Farm Anatomy: The Curious Parts & Pieces of Country Life by julia Rothman
Family. Faith. Fun.
It’s been a year. A trying year and a blessed year for both of us. And though we’ve been over a thousand miles apart through most of it, you’ve managed to support and love me with generously and and abundantly.
I don’t have much to say this year, except thank you. Thank you for the hour long phone calls while I bemoan my blessed lot in life, and for understanding when remaining silent for a couple of weeks is what is best for me. Thank you for loving my husband as your own son, and for loving my girls as much as any gradmother could.
We love you so very much.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Had he lived, tomorrow would have been my father’s 63rd birthday. He has been gone a long time now, and the desperation I once felt when remembering him is gone. It is the only blessing that comes from missing him for so many years.
He was a wise man. He didn’t care much for birthdays, but was awfully proud of his final one. He loved sports and rock and roll. He put his Old Spice on my mosquito bites and could make a meal out of saltine crackers and Diet Pepsi. He loved wedding cake but never ate the frosting. When he cooked, dinner would always be chili dogs. He was responsible for putting the tinsel on the Christmas tree and it would always be done two strands at a time. He loved technology and I often imagine what he would think if he could wake up, as if from a long slumber, and see the cell phones and tablets of today. He was handy, but hated having to use his talents. He got up earlier on the weekends than the weekdays because he didn’t want to miss any moments of his days off work. He once gave me a birthday card with the quote “The greatest gift a parent can give to a child is the courage to be different.” and a simple, handwritten, “You’re welcome.” He always kept a mustache and graded his students’ papers with a green, felt-tipped pen. He had the thickest head of hair I’ve ever seen. He teased people he liked relentlessly. He hated his name and always wished he had been named Steve.
His favorite flowers were lilies-of-the-valley.
His favorite song was The Eagles’ “Already Gone” and I insisted we play it at his funeral. It brought me such joy, and I know the confused look on peoples’ faces would have brought him the same.
I have no idea what his favorite color was but I wish I did.
He was born in a house at the bottom of Division Street in Davenport, Iowa. Like him, it no longer stands.
And whenever I read this poem, I think of him:
FATHER
Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day—the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today,
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.
-Ted Kooser
This image
is all over my Facebook feed right now. I am irritated with the image, the caption, and the article without even reading the magazine. Also, I’m just plain tired of seeing it (so here it is again for your viewing pleasure).
The photo. I’m not offended by it. I nursed Adeline and I’m still nursing Katherine. I’ve nursed in private, in public with a cover, in public without a cover. It’s natural and beautiful and beneficial to both parties. Agreed. It’s not the age of the child (close to four, I believe) that bothers me. How long you nurse your child is your own business. The reason I’m irritated with the photo is the pose. It’s confrontational, it’s begging us to look at her and daring us to get offended. My experience with what I would call militant Attachment Parenters is similar. They want to be in your face with their choices, but also want you to mind your own business because, hey, it’s their choice. Again, I don’t care how you parent your kid, but this image is not doing AP’ers any favors, because I don’t think most of them are in anyone’s faces. They are just doing their best for their own children.
The caption. “Are You Mom Enough?” What a loaded question. In four words, Time has perpetuated the fears of every mother and fueled the fire of dissension between moms who raise their children differently. Am I mom enough? No. But it’s not because I don’t co-sleep, extended breastfeed, or babywear as a rule. It’s not because I breastfeed, don’t let my baby cry it out, or cloth diaper. It’s because I want everything for my girls. I want to be the best possible mother than could possibly have. I don’t need the cover of Time goading me to doubt or question myself. It’s in my mommy make-up.
And the article. Time, you’re not going to change any minds. I certainly don’t go to the magazine or website to learn how or how not to parent my children. They did their job, caused an uproar and have moms all over the world discussing the article. Time’s managing editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC. “The cover is meant to get your attention. It gets your attention. I think this is a legitimate debate. It’s a debate lots and lots of women are having.” Why the heck are we debating what other mothers do? Why do we need a national publication to call us to battle? Who cares about the bare breast on the cover? It’s the motive of the article that is offensive.
I’ve watched my children sleep so often, especially in these past eight months. Of course I’ve rocked and nursed the baby to sleep, but also Adeline sometimes winds up in our bed when Katherine is having a rough night. It’s hard not to watch them. The short, easy breaths and the sweet, dreamy faces. It is the one time I can look at Adeline and see her just as she was as a baby.
I’ve been reading an anthology of poetry lately. One thing I love about poems is how that, even though I haven’t experienced exactly what and how the poet has, I can find my heart and mind in the lines penned by someone else. Tonight I read a poem that found me doing just that. The main reason this blog exists is for my kids. The posts are pieces of my heart shared with the world, but mostly for their sake and knowledge. This poem had me a little choked up by the end, because it is very much what I’m feeling while I write or watch them sleep. No matter that I haven’t an Emily, or am not fifty-three or a grandfather.
A Poem for Emily
by Miller Williams
Small fact and fingers and farthest one from me,
a hand’s width and two generations away,
in this present I am fifty-three.
You are not yet a full day.
When I am sixty-three, when you are ten,
and you are neither closer nor as far,
your arms will fill with what you know by then,
the arithmetic and love we do and are.
When I by blood and luck am eighty-six
and you are someplace else and thirty-three
believing in sex and god and politics
with children who look not at all like me,
sometime I know you will have read them this
so they will know I love them and say so
and love their mother. Child, whatever is
is always or never was. Long ago,
a day I watched awhile beside your bed,
I wrote this down, a thing that might be kept
awhile, to tell you what I would have said
when you were who knows what and I was dead
which is I stood and loved you while you slept.
That look on my brother-in-law’s face. I didn’t understand it then, but oh, I do now. This was taken on Christmas of 1999 (check out the phone in the background and the N Sync t-shirt my nephew, Nick, is wearing!). I was sixteen and completely out of tune with what parenting two spunky little girls was like. But there he is, 1999 Rob, dealing with an irritated, crying eldest daughter and a spirited, wiggly youngest daughter and explaining it all with that look.
That is the look of tired and of resignation. It is hard work raising little beings, and it’s pretty obvious that Rob just isn’t going to win here! But then there is that slight grin on his face. Parenting is also joyous work.
I didn’t know it at the moment I was taking this photo, but above all else, this is a oh-my-goodness-these-kids-are-going-to-kill-me-but-I-love-them-anyway look.
I make it daily, and I quite frequently think of this image as I do.