This birthday was no different. Alice had 2 birthday parties previously, but they were family only, and her brothers had twice had parties with friends. This situation needed to be remedied. Alice is still a little young to have real friends, so I invited the daughters of some of my friends who she had occasionally played with. I only had one concrete premise. There must be a doll cake. A doll cake, for those who don’t know, is a cake baked in a dome shape that serves as the skirt for a Barbie-type fashion doll. You shove the doll in up to her waist, cover her injection-molded breasts with frosting and voila, a doll wearing a southern bell dress made of cake! Every little girl’s dream!

I had always heard you could use a Pampered Chef batter bowl to cook the skirt in but then I was warned that it was just a hair too short to accommodate an 11 1/2 inch fashion doll. “You have to cut the feet off,” my friend advised me. That seemed like a perfectly awful waste of Barbie feet so I asked around and found there was an even more gruesome solution. A Doll Pick.

A doll pick is essentially a doll head, torso and arms, only it looks like it has been impaled on a pike. I tried to hide it from Alice partially to surprise and partially because it was so darn creepy but she discovered it. “What happened to the doll’s body?” she asked, which was a question I found I could not answer.

I only realized after I had invited the little girls to the party that oh my lord my husband is working 60 plus hours a week plus going to school two nights a week plus OH MAN I just had a baby. What was I thinking? To get this house in party order would require not just cleaning but a total reorganization. For instance, why are there piles of cardboard in my kitchen and 2 bags of plastic styrofoam peanuts on top of the book shelves? Not only are there things piled onto every flat surface in human reach but my three older hooligans have been known to dismantle a clean room in a matter of moments. Even if I got the house clean enough for guests there is no guarantee it would stay that way.

So in a moment of desperation I decided to have the party at a local park and prayed that there would be no rain, although secretly I also prayed that there WOULD be rain so I could cancel this madness, which was giving me more and more anxiety the longer I dwelled on it.

I am not a detail-oriented person. Selecting food and decorations are fun for me, but it when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of making sure to have enough utensils and not forgetting to bring a pitcher for the beverages and such, I slowly spiral downward into the fetal position. I was coming to terms with the fact that I was having a party at all when I found out my mother and father could not come, nor could my grandmother. Enter party number two, or party number one, since we held it on Friday night, the actual date of Alice’s birth.

I stayed up for hours the night before making homemade fresh strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, one batch for the end of school picnic that our homeschool co-op holds every year, and one for the family party. This was completely unnecessary of course, but I have an unreasonable need to be liked and the quickest way to do that is to feed people. And it works. I am very popular.

The party at my Mom’s went off without a hitch, except for the fact that Alice COULD not blow out her candles. I finally snuck up behind her and added a puff of my own or we would have been there all night. The cupcakes were delicious, every present was delightful, and Alice thoroughly enjoyed her moment in the spotlight.

Enter Party #2. I was nervous about getting to the park early and setting up, but my insanely-loyal-to-his-terrible-job husband was working from home until the last second. I left about half of the party accoutrements at home, which ended up not mattering because LORD was it WINDY. Apparently those blue arrows on the weather forecast? WIND. The sky was bright and sunny, but the wind was outrageous and cold. If I had brought bubbles they would have popped the minute they left the wand. Alice’s china tea set that her great-grandmother made would have been obliterated. As it was my husband had to go back home for a roll of duct tape when it became clear that there was no way the tablecloth would stay on the table without it.

Slowly the birthday guests arrived and it became apparent that no amount of well-meaning mothers could salvage my original intent for the party. Plates and napkins and coffee cups and gifts were flying. One sweet girl dumped sparkling pink lemonade on herself (aided by the wind) and cried “Mommy! I am unhappy!” My friend Jesika pointed out that the shelter house was effectively acting as a wind tunnel. She did save the day in one respect: since she never cleans out her car (her words!) she had enough jackets for all the little girls to borrow.

We did manage to eat the doll cake, which turned out decently despite the fact that I am no cake decorator and I had to bake the darn thing for over an hour just to get it to cook through. I am sort of known for ruining cakes, so at least that brought me some comfort. I actually remembered to bring the candles. I have a habit of buying birthday candles and then leaving them in the junk drawer and then having to borrow a pillar candle or something at the last moment, so this was a real win for me. Until I went to light them, and WOOSH. There went the wind again. The one time I actually remembered the candles they were completely useless.

I brought foam tiaras and hand mirrors for the girls to decorate with stickers and jewels, but those were sent home with the goodie bags. It was not crafting weather.

With gifts and snacks out of the way, and all other activities called off due to inclement weather, we finally decided to just let the kids play on the playground. The runny-nosed birthday girl with her tulle skirt drooping and wings askew opted instead to sit in the van and eat her birthday cake. When my husband climbed into the van he turned and said “Well, sweetie…did you have a good birthday?” Alice replied matter of factly,

“I think it was stupid that I had two parties.”

Our first two children were fine sons, born almost exactly two years apart. For most of their lives they have been best friends, walking hand in hand, crying if they were apart. It pleased me to know my sons had each other, and I longed to give my daughter a similar companion, and something I never had. A sister.

Every last one of us became convinced of the reality of this baby girl. She even had a name, one my husband and I conceived separately and simultaneously. Eva for his grandmother, Lucille just because we liked the name. When I told him of my stroke of genius he smugly replied that he had already thought of the name three days before. It was serendipity. It was fate. Our daughter was born in our hearts. Now we just had to wait until she was born into our lives.

When the 2 pink lines showed up on the stick, I whooped for joy. We weren’t trying but babies with us always seem to be the result of a happy accident. I only had to go through one pregnancy where I was filled with fear and then confronted by a child so incredibly precious to recognize the foolishness of ever doubting God’s hand on my womb. And finally, we would get to meet our second little princess. The timing on earth seemed rotten, with my husband in school, but the timing for our family seemed just right.

Everything screamed girl. The heartbeat was fast. Perhaps an old wive’s tale, but I was also sick, as sick as I had been with Alice, sicker than with my boys. And I had difficulty even looking at boy’s clothes, or thinking of boy names, because it seemed silly. I was carrying a girl. This I knew.

But when a friend of mine with a similar story, who was equally convinced of her child’s sex, had a surprise boy, I began to get nervous. I began to doubt. I scheduled an ultrasound. My child was shy at first, but after a while there could be no mistake. I was carrying a son.

I was dumbfounded. My dreams were tied up in a neat little package that I thought was based on something akin to prophecy. Were we not given a message? As a person whose whole life has seemed chaotic, I thirst for balance and order. Symmetry. 2 boys. 2 girls. Children close in age who share toys and hand me down clothes. And there came the monkey wrench in the well-oiled machine of my desires. A boy.

I was told to start loving this baby, to stop resenting him, by people who meant well but whose accusations hurt me deeply. Of course I loved him. I had known him for a long time. I had felt his kicks inside me and pressed my hands to my abdomen in communication. I just thought he was someone else, and it took me a few days to process this. I grieved, not because I was having another son, but because I felt I had lost a daughter. It was an honest feeling, born out of love, and I had to press through it. I was ashamed of my tears, but I knew that the place they came from was not resentment. It was loss.

For us, Eva Lucille was a real person. She had existed as a family member for almost three years. We all felt we knew her, and anticipated her arrival. So when we found out she wasn’t coming it was a bit of a shock to us all. The adjustment was quick, but it was an adjustment that had to be made through a few tears on my part.

Some people wait until their child is born to name them. They want to meet their baby and get to know them. But for me, I like for God to inspire us, and help us get to know our child beforehand. I was fretting because we did not have a boy name selected. I knew it would help me bond with my child if he had an identity. And my husband and I felt the boy name well was dry. We had never disagreed over names, but we no longer knew of any boy names that we both agreed on. I clung hopelessly to the name I selected when I was 14, a name my husband had told me he would *never* like.

But when the ultrasound showed lips that seemed parted with laughter…my husband said to give him the name I loved, the name that meant “Happy.” And when his identity was forged, there came peace. God had gifted me a son. A son I was allowed to name my favorite name, a name my husband has grown to love. Felix Sebastian is happy, and I know he will be worthy of praise, as his name proclaims. He was not who we expected, but he is who we need. And he has made us happy.

Lighten my darkness

Pour over me your holyness

For you are holy

Breath of Heaven by Chris Eaton

Yesterday was a dark, dark day. No matter why, the reasons don’t matter. But I was not feeling Christmas, and it broke my heart, because this is my favorite season. My daughter, bless her heart, who is only two and a half, asked me not to cry about six times.

I began to think about all the people I know who have given up Christmas. How they view the stress that goes along with decorations, baking, family plans, and of course, the inevitable shopping. I don’t know that I had ever felt the darkness that can loom over this season so clearly before, and I worried that they were right, and all these years I have been chasing a vapor.

But then I remembered a young girl, heavy with child, on a donkey, riding to an unknown city, knowing that any day she would be shouldered with the responsibility of raising a KING, while she had no chance of having the slightest idea how to do so. Fear, stress, pain…all these emotions must have loomed in the days before the first Christmas.

With that, I began to feel fortunate. All this stress is leading to SOMETHING. It is leading to embraces with my family, lit up faces, delicious food shared with loved ones, singing and smiling. It is leading to days of worship, of song, of a special kind of holy wonderment that is especially prevalent during the season. It is leading to a NEW YEAR, where I will welcome my own little bundle of possibilities.

I cherish the idea that our stress is a pale reflection of what Mary was dealing with in those last days, and how it must have melted away as the night sky shimmered with a star of unusual magnitude, a heavenly choir greeting the child, and unexpected guests arrived to worship.

Truthfully, I have had one ambition since childhood that never, ever left my heart. That was to be a mother. Not so unusual, most little girls enjoy playing with baby dolls, most women have a maternal urge. But the older I got, the more important it became to me, till it trumped every other ambition I ever had. I had but one goal in life, and that was marriage and children.

This did not always go over well. The one math teacher who could make me understand Algebra told me I was “wasting my brain.” Friends of my faith understood, because they had the same goal in mind, but most of the time people reacted with disbelief.

I vividly remember sitting in my journalism class while the other students discussed their futures. I had several 1st place awards nestled away at that point and most people looked upon me as having a bright journalistic future. As I listened to the students discuss what school they were going to (Ball State being a popular choice) and how they planned to work their way up, I listened with an almost sinking feeling. Not only did I not have any such plans, but I hadn’t even thought about it for a second. The idea of single-mindedly pursuing my education and putting my true dream of having a family on hold didn’t make sense to me. I admit, it still does not.

I do wish I had finished college. I didn’t obtain my MRS degree until I was 23, and I could have finished a college degree by the age of 22. But it was not the time for me. I can’t regret the fact that I didn’t know the future, and that the future was holding me captive. Do I believe that “women” can be fulfilled by something other than marriage and family. Certainly. Do  I believe *I* could be fulfilled by anything less? Not on your life.

If I had decided to work up the corporate ladder, I know for a fact that I would never have been able to squelch the longing in my heart to be elsewhere. Of course, women can and do work while juggling a career and a family. I don’t know what it takes to successfully balance that. I just know that I’m not the one to do it.

Part of my ambition was not just about being a wife and mother, it was about being a particular kind. I never wanted to worry about infertility, or about cutting back from two incomes to one. I thought to myself, “I would rather be poor than ever be faced with having a lifestyle that was dependent on my income.” I wanted to homeschool, and feel free to be with my children. I wanted to nurse my babies without worrying about a pump, and I didn’t want to miss their “firsts.”

So I made decisions that many people in the world would think were foolish or thoughtless, but for me they were carefully calculated. I didn’t want to worry about infertility. I have seen so many women put their bodies through hormones to prevent pregnancy at just the so- called “right time”, which usually coincides with a time of declining fertility. And bingo, they are faced with trouble getting pregnant. The thought terrified me. I have also seen many women establish their careers, get married, settle in to a comfortable two income situation and then panic because they “can’t afford to have children.” I didn’t want to worry about that, so soon after I got married I started cutting my hours and by the time I was 7 months pregnant I quit my jobs altogether. That way we didn’t have to adjust to having one income, it was just our life.

I grew up with very little, so I know for a fact you can raise a child with very little. You just have to lower your expectations of what your life should be like. My children have never once starved, have never been without decent clothing. I am learning more every day about how to stretch a dollar. Sometimes I complain because I want more niceties, but that is my fault, not the fault of my life in this rich nation.

This doesn’t mean we are completely content with the status quo.  My husband is currently in school earning an accounting degree, which I believe will take him far. If I had a career to juggle, I wouldn’t be able to support my husband on his career journey. I am proud to be his nurturer, for I know, when the time comes, he will nurture back. I have started writing again for fun and profit, for I know that is the second most important calling in my life. I have three and soon to be four bright, beautiful children who it is my privilege to teach and to cuddle every day. My life is very full.

This is the life I have chosen. It was not thrust upon me. It is not the work of bad decision making.  I made my decisions by choosing not to fear the future, but to trust nature’s model and the example of women before me. Ultimately, I believe the decisions I have made for my life will bless me in the end. And Motherhood is not the end of me as an individual. It is the beginning. As a writer, my shelf life will only increase as more experience gets stuffed into my brain. This is my training ground for my own future. Many rich opportunities lay ahead. I just wanted to reap the benefits of these first.

In the process of learning this, I have been wounded. People I have trusted have used my confidences against me, and taken my admissions of weakness and used them as ammunition. There is perhaps no one more aware of my foibles than my own self, but to see every aspect of my character splattered like roadkill was devastating, to say the least. There has been weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I am trying not to dwell, but every time this pregnancy knocks me down physically, I feel the nagging again. I’m not good enough, or strong enough, to do the things I want to do. The things I have always envisioned myself doing. This  bitterness has soaked into me and I’m having trouble removing the stench from my life.

I’m a certified oddball. This I know, and this I am comfortable with. I can’t be anything but. I do things outside the norm, not to make a statement, but because I feel profoundly uncomfortable doing anything else. Obviously, this does not extend to all areas of my life, but in the way I raise my children there are definite glaring differences between me and the rest of society at large. I’m fine with that. But it pains me that I can live and let live, and there are those who cannot extend me the same courtesy.

But on this journey, I have learned that it does not matter what others say. It’s important to listen to the opinions of people you love and trust, but you have to be able to seperate the wheat from the chaff. And it’s also important to know that there are those in this world who, perhaps unintentionally, will strive to do nothing but bring you down. Because of this baby I am nurturing in my womb, my hormones are running too high for me to do anything but avoid these confrontations.

So I have been trying to hear the voice of God in a way that was not as relevant to me a few months ago. And through the advice of encouraging people who have my best interests at heart, I can hear his voice again. And it says to me “Whom God Calls, He Also Equips.” This idea is supported by scripture, and daily I am reminded that we do not war against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.

There is an attacker, but there is also a rescuer. And he who called me to motherhood, and all the choices that go with it, will not leave me unarmed. As long as I continue to listen for his voice, and his alone, I will have the strength to do extraordinary things, things that make no sense to the outside. But I’m not here to make sense to anyone else.

Owing to my morbid sense of humor,  whenever we have mentioned wanting to have another baby I have always moaned dramatically “ROOM FOR ONE MORE…” It’s suitable. Most people seem to view the idea of four kids as certain death, though for me it’s just normal. I’ve never known anything else. Four was the magic number for me.

At least, it was until number three came out a week late, I went having labors that were less than 6 hours long to one that lasted for 36 hours and included lunch at El Rio and a shopping trip to Wal-Mart. My daughter was so large that it took her hours just to descend enough to stimulate dilation.  My water was broken at 9 and a half centimeters, and I was immediately hit with an uncontrollable pushing urge, which I had to breathe through for an agonizing fifteen minutes. Then, came shoulder dystocia and finally, I see my daughter, the largest newborn I had ever seen outside the Guiness Book of World Records. Five minutes after she came out I told my husband plainly “You can have surgery now. Seriously. I am DONE.”

We felt we were being very wise. Pregnancy is very hard on a woman’s body, and for me it lasts FOREVER and is fraught with health problems, not serious enough to endanger the baby, but enough to make me feel that I was slowly being invaded by an invisible army of pain. Birth is strenuous, and let’s not beat around the bush. It hurts.

Why be greedy? We have our boys, we now have a girl, what could be more perfect than to just close the door on reproduction and open some new doors? Hugh returned to school, and I embarked on a freelancing career that really fulfilled me in ways motherhood did not. We felt very grown up.

But, only a few weeks after my baby girl was born, and I watched her adoringly as she slept in the church nursery’s crib, I was struck by the powerful feeling that I was not done. The feeling was so deep, so profound that I could not fight it. I have learned that when I know something, I know it, and not to fight that knowledge. And I knew there was a baby in my future.

Later, Hugh and I discovered that we both thought of the same name at almost the same time. This future baby now had a name. The only thing left to do is to wait. And we did, longer than we waited for the other three, who were all born two years apart. I would look at the kitchen table and know that someone was missing, and I knew exactly who it was, and I knew it was only a matter of time.

And this week, we found out that we will be meeting this missing person, sometime in mid March if due dates are to be trusted (and I don’t…my kids like to cook a bit longer.) I love accidental pregnancies. There are serendipitous, and proof to me that God knows us better than we know ourselves. I had baby fever for quite a while, but I really didn’t think there was a chance I was pregnant, and I had made up my mind that I wasn’t ready for another baby, that I wanted to do other things right now. And I was happy to do those things.

With the pace of my life I was slow to catch on that I had a new life growing in me. But when I found out there was nothing but joy. Earlier in the day I had fretted a bit about the future, about what I was meant to do. This settled that question. It drew my heart home, and even closer to the dear children I have already been blessed with.

It’s a scary time, for my family personally and for the nation at large, but I feel immense calm. I know that this situation was born of purpose, and this child is meant to be here, meant to be someone. The knowlege of this baby has erased all fear, and affirmed to me that things will work out in the end.

So yes, we have room for one more here. But while that might spell gloom and doom for some, for us it just brings relief. If the cable snaps, we’ll at least have eachother.

How to explain my son’s heart? He is six years old. Like any human being he has flaws. He whines. He demands his own way and weeps as if his heart would break if he doesn’t get it. He can be negative. But his sensitivity that can lead to temper tantrums always leads to tenderness, and a deep desire to do that right thing.

My son is often misunderstood by people who think he is bratty, when truthfully most of the time he is on sensory overload. And he can be very hard to deal with during his meltdowns. I get frustrated and angry when my son is screaming and weeping over something that seems of little importance. That’s why I take it especially hard when he is criticized, not for being naughty, but for simply being himself.

We always try to give our children some loose change to put in the offering plate. “Give it to Jesus,” we tell them. On this particular Sunday my husband and I realized we had put our last bit of change towards the donuts that are available every Sunday morning along with free coffee, and we had nothing for the offering plate.

Jarvis began to panic. He had to put *something* in the offering plate. He settled on one of the three, count ‘em, THREE, stuffed spiderman dolls he had insisted on bringing inside. There was a slight commotion as Hugh tried to get him to stop, and I said “Let him do it.”

Just then one of our busybodies decided to interject…a woman who frequently thinks it’s her job to do my job. She is a frequent source of irritation to me, but I try to extend her some grace because I know that we are two very different kinds of people. The problem is that I don’t think I am better than her, but folks like her almost always think they are better than me.

“Stop that Jarvis. Don’t do that,” she snapped at my son who was becoming increasingly confused over the conflicitng messages he was getting. I looked back at her and said calmly “It’s not like he was going to get it back later…he was trying to do the right thing.” “Oh no he wasn’t” she scoffed rudely. I felt my cheek color rising to match fury flaming up inside me.

“Jarvis…were you joking around?” In a panic…he helplessly picked an answer out of the air…one he hoped that would keep him out of trouble. “Yes?” With that I made him get up and I furiously walked to the bathroom with my hand gripping his shoulder. Once in I turned him to face me. “You embarrassed me out there. Now tell me the truth…why did you want to put your Spiderman in the offering plate?”

He sank miserably to the floor. “Because I didn’t have any money and I wanted to give Jesus something and I thought he would like Spiderman.” My instincts had been right, and the fact that I had been goaded into not following them by a snippy, unhappy woman made me sick.

My son and I went outside and sat on the porch. I held in my lap, and I wept. My son had attempted to give something he loved, something he would normally never part with. The idea of Jarvis getting rid of ANYTHING voluntarily is shocking. He sentamentilizes everything. I got rid of a lego table I had NEVER seen any of the children pay attention to…a lego table that was not even HIS, and he shrieked as though I was cutting out his spleen with a butter knife. He wants to keep every piece of trash…they are all his treasure.

To put a Spiderman doll in the offering plate was for him a deep act of worship, a surrender the likes of which I had never seen. It was like he was putting his own, imperfect, human heart in that plate, offering his heart up. And that woman smacked it out and told him his heart wasn’t good enough.

Of course, offering plates are for money. And my son’s raggedy Spiderman wasn’t going to pay for the church’s electricity, or to feed people across the world. But like the woman who poured perfume on the feet of Christ and wiped them with her hair, his offering was his way of connecting to Christ, of giving himself humbly.

And the diciples grumbled that the money was wasted, that it should have been given to the poor. And they tried to keep the children away from Christ. And both times Christ asked these misguided people to not critisize those who come to him. And yet it continues to happen.

I can’t fault people who follow the light that they have, however dim. But I do pray that though my son’s light was put under a bushel, that he will never allow anyone to snuff him out for long.

Related Post: Forbid Them Not

My love affair began as a small child when my parents used to buy two cheese burger Happy Meals for the four of us and then tear each burger in half. I remember vividly the first time I was allowed to order off the adult menu. I was with my pastor’s daughter, who bought me breakfast. When total came up $6.66 she declared “I am NOT paying that. Give me another hash brown.”

Happy Meals gave way to Big Macs, a large Dr. Pepper and those FRIES. So delicately crisp when hot and fresh, that quickly give way to wooden crumbles when cold. If I am really feeling decadent, a hot fudge sundae for 99 cents. I have spent all three of my pregnancies downing 69 cent vanilla cones to help soothe my heartburn. Yes, hand-dipped gourmet ice creams have their place, but sometimes you just want cheap, nostalgic indulgence on a cake cone.

Still, until recently I only had a casual relationship with Ray Kroc’s goldmine. We’d haphazardly show up, order a couple of Happy Meals that usually came with some unfortunate toy that I’d later have to sneak out of the house (the Shrek quiz cards were especially horrible, and found their way into the garbage can AT MCDONALD’s). There was no rhyme or reason…until now.

I was recently told that if you save 10 proofs of purchases off the bottoms of your Happy Meals they can be redeemed for a free one. This is of course, not advertised. If I had known, I probably could have earned about 100 free meals by now. So now, I jealously guard my boxes, I tell everyone about the promotion and sometimes they graciously give me theirs, I have even snuck a few out of the top layers of garbage and then immediately washed my hands (which prompted my husband to say “I don’t even know you anymore.” Um Yes…you do! There is no way that sort of behavior could have surprised you).

As I mentioned in my previous blog right now Mickey D’s has Lego Batman and Madame Alexander Wizard of Oz Dolls. I am a woman POSESSED! I have decided to only go to McDs when they have toys we really, really want, and then we will load up. I will check the website, and make plans. So far we have Lego Batman, The Joker, Mr. Freeze (my favorite), Penguin’s Boat, Joker’s Helicopter, and the Batmobile. We still need Robin and Batman’s boat. We also have Dorothy, Glinda, The Wicked Witch, The Cowardly Lion, The Flower Munchkin, and the Winkie Guard. We are missing two Munchkins, the Mayor (but I don’t care about him so much), the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and my FAVORITE, The Flying Monkey. But they will be mine. Oh YES. They will be mine…er…Alice’s.

The people who work at McDonald’s don’t fully seem to understand the quest. I try to tell them if you have ANY of the Happy Meal toys that I don’t have I WILL buy all of them. I will eat a Happy Meal, the baby will eat a Happy Meal, whatever. But they just act annoyed. Dude…I am your JOB SECURITY.

After two weeks of Happy Meals I am getting a little sick of it. After this is Hot Wheels and Barbie, and I can take a break. But until then, I will sometimes choose milk and apple slices to minimize guilt. I will contemplate how switching to all white meat chicken didn’t change the rubbery consistency of a McNugget, and how the breading feels like armor after all these years. I will relish the flavor of the meat, which does not resemble any other beef I have ever tasted. And I will wonder why new jeans are so tight.

*UPDATE*

The Glorious SHERRI brought me a FLYING MONKEY TODAY and SCARECROW. She is DIVINE.

In other news, my Winkie Guard is missing. I am quite fond of him.

*BREAKING NEWS*

I have found my WINKIE GUARD. Oh Winkie Guard, I think I love you most of all!

*FINAL NEWS UPDATE*

Today I bought Five Happy Meals, and my search is complete. I got Lollipop Guild Munchkin, Lullabye League Munchkin, Tin Man and The Wizard. Also Lego Robin. And now I can worry about something else for a while.

Erma Bombeck was the reigning queen of schlumpy housewives. For her to be a woman’s hero would have been no big deal, especially during the golden years of her reign, the 60s and 70s. She certainly was my hero. Only it was 1988, and I was 10 years old.  If I were in a freak show I’d be The Girl Who Time Travels because all of my references are so dated. It comes from being half-raised by my grandmother in a 100 year old farmhouse where layers of history are excavated just by moving a glass or lifting a book. I read my grandmother’s copies of “If Life is a Bowl of Cherries What am I doing in the Pits?” and “The Grass is Greener Over the Septic Tank” multiple times and what I didn’t understand I just filed away for later. But I knew I loved this woman, I loved how she took the dust bunnies out from under the bed and made them perform like trained monkeys. I got to meet her when she spoke in Evansville and I don’t know who was more excited, me, or Erma. It could not have been every day that she would meet a 10 year old girl so enamored of Housewife Humor.

Madeline L’Engle…I have not read nearly enough of her but what I have read is beautiful and funny and frightening.  I met her I beleive in 1992…she was kind and had a wonderful eastern accent. We talked about L.M. Montgomery. She loved Emily of New Moon, I’m all Anne of Green Gables. Touching her hand was touching greatness.

In 2003, shortly after the birth of my son Jarvis my mom brought me a book from the library. It was a memoir called “A Girl Named Zippy” and it was by a woman named Haven Kimmel. “I really think you’ll like this.” It looked a cute, fun read. I imagined it would be corny tales from the farm, told by a zany woman who wears purple with a red hat that does not match.

Wow. I was not expecting that. First of all, she’s no old lady, but instead is the exact age of my Aunt Dawn, who is FOREVER YOUNG and also not old at all. And the book was not just screamingly funny but also haunting and sad and dark and did I mention funny? Let me quote an example. The protagonist, Zippy, is talking to her mother about how to honor her now out-grown bicycle, and considers propping it against a shed, planting some flowers and maybe even putting up a sign so people would know what a treasure this old bike is.

“Like a shrine, you mean,” said Mom, blatently trying to teach me a new word.

“Yes, like a Shrine.” As far as I knew, Shrines wore absurd hats and drove miniature cars in circles during the Mooreland Fair Parade, and were praised, inexplicably, for burning children. Although actually, if I were perfectly honest, I could think of a couple kids who could use a good frying.”

After I read that line I very nearly gave up writing. I mean seriously, what is the point?

The thing that got me the most about this book and it’s follow-up, “She Got Up Off The Couch” were the details, the things I recognized. Her upbringing in Mooreland, IN in the 1970s felt so incredibly FAMILIAR, to the point that if I ever write anything autobiographical I would have to go through her books with a fine tooth comb and make sure I didn’t write about the same things, because it would not be hard. And while being compared to Ms. Kimmel, while being a huge honor, could also be literary death, with us both being from the Hoosier State.

That’s the thing about her novels too…the way she describes things and really zeros in on the landscape, on personalities, on the details that had no name until she described them. It’s little things …like a description of a glass lighting fixture filled with dead bugs. But make no mistake about Ms. Kimmel, she is whip-smart and funny and poignant but sometimes I feel like I will need a master’s degree in 20 different subjects just to help me understand what she’s talking about. And that spurs me on as well.

I confess I’m a comfort reader, and I read all of my favorite books, including ones from childhood, in rotation. So Zippy and Couch have taken quite a beating. They have been read in bed, and in the tub, and in the car. They have been stepped on, and had food spilled on them, and it’s all in the name of love, I promise. And with each reading I just loved them more and more, these books are my good old friends, now.

When I discovered Haven had a new website and blog I was extremely happy. When she actually answered some of my comments I was hopelessly geeked. And when I found out she would be speaking in Indianapolis well, let the circle be unbroken!

My husband has more than once left me at home while he traveled to the Transformers Convention (yes, the toy, not the electrical tower), including once, driving all the way to Texas. I told him “This is my Transformer’s Convention.” And he knew I was right. So on Thursday all five of us drove up to Indy to spend the day. It was meant to be two days, but I didn’t get a paycheck I was expecting. So, no hotel, and instead of a whole day at the Children’s Museum we had only two hours, which may someday be proven to be child abuse. There was a poop incident, and we had to rush to see everything, and we couldn’t really spend any time discussing the things we saw. We are going back.

We had to rush quick to McDonald’s and to the boy’s joy yes, they had LEGO Batman and to my joy they had Madame Alexander Wizard of Oz Dolls, and Alice accidentally wound up with two. Then we had to hoof it to the little independent bookstore, Big Hat Books, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a STREET FESTIVAL going on and we almost didn’t make it.

But I made it, and there was a canopy set up in the back, and wine served in paper cups. The proprietors were ASTOUNDED that I had driven 4 hours to be there. Just as I was getting up to get some wine I saw she was coming. Amazing that someone who was essentially a feral child looked so elegant and poised. She was very thin, thinner than in photos. The lady sitting next to me said “I wonder if that’s her.” “Yes, that’s her,” I said and felt like running and hiding. But instead I just sat down.

The explanations of the chapter titles were miniature lectures on myth and psychoanalysis, she quoted both Freud and Scooby Doo in the same story. The reading of her book was hilarious, and unlike some writers she actually has the right voice to read her own work (I submit to you Erma Bombeck, and Dave Berry, who should have always hired voice-over artists.) The book itself…what can I say? It’s disturbing and full of the Kimmel touch, of remembrances and descriptions of things I didn’t know you could describe until I saw them there, it made me feel smarter and dumber at the same time. I have to go load up on Freud and Jung and Edith Hamilton now, but it didn’t make me enjoy IODINE any less.

When it came time for questions I could see that it was my duty to do the one thing that no one else would and ask about the people in the memoirs…”Where Are They Now?” I could see the question made her a tiny bit uncomfortable, and I was uncomfortable asking it. I kept waiting for the woman who told Haven that she was so glad that she finally wrote a book that used her education to do it (and oh my, while that woman was talking it was all I could do not to curl up in a ball. I was so embarrassed. ) But she then gave us an answer that was joyously funny and tender, and I quit being sorry I asked.

And when I met her, she was kind and sweet and when I told her who I was she was genuinely delighted to meet me and my children, and initiated a hug and if I had been thinking clearly I would have thought “I have touched the hem of her garment and now I can write” but I was so happy that I just thought “Oh, how nice!”

I’m pretty sure I babbled incoherently and said stupid things, however. For instance, I introduced her to my son, Jarvis, which is her maiden name. I read the book after he was born, and I decided I named him after her without knowing it. But when I told her this I said “I asked my mom, ‘Why does she keep saying Jarvis?’ and mom said ‘Honey…it’s her last name.” Well, that’s not quite what happened. The first time she is referred to as Jarvis I sat straight up and was so confused…because I was really digging on this book and then, HELLO, there is my son’s name which I promise I had no idea was surname until that moment. So, still stupid, but not quite as stupid as I described it. Though one of the nice things about Haven is that everyone else looks kind of dumb in comparison, but she’s so nice about it that you can’t even care.

So, in honor of someone who feels like an old friend, I am going to reccomend the books of Haven Kimmel. And if you don’t like what she has to say, pay attention to the way she says it.