old Yeller

Tonight my 10-year-old twins are having a hard time falling asleep.
They know the end is near, nearer than anybody wants to admit, for Yellow Dog.
You see, the nearly 13year-old lab we affectionately refer to as Rufus, Yellow, Stinky, Jacka--, Old Lady, Dufus, Schmoofus and sometimes even her real name "Boise" is really starting to fail.
We've thought she was on her way out before and she fooled us. But lately, but watching her arthritic joints try to get up and go I realize they are getting up and going. As she tenuously rises from her well-used doggy bed, I can see her back leg slip.
Yet, despite the arthritis, incontinence and often bad case of flatulence; despite the myriad of pills she takes each night (see previous blog on how I got in on that action once) she is still wagging and eating.
Despite the long naps, she still remembers every morning to get to the front door and wait for it to open onto the front porch. And there she sits, paws hanging over the top step watching the kids get on the bus. It's the same at 3 o'clock each afternoon, when she limps to the front door once again waiting for the return of her family.
She's even still a little feisty. This summer, she could still destroy a hosta within minutes. She has taken to barking in the middle of the room for no good reason. And she refuses to go up the ramp into the back door without a push from behind. And at about 10 o'clock each night, she appears around the corner and plops down on the rug in front of the tv. And then she waits. And if you don't get your duff off that couch to lay down next to her for some ear scratching, she will roll over and start making the weirdest noise so you can't hear the tv.
We can barely recall the days when Yellow was a spaz of a puppy, and if you've seen or read Marley & Me you know just what I'm talking about. But I'm okay with what I have now. And for as long as I've got, I'll appreciate the loyal, sweet and loving (and okay, stinky) dog who became one of the family more than a decade ago.