the beauty of a filter

I brought our camera to the lake this weekend but I never unpacked it. I've been too enamored with the Instagram app and the filters that can be applied to photos taken with the iPhone. In my mind's eye, the filters make each image warmer and truer. Like I'm seeing through something two-dimensional to something so beautifully multifaceted, something living and breathing. Like I'm capturing what is most essential about each moment. Like everything is precious.

Spending a long weekend in a house with fifteen family members requires its own kind of filter. Sisters and brothers, parents and in-laws, nieces and nephews. There was work to be done—path mulching and wood chopping, porch vacuuming and dock scrubbing, boat launching and screen washing. There were big meals to prepare and clean up. There were discussions that got a little heavy. Like most families, we don't all agree on the same politics or theology. And we're all a little stubborn and opinionated. But we like each other. A lot. And we like to be with each other. A lot.

So we apply a filter. We still debate and discuss challenging topics. But we do it remembering that the person in front of us is not two-dimensional but so beautifully multifaceted. That what is essential in the moment is not winning the argument or being right, but recognizing that a close-knit family you can laugh with and play with and raise your kids with is something precious. And that, in the end, everything is best viewed through the lens of love.

five

Dear Elliott,

Yesterday you turned five. What a fun and special weekend - all the more so because you knew we were celebrating you and because after three weeks of your questioning, we could finally say, "Yes!" You get thrilled over the simplest things like blowing out a candle or a card that plays a song. I love this about you. Nothing is too small to escape your notice or your delight. If I only had one quarter of your joie de vivre. And lucky me, because I live with you, I do.

In this last year, you have become quite the adventurer, daredevil and explorer. We ran across a carnival on the night of your birthday and you wanted to go on every ride. Watching you climb up the huge slide with your brother was incredibly nerve racking for your mama. You didn't think twice about it. Earlier in the day you not only happily tried fermented beet-garlic-ginger juice at a neighbor's house (when no other kid could could even be bribed to do it), you liked it and asked for more! Nothing phases you. Except maybe a bug in the house.

Today you brought five little friends on the train for a birthday adventure. You were beaming—a model train show, ice cream cones, presents, duck duck goose in the park. Your friends, your party, your favorite things. As much as you enjoyed it, you loved seeing your friends enjoy it. More than presents or treats or even blowing out that candle, nothing made you happier than knowing your friends would be along. The same goes for your mom. Every morning you ask me so earnestly, "Mama no go to work today?" And when I answer in the affirmative, the answer you don't want to hear, you ask the question again, with even more gusto. As if your repetitive asking of the exact same question in the exact same way, your very longing for my company, might elicit a different answer. It's heartbreaking to turn you down, but you recover like a champ. Your open-hearted resilience has been schooling me. You love people better than almost anyone I know.

Here you are five years old. You are as cute as can be. And you're a pistol. You love trains, taking endless photos and movies of yourself, pinching your brother, snuggling your blankie, making the craziest faces imaginable. You just learned to wear flip flops and will happily pee anywhere you see fit, including on the sidelines of a girls' soccer game and into the bathroom sink. You confidently ride the little yellow school bus every day and call the driver by name. You're such a fan of shaking your booty that one friend gave you a disco ball for your birthday. You are a clever, funny, daring, beautiful boy. I love you like crazy, my Incredible Mr. E, and feel so lucky to have you to teach me how to look at life through a better lens—a happy, people-loving, self-abandoning, life-embracing lens. You are a gem.

xoxo
Mama

rolling up our sleeves and saying yes

On Sunday Liam wanted a job to do. I suggested he and Elliott wash the car. And they did, with gusto.

When they were nearly finished, Liam asked me for the keys.

“Why do you need the keys?” I asked.

“To open the roof,” he said matter of factly.

“No, honey,” I said. “Not while you’re washing the car.”

“But, mom,” he pleaded. “I can’t get the roof clean!”

I wasn’t following him and my impulse was to just shut him down. I’m the mother after all. Water is being sprayed with a hose. Soapy rags are being tossed about. The car interior will surely get wet. Not a good plan.

I held my breath and resisted the urge to blurt out my mantra, “No. Not today.”

But we were having a good day and I say that far too often.

“Explain to me what you want to do.”

So we made an agreement. Hose off, shoes off. I opened the sunroof and Liam rose up through the open space and proudly went to work scrubbing the roof.

I say no a lot. It's practically become a reflex. But lately I've been seeing it for what it often really is —the easy way out.

I don’t want to clean up your messes, so “no.” I don’t want to risk the possibility of injury or accident, so “no.” I don’t want you (or me) to look silly, so “no.” I don’t want to spend the time, so “no.” I don’t want to think about this anymore, so “no.”

I have written about the importance of saying yes a couple of times—how much good it does for a child’s creativity and how much joy and pride it can elicit in a child who has been given a privilege or a responsibility. The problem for me is that saying yes doesn’t get any easier.

I still don’t want to clean up the messes or look silly or spend the time. I’m prone to laziness in this department. Plus, saying no makes me feels like I’m in charge.

But on May 11, 2004, I was blessed with a son who is not easily controlled, and not because he’s defiant or rebellious, but because he’s smart and compelling and a very skilled negotiator. He’s a risk taker and an inventor and very much his own person. He doesn’t happily take no for an answer.

I could squash him, and let me tell you, I have and I do. But this weekend he turned eight and as he stood with a sopping rag in hand asking to take his job to the next level, I saw that it may be time to try yes.

In her excellent new parenting memoir MOMumental: Adventures in the Messy Art of Raising a Family, Jennifer Grant devotes a chapter to saying “yes.” Through story and anecdote she reinforces the importance of letting out the lead and allowing a child to make his own decisions, especially as he gets older. She ends the chapter with this quote from playwright Jean Anouilh in his drama Antigone, “To say yes, you have to roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows.”

Not the flippant, thoughtless, "you finally wore me down," "get out of my hair" kind of yes, but the kind that's risky and messy. The kind that requires surrender. The kind that opens the door to really living.

My son reminds me daily that we have many chances to roll up our sleeves and plunge both hands into life. All it requires is a yes.

baking makes me happy

The second week of my new job I was given a personality profile to complete online and then met with a small group of coworkers (who had also completed the profile) to discuss the results. Before we each shared which quadrant the profile placed us in and whether we tended to be results driven or likely to back down in a disagreement, we each took turns sharing a couple of seemingly random things about ourselves. In addition to the first thing we like to do when we get to work (check e-mail) and our life's motto (All shall be well), we were asked to name two things we like to do when we have free time. I could have named 20 things, but I narrowed down the list to spending time with people I love and baking, which I see now pretty accurately depicts my "iS" personality (the happy maker).

Over the last two weekends as the high of quality time spent with the people I love quickly dissolved into the funk of anticipating another week missing my kids, being stuck inside sitting at a desk and not having a stretch of day to clean out the closets or organize the garage (not that I would, but at least knowing I could!), I found myself measuring flour into a bowl, cracking eggs and shredding zucchini. Especially when I'm down, baking makes me happy.

Mixing together the ingredients, pouring the batter into a pan or plopping spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet, setting the timer and gradually noticing the smells in the house improve makes me happy. Pulling out fresh bread from the oven makes me happy. Giving a neighbor or a struggling friend something I've baked makes me happy. But most of all, being intimately involved in the creation of something special and delicious, without a single thought that I wish I were doing something else or being somewhere else or, simply, someone else makes me happy. Baking, like reading to my kids in bed, practicing yoga, walking through the forest and writing something beautiful reinforces my motto, All shall be well. And lately I've needed a lot of reinforcement, which is why before 6 a.m. yesterday, I was baking breakfast cookies.

If you want to join me in being happy, try this zucchini bread. It's one of my favorite things to bake when I'm in a hurry to get something in the oven. I combined a couple of recipes and made it just a little healthier but still really yummy.

Zucchini Bread

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 t. salt
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1 1/2 t. pumpkin pie spice (or 1/2 t. cinnamon, 1/2 t. nutmeg, 1/4 t. clove, 1/4 t. ginger)
2 large zucchini, grated
3/4 cup sugar (or 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup agave)
4 eggs
1/2 cup oil

Stir together dry ingredients. Combine zucchini, sugar, eggs and oil. Stir dry ingredients into zucchini mixture until just combined. Transfer batter to two loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.

from the style files

Recently I was listening to a conversation between two female colleagues who were discussing the difference between their styles and the taste of their significant others. Both childless, they agreed on the merits of a good throw pillow and bemoaned the fact that they had to slipcover good furniture because of pets. But both clearly had pretty stylish-sounding condos.

One of them turned to me and smiled.

"So, who decorates your house?" she asked.

"Well," I said, thinking hard. "No one."

A mishmash of handed-down antiques and garage sale furniture, sun-faded curtains and framed kid art, our home reminds me of a cross between Trainspotting and the Golden Girls. Okay, so it's not that bad, but it's so completely not my style and, yet, I fear it has become my style.

This weekend as I looked around, however, it occurred to me that the real answer to the question, "Who decorates your house?" is, "My children."

Maybe someday I will have the time, energy and money to care again. To find my style and take back my home. In the meantime, I'm going to try to celebrate the fact that my home is odd, eclectic and creative, and that thankfully blankets are plentiful and transparent tape is cheap.

Liam's "dog's" sleeping quarters, in the corner of our dining room.

The Iron Man obsession plastered across the wall leading up the stairs.

Where every stuffed animal in the house finds shelter, and mom finds the pillows from her bed.