woodard wanderings

On Go Set a Watchman

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 23:51:00 +0000

It’s been twenty years since I first checked out my middle school library's purple paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and ten years since I first taught it to English classes of my own. Starting with that first year of teaching, I formed the habit of ditching the audio version meant to facilitate our in-class reading, and often read the text aloud to the class myself. This meant that at the end of any given day, I'd heard the cadence and inflection of my own voice giving life to the story no less than six times. Not surprisingly, I memorized and internalized much of the novel that first year, and then watched the film as many times over as each class wrapped their study.

So Harper Lee’s evocative first novel is familiar and dear to me, and, like other devotees, I’ve ridden the emotional roller coaster of the past months’ shocking revelations-

First, that a “sequel” to To Kill a Mockingbird had been discovered and would be published.

Then, that Harper Lee had (very likely) been manipulated into publishing the manuscript after decades of refusal.

And finally, that Atticus Finch was, in the end, a bigot and a racist.

Still, when Go Set a Watchman arrived on my doorstep Tuesday morning, I thought I was ready. Having processed all I’d heard and read about the novel prior to its publication, I determined that I would read Watchman as the Mockingbird “prototype”-- an earlier working of Lee’s inspired theme-- that gave insight into her artistic process without the assumed gravity of a finished masterpiece.

Even now, I think this is an acceptable way to read Go Set a Watchman… if you can.

For me, however, it became increasingly difficult to do so.

The first hundred or so pages were rather boring and forgettable. I was uneasy with the author’s cavalier treatment of Jem and Dill (both of whom appear in the story only in Scout’s memory), but chided myself to remember that at the writing of this manuscript, neither of them yet existed as we came to know them later in Mockingbird. So it wasn’t personal.

But then the real gut punches began.

I expected hard-to-read passages about an Atticus I didn’t know. What I didn’t expect was for those passages to read me, and all I brought with me to this text. I didn’t expect those passages to preemptively assume and disarm my intimate familiarity with the “old Atticus.” There were times when I actually had to stop and wonder if it was all a joke. Is this for real? Did Harper Lee really write this? And if she did, no way was this written without a finished Mockingbird in mind.

I had counted on being able to identify evidence that the Watchman manuscript was a rudimentary precursor to To Kill a Mockingbird. Instead, some passages seemed so eerily and even deliberately synchronized with the emotional state of a reader already grounded in To Kill a Mockingbird’s text, that I found myself disbelieving that Mockingbirdhad not been written- or at least fully conceived- first.

The novel offers more pontificating than it does plot, reading more like social commentary than fictional prose in several places. There are a couple of genuinely warm and funny moments- both of which occur in Jean Louise’s childhood flashbacks- and quite a few passages of great profundity. Still, these are not enough to give appeal or meaning to the novel apart from what we know of To Kill a Mockingbird. That was perhaps the biggest surprise that came out of reading for me.

Prior to reading, I was determined that Watchmanwas not the key by which to interpret Mockingbird. I still stand by that. But what I discovered is that Mockingbird is the key by which to interpret Watchman. Without Mockingbird, Watchman loses the power behind its central thrust, which is Scout’s disillusionment with the world in which she grew up- and with the man at the center of that world. We feel Scout’s shock and revulsion as viscerally as we do because we grew up with the same Atticus as she did. Just like Jean Louise, our journey throughout the novel hinges completely on our prior understanding of her father. Without that deeply cherished preconception, the apparent change we see in Atticus does nothing to change us. It doesn’t even make sense.

That’s what makes it so hard to keep the two novels separate. You really can’t have Watchman without Mockingbird.

So can we still trust what we thought we knew about Mockingbird? And is it possible to read Go Set a Watchman without bidding farewell to the “old Atticus”?

The answer to both, I think, is yes.

First, we can trust our pre-Watchman reading of To Kill a Mockingbird because it was Mockingbird, not Watchman, that ultimately emerged from Lee’s creative process five decades ago.

In Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader, the narrator observes that once he decided to tell his own story,

“I’ve [since] done it many times in my head, each time a little differently, each time with new images, and new strands of action and thought. Thus, there are many different stories in addition to the one I have written. The guarantee that the written one is the right one lies in the fact that I wrote it and not the other versions. The written version wanted to be written, the many others did not.”

Harper Lee may have written both Go Set a Watchman and To Kill a Mockingbird, but the one that was nurtured and brought to life by the author, her editors, and the publishers at the time was Mockingbird. I don’t think it’s a stretch to declare Mockingbird as the version of the story- or, rather, the version of what Harper Lee had to say- that was destined to be told.

When it comes to the question of whether we must bid farewell to the “old Atticus,” we must remember this:

Harper Lee did not single-handedly create Atticus Finch. We all did.

Atticus- along with Scout and Boo Radley and all the others in Mockingbird- was only fully embodied when he left Lee’s page and entered our collective psyche, through discussions in book clubs and classrooms across the country, across the years. That’s the way it is with art. The artist is the visionary and the artist labors- but it is only in the audience that true incarnation takes place. Lee conceived the character, but we all had a hand in birthing the icon. And once we brought our own “stuff”- our own DNA, if you will- to what Lee gave us in Atticus, he was irrevocably altered, untouchable even by the imaginings of his original creator.

On the other hand, I do think that Watchman offers several valuable themes to explore, if we are willing to take it at face-value and accept it as part of the continuing Mockingbird story. A few that spring to mind are the deconstruction of childhood heroes as a prerequisite for setting our own "watchman," the distinction between individual and systemic racism, and maybe even an uncomfortable evaluation of our affinity for the literary white savior (bearing in mind, of course, that Atticus did not actually "save" Tom Robinson in Mockingbird. This is also the only apparent contradiction between Watchman and Mockingbird- when Scout reminisces about the rape trial in Watchman, she tells the reader that Atticus won an acquittal for the defendant. That was not the outcome in Mockingbird's version.)

None of us can yet know the mark that Watchmanwill ultimately leave on our literature or culture. The creation of art takes time; the creation of its meaning takes even longer. Like its predecessor, Watchman will only take its rightful place once we’ve gotten to know it, chewed on it, felt all our feelings about it, discarded it, picked it up again, and let our collective conscience make up its mind.

To a large degree, the fate of this book’s impact rests in the hands of my colleagues in the classroom. Will Watchman forever change the way Mockingbird is taught? Or will it be business as usual, with only a passing mention of Watchman and the controversy surrounding it? Those will be fascinating and difficult waters for teachers everywhere to tread.

I can’t say I envy their task.

Cosmic Shift

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 02:22:00 +0000

I met Erica last September at a MOPS meeting, and within minutes of meeting, we discovered that our boys shared a name. She was more surprised than I was, I think, at finding another little “Cade,” and we chatted about what led each of us to choose that name for our sons.

I didn’t know Erica very well, though over the course of the semester in the group, I learned pieces of her family’s story- specifically in their struggle to adopt two Russian girls and their heartbreak when the final door was closed on that opportunity. Not long after that came the news that she was pregnant. I remember the day we gathered around her to pray, her Cade (who was ALWAYS wanting to be right by his mama’s side instead of in the childcare room), hovering close to her throughout most of the prayer, but meandering onto my lap for a moment.

It was around the time I switched MOPS groups in December that I heard Erica had been diagnosed with stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer. She was 14 weeks pregnant at the time.

I followed her story online-- at a distance, as our paths no longer crossed--and rejoiced at the news that her baby girl was born healthy at 34 weeks. Along with many others, I held on to a sliver of hope that she would be around for a long time to see her babies grow.

But now, two months later, she’s gone. And I grieve for her. I grieve for the children who will grow up without their mama.

One of my first thoughts when I heard the news was, Now she knows. By stepping over that impossibly fragile line from here to there, she knows what we don’t, sees what we can’t, and- I do believe this- she has laughed with relief.

In my current state of deconstructed faith, I don’t pretend to know what exactly it is that she now sees or knows that evokes that response…but I still believe that it’s the right and true response to whatever it is that He reveals of Himself just across the curtain.

I didn’t get the impression Erica had the kind of spiritual angst that I do, although I don’t know. The appearance was always of a very strong faith, and one that didn’t seem to question. In some ways, I am jealous of that. In other ways, though, I find myself just doubling down, even more determined to press into those tender pressure points of my faith and to allow my old foundations to be shaken, in hopes of rebuilding an even more beautiful, hope-filled faith than what I've thus far grasped. Our struggle here -- spiritual and otherwise-- really is infinitesimally short-lived.

Thanks to my precocious, science-loving firstborn, I spend a lot of time these days reading and talking about all things science and nature. Reece's all-consuming interest in the animal kingdom, both past and present, has sparked my own interest in the cosmos and lifeforms on our complex planet. Just last night, as I waited for Matt to get home from a work trip to NYC, I found myself reading up on human evolution- the mechanism behind homo sapiens sapiens becoming distinct from Neanderthals and our other hominid ancestors. The subject is endlessly fascinating , if not a bit disconcerting when trying to reconcile it with some of our ideas about God, humans, salvation, and what it means to be made “in the image God.” How do we configure all these things into a picture that is beautiful and coherent and trustworthy?

I continue to be intimidated and, honestly, a little afraid of the immensity of history. It’s hard to wrap our minds around millions of years of primordial life, or humans who lived tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand years ago, when we consider that even from the earliest stories of Abraham, we’re talking maybe four thousand years ago at most. That means that roughly 95% of the history of our modern human species predates the calling of Abraham. When you consider one human life span in light of a 4.5 billion-year-old planet, thirty or sixty or ninety years all seem equally as miniscule. From that perspective, it doesn’t seem that Erica was that cheated out of much more than all of us are.

Yet at the same time, it also doesn’t diminish the gut-wrenching tragedy of two tiny children losing their mother.

Even if “to the Lord a thousand years is like a day," to us, a day is like a day.

And a year is like a year.

And they’re both significant intervals in the scope of our lifetime.

To suffer a debilitating illness concurrent with pregnancy, growing life, giving birth and having a newborn you’ll never see grow up…and having this tiny boy, this little Cade, who she loved so fiercely and who was so incredibly attached to her…thatrends the fiber of my soul.

That kind of pain is not comforted even in light of the scope of human evolutionary history.

So come, Lord Jesus. And as Cade and Ella continue to trod this earth for a few more years, bolster them with a supernatural substance in their very bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits.

Doxology

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Tue, 26 May 2015 19:35:00 +0000

A mother found pushing her dead 3-year-old son in a park swing.

A family of four swept away in a flooded house, only the father rescued.

A car crash that claimed a 2-year-old boy and his unborn brother, leaving their parents childless.

The Iraqi refugees- especially the girls- written about so graphically by Ann Voskamp.

These are all horrors that have paralyzed me JUST THIS WEEK.

Mental illness, floods, car crashes, and regimes of terror are a few of the evils that RUN UNABATED on the same earth that just today afforded me a beautiful waterside morning with a toddler playing happily in the sand.

My doubt is ever with me.

Sometimes it shrinks, in the glorious moments when beauty and hope break through and whisper their assurances.

Other times, it expands like a storm cloud, growing more ominous and black.

There are two strands of my doubt-

One is the head doubt, born of reason and growing knowledge of the world and its wild, diverse complexity that doesn’t fit neatly in our theological packages.

The other is more visceral, the kind of doubt that comes when confronted with suffering like that named above- in which my spirit breaks a little.

As I carried Cade back to the car in the early morning cool, I pressed my face to his squishy sweet baby cheek and sang the Doxology softly in his ear,

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

In those moments, I felt and meant every word. It’s the human yearning to express gratitude that even atheists like Daniel Dennett and A.J. Jacobs have written about.

It only seems fitting to cap an experience as sweet as a stolen hour by the water with my boy with a benediction of thanks and an acknowledgment that someone gave me those moments, a gift.

But on another level, the words ring hollow, tasting as dry as cotton as they roll off my tongue. I haven’t forgotten the Iraqi girls. Or the mother drowned with her babies. Or the mothers drowned in their grief for their babies.

Is it ignorant for me to sing those words? Complacent? Naïve?

At best, it seems like a denial of the very real pain and suffering that permeates the world this morning.

And I’m not in denial…which makes the words seem false.

Because, listen… Praise God…Praise God? Praise God? When babies, ripped from their parents' desperate embrace, drown under dark floodwaters?

Praise God when one moment you are driving down the road anticipating being mother of two, and the next moment, in a shock of blood and force and twisted metal, you are childless?

Praise God when girls are being bought and sold for under $200 to the silent screams of their ravaged, powerless mothers?

If theological platitudes are springing to your mind right now, just…no. No.

But then it occurred to me.

Praising Him isn’t an act of denial. It’s an act of defiance.

Defiance at the thought that evil and loss and suffering and grief get the last word.

Defiance at fatalistic cowering, defiance at apathetic insulation.

Defiance that screams, “BEYOND ALL REASON AND HOPE, I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE THAT LOVE WINS. THAT GOODNESS WINS. THAT BEAUTY WINS. SOMEHOW! SOMEWAY! SOMEDAY!”

Kyrie eleision. Lord, have mercy.

It doesn't help me "feel better," doesn't seal things up to be filed in a tidy mental compartment so that I can move along with my day. It's still confusing. It's still ludicrous.

But it’s how I must CHOOSE to live my life.

I have to choose to live as though the most beautiful thing {resurrection, redemption, and healing of all things} is the most true thing, and the most true thing is the most beautiful thing.

If its not the most beautiful thing, it’s not the most true thing. It may be “a” true thing, but it’s not the true thing.

Lord, help my unbelief.

Floodgates

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Tue, 26 May 2015 17:39:00 +0000

It starts with a drop...a trickle.

Small, provocative, insidious.

Slowly, it picks up, but-

We've seen this before.

Like rain, doubt comes in its season,

Balancing the ecosystem of that which is alive.

But what is needed for health can turn excessive,

until the rivulets thicken into currents unweildy and unwelcome.

Power is transferred, footing lost.

We are at the mercy of a force unconcerned with what it destroys,

Holding our breath to see what will be left in its wake.

Who holds back the flood?

Who says, "Thus far you shall come, and no farther,

And here shall your proud ways be stopped?"

Kyrie elesion.

Here's to 34.

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 18:39:00 +0000

Thirty-four.

It sounds frumpy to me. (And old, of course.)

But here I am.

Married, two kids, stay-at-home mom.

(In those respects, "livin the dream" I'd always hoped life would bring at this age.)

But also...full of angst, with dreams of other things churning in me, too--

Writing. Justice. Advocacy. Creativity. Connection. Diversity.

I'm still figuring things out in Rhode Island, and still having to defer SO MUCH processing and reflection because of the acute demands of my daily life (mainly mothering) in this season.

I'm happy & hopeful, stressed & tired, enthusiastic & fearful, succeeding & failing. I'm more confident that I've ever been; simultaneously restless AND fulfilled. Full of paradox: so different from who I used to be, and yet still the same little Allison I've always been.

I'm thankful (really) for time to write a few words today as Cade naps and Reece plays with the iPad. This time is NOT a "given" on any day, but I'm happy that we seem to be settling into a rhythm where it happens more frequently than it used to.

So much in my life these days involves a steep learning curve-

My constantly evolving mothering in response to my boys' ever-changing needs,

Noonday,

Establishing myself here, in the first (quasi)permanent place we've lived since getting married.

Life is exhausting and frustrating and full- but at the end of the day, I'm thankful that in the midst of my failures and weaknesses and risks and mistakes (of which there have been many), I'm right here, doing exactly this, right now.

So here's to the "tired thirties" (as Madeleine L'Engle perfectly dubbed them),

to a mimosa-for-me/orange-juice-for-him toast with Reece this morning over breakfast,

to pink champagne birthday cake and to dinner out with my favorite three boys tonight.

Here's to 34.

Stream of Consciousness on a Sunday Afternoon When There's No Time to Blog

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 18:47:00 +0000

Something in me shrivels when I haven't written- journaled privately or blogged- in a long while.

And that little shrively part of me needs to be fed today, so in this fleeting half hour I have in my hands now, stolen away at a coffee shop where conversations around me are more distracting than I'd like and my stomach is growling because I chose this over lunch, I'm ready to let the words fly, jumbled and unedited and disjointed.

It's the third Sunday of Advent, the most tender, holy, poignant season of the year for me, and I feel like I'm missing it. So much swirling around in my day to day. Even when I'm physically still, I don't know how to quiet my mind these days.

We have found a church that I love. I have felt nourished and challenged and downright teary after each of the three services we've attended so far, and I am immensely grateful to have found a place and a people that are helping to stir my spiritual stagnation.

Today is the 2-year anniversary of Sandy Hook, and though I had no direct or personal connection to the horrific events of that day, it changed me. It shook up something in me that has never quite settled again, two years later. The same thing that Columbine did to me in 1999 as a senior in high school. But Sandy Hook unhinged me even more, and it just adds to the heaviness and longing of this season, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

"And Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed...."

Simple verse, posted on Facebook without commentary by a spiritual mentor two weeks ago, and this verse continues to rumble around inside me. It validates me in my longing for quiet and retreat and withdrawn time....

How often am I trying to escape in the daily grind right now? Escape to my phone, escape to my planning for IF gathering ,escape to my labor of love with Noonday...

Who has time for housework? It's beneath me. I'd never say it (well, I guess I just did)...but when I have lofty dreams and visions for how to use my life and time and energy in this season, how can I waste so much on laundry and dishes and cleanliness? I mean, I have two little boys....

But it does matter. It's my calling right now, along with these other things. To create a space that's harmonious and comfortable and energy-giving (rather than chaotic and energy-draining) for myself and for Matt and Reece and Cade.

(I still have to offer the disclaimer that Matt does more housework than I do. But I need to reframe how I'm seeing the care of my home in the most menial, physical sense. This is hard for me. Really, really hard for me.)

It's Monk Work. Thank you, Micha Boyett, for this perfect way to reframe these daily tasks.

My Cade turns one on Wednesday.

The heated discussion on neo-conservativism, fascism, and the political climate of World War II that's taking place between the two gentlemen behind me is distracting me so much, but I press on, because if I want these moments, I must use them. Such is life right now.

Back to Cade. One year old on Wednesday. One year since Matt brought me apple juice instead of the cranberry I requested at 6am when I knew labor was starting; one year since kissing my little blond boy goodbye in the sunny kitchen of our precious house in Temple before heading out the door on the short, sun-drenched drive to the hospital, where after pushing through only three contractions, Cade was born just an hour after we arrived.

I need to hold these moments so close. I can still recite and remember the tiniest of details of Reece's birth, but I started to feel a little differently about them after his first birthday. I don't know why. I don't know how. It just changed. And, irrationally, I don't want that to happen with how I feel when I relive the day of Cade's birth. I want to always feel like this- like its near and vivid and real- when I think about it.

It's time to go.

I'm not satisfied yet.

Much more to say...and my wish for quiet contemplation has not been fulfilled. Such is the risk I take in a public coffee shop. Goodbye, men whose conversation has now shifted to the radicalization of Islam. Goodbye.

Back home now where I'm needed. This is life right now. And I'm jumping back in.

5 Reasons I'm Partnering with Noonday (+ a giveaway!)

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 03:12:00 +0000

It started as a fleeting thought in the shower one day, not long after our cross-country move.

Daydreaming about possibilities for a new chapter of life in Rhode Island, I wondered, What about Noonday?

But I quickly put the thought out of my head, because (full disclosure here):

I am not built for sales, y'all.

I have many friends and family members who are. And I've watched their strengths at work, their passions ignite, and their personalities flourish as they navigate businesses and step out boldly as entrepreneurs. I watch in admiration, supporting them with my love (and sometimes money.)

But that's just not me. I'm a book nerd and a humanities lover with degrees in social work and education. An introvert with literature, not a go-getter with a sales pitch.

So I didn't think too seriously about Noonday- other than planning a modest amount of our monthly budget to be used to purchase pieces for myself and others- until I got Erin's message.

"Hey! So...we don't have an ambassador in Rhode Island! Would you be interested?"

Never before had I expressed interest to Erin (my friend who is a ROCKSTAR ambassador for Noonday in my hometown) or to anyone, for that matter. Not even to Matt. And I hadn't shared about my budgeting plans, either. So reading Erin's words, my heart skipped a beat, and without even thinking it through, I knew I would do it.

There is no ambassador here. No one to show off the unique, handmade accessories crafted by Noonday artisans all around the world. No one to share with women in this part of New England about the incredible work Noonday is doing.

No one to tell them the story of Emebet, an HIV-positive Noonday artisan in Ethiopia, who turns melted-down artillery metal from former war conflicts into jewelry in order to earn a livable wage and receive the appropriate medical care.

No one to tell them about Sham, who, at age 12 in India, moved to a city by himself to work as a floor sweeper in a factory to help support his family back in their village, but who today has dignified work and a means of supporting his wife and three young daughters as one of two top artisans in Noonday's partner workshop.

These stories, my friends, are where I come in. Because even though the words "salesperson" and "entrepreneur" and even "stylist" don't particularly describe me, there are other words that do. Other words that resonate with me deeply, like...

Storyteller.

Advocate.

Pursuer of justice.

Believer.

And so here are 5 reasons why I am partnering with Noonday, despite my ineptitude:

1. Through Noonday, I am an advocate for artisans whose voices and stories could not be heard without ambassadors to tell them. I'm reminded of the text from Proverbs 31:8-9 that used to hang up on my wall-

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves...

Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless,

and see that they get justice.

2. I am passionate about connecting others like me (who might spend their days potty-training and playing legos, for example) with concrete, tangible ways to make a global impact. We live in an age of more "awareness" than ever before, and while awareness is certainly the first step in creating change, it can also cause deep frustration and despair when we don't know how to move beyond it into concrete action. For those who, like me, frequently wrestle with the disconnect between global issues and the minutiae of our own daily lives, I am thrilled to offer a simple, sustainable, (and fun!) way to help make an impact.

3. Noonday is effective precisely because it is a business, rather than a charity. Let me be clear: there are numerous non-profits and charities doing tremendous work all over the globe. But Noonday's artisans benefit not from receiving handouts or donations, but by being given the opportunity for dignified, sustainable work at a livable wage in a fair environment. This is made possible through the business model employed by Noonday. So even though my social work background puts me more at ease in the non-profit world, I must acknowledge that Noonday's ministry is business, and vice versa. Rather than being mutually exclusive, they are actually interdependent in this case.

4. I love orphan care. Ever since my Romanian summers with the little ones who captured my heart a decade ago, orphan care has had a special place in my heart. I love that Noonday strives to keep families together by creating a pathway out of poverty. And I love that in places and circumstances where children are in need of families, Noonday gives to families who are adopting them.

And, finally...

5. I am joining with Noonday because it does force me out of my niche and into a world I'm not entirely comfortable in. The beautiful part of this for me is that every time I respond to a stranger's compliment of a Noonday piece with a quick pitch of the collection or every time I risk asking for trunk show bookings, I am reminding myself of reasons 1-4 above. If the marketing and selling part came easily or naturally to me, then I might be inclined to forget why I'm doing it in the first place. But my relative discomfort will serve as a continual reminder of these reasons.

And now, without further ado....for my first giveaway.

In order for Noonday ambassadors to have a platform for their storytelling and a market for the artisans' accessories, they need hostesses to open their homes for trunk shows. As a hostess, you are simply agreeing to invite your friends over one evening (or afternoon or brunch or lunch hour, etc) to try on fun accessories, maybe do a little holiday shopping, and make a difference in global poverty.

It's that simple: open your home and invite your friends. I will do the rest! (And I will even help with the inviting part.)

Anyone living in Rhode Island, Connecticut, or Massachusetts who books a November or December trunk show with me by Friday, November 14th will be entered to win a $50 Noonday voucher. What a perfect way to get a special holiday gift for someone (or a special accessory for yourself for all those upcoming holiday events) for free!

In addition to being entered in the giveaway drawing, every hostess will have the chance to earn free Noonday at her trunk show!

If you know a friend in this region who would be interested in hosting a trunk show (maybe learning about Noonday has brought someone particular to mind or made you think, Oh, so-and-so would love this!) then spread the word! If you share this with a friend who books a trunk show, you will get entered in the giveaway, too- no matter where you live.

So please help me spread the word about Noonday.

(And if you are far away, you can always shop on my Noonday website or connect with an ambassador in your state.)

Giveaway winner will be chosen at random on Saturday, November 15th, so email me at allisontyrochwoodard@gmail.com or contact me via any of the methods on my ambassador homepage to get your show scheduled!

On Being a Psalmist, Not a Saint

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:30:00 +0000

Dear Boys,

It is a heavy time in the world.

I suppose that is always true, but lately, some really big, hard things are drawing a lot of media attention, so the heaviness feels...heavier.

ISIS is spreading fear and evil throughout the war-weary Middle East, and the stories coming out of Syria and Iraq are some of the most horrific in recent memory.

Ebola continues to ravage West Africa on a scale that we cannot fathom in this country, although many here have been frightened by the first cases of the disease in the U.S. these last few weeks, after a Liberian man died from Ebola in Dallas and two nurses were infected.

I hear about these things, I read about them and turn them over and over in my heart. And yet, there is still such a disconnect.

My days are filled with wiping crumbs and ignoring piles of laundry on the couch and watching Happy Feet and exploring our lovely region in this exquisite time of year with you, boys. On Friday, we took a long walk in Roger Williams Park, marveling at the leaves and the ducks and feeling the crisp air fill our lungs. Then on Saturday, we went to Lyman Orchards- a favorite Connecticut spot of ours- to wander among the pumpkins and buy cider donut holes. We took you two to Yale for the first time, and you played in the Div School courtyard while Daddy and I reminisced about his time there. Reece, you climbed the exterior steps of Marquand Chapel- the very ones that Daddy walked across when he graduated four years ago- and you looked like such a big boy.

Even as I type this, the heartache and suffering of the world melts away, and I feel at home in my comfortable little niche in the world.

But then I'm reminded again-

Another sickness- enterovirus 68- has struck many children across the country, and a preschooler in New Jersey died, asymptomatically, from it in his sleep last month.

Just this morning, I read about a little girl who was killed by her stepfather in Brooklyn for (apparently) having a potty-training accident.

There is always this tension between what I experience of life and what I know is reality "out there." And while there is nothing wrong with the life we are somehow fortunate enough to lead, there is also the danger of thinking we are somehow entitled to this existence and that the things in the news will always remain at arms' distance from us. We read of Ebola and are tempted to think that will never be "us", that there must be a certain "otherness" to those affected in Sierra Leone and Guinea and Liberia.

It is tempting to think that the kind of war and oppression and atrocities in the Middle East- the selling of women and children into sexual slavery and the grisly, publicized beheadings carried out by terror groups- will never be our reality because they are too incompatible with autumn leaf hunts and library storytime.

Even in stories close to home, we clamour for the "otherness" factor. When a child dies from a common illness, we are quick to console ourselves by assuming they must have had other, underlying medical issues...or even when a child dies at the hand of an abuser, we (consciously or not) look for what sets us apart from those affected- what makes us different from them and then, the logic goes, somehow safe from what they suffered.

There is such a danger in this mentality, my sweet boys. I understand it. I succumb to it (far too often.) But it is not okay.

They are not "other." We are not exempt from the things facing our brothers and sisters. It's true that we are sometimes protected by our location in this country and our legal system and our access to resources and the fact that we have great wealth, by global standards. But we cannot make the mistake of thinking that these luxuries inform us at all about God or our own identities. In fact, our view of ourselves and our theology get skewed when we primarily view the world through the lens of our privilege and power. We get a far more accurate view of both God and man when we sit and consider Ebola and ISIS and slavery and death.

And that is a really, really uncomfortable thought. In fact, it's kinda horrifying.

We like to see ourselves through the lens of our power and wealth and comfort. It seems to tell us that we are special, and that we are entitled to life with pumpkin patches and cider donuts. It also, insidiously tells us that God would not let us suffer certain things.

In the midst of writing this post, I found myself sitting at the table with Reece while eating a snack. (You didn't really think I get to write anything in one sitting these days, did you?) I pulled Sally Lloyd Jones' Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing off the shelf in our kitchen to read to you while you ate, Reece. The page I happened to turn to was about God hiding us under his wings like a mother hen. When I read or said something along the lines of God protecting us, you immediately asked,

"What happens when he doesn't protect us?"

(This question was not nearly as deep as it may appear. It is actually a variant of the question I get fifty times a day- it's almost second nature for you to ask now- "What happens when I don't eat my lunch?" "What happens when you don't fix your hair, Mommy?" "What happens when the penguins don't swim under the water?" and so on and so forth forever and ever.)

But even though the question was posed instinctively and even rhetorically, it hung in the air for me, because it's the very thing we all want to know. It's easy to default to an answer along the lines of "He always protects us, even when it doesn't seem like it...or we suffer...etc etc." But I feel uncomfortable with that. I feel uncomfortable, on one level at least, trying to push that view of things, especially on you, my small, impressionable children. Because there is a very real disconnect between what we are taught/what we read in the Bible about God as protector and what befalls the innocent in the world.

He didn't protect the twelve Ebola nurses who cared for an orphaned infant from contracting the disease and dying.

He didn't protect the sweet girl in Brooklyn, as she soiled her pants as all young ones do, from moments later being beaten and killed by her stepfather.

You can turn all the theological gymnastics you want; but on a very real level, He just didn't.

So what do we do with that?

Give up? Stop believing? Stop praying?

None of these avenues satisfy.

Here's the best I can tell you today, boys. The best I can tell you, when you wrestle with these questions (and I hope you will wrestle, because failure to wrestle means a failure to really enter in...and I want you to enter in, to life and to faith and to what it really means to be here and to be human) is this:

When you can't be a saint, be a psalmist.

I stumbled across this idea in the pages of Micha Boyett's book, Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer. In her study of St. Benedict, she was disappointed in the biographical literature that painted him in such lofty light that his humanity and weakness were almost lost. As she put it, she "didnt want a saint. I wanted a psalmist."

I'm changing her context a bit, but it immediately struck me that sometimes we all need to BE psalmists- in other words, there are times when we just cry out to God and AT God and feel the depths of pain and betrayal and confusion and hurt that are not easily solved, that are not easily tied up with a theological bow, that are not explained away.

To be totally transparent, I am a little wary of God right now. I look at you two, Reece and Cade, and think I will just die of love. I can't imagine ever, ever seeing either of you suffer even a fraction of the atrocities mentioned above. These are places so dark in my mind that I just can't even go there in a hypothetical sense without breaking open something horrible and irreparable in my spirit. But yet, these unthinkable things are real for multitudes across the world. They are real in a world that is also, somehow, goverend by a good and trustworthy God. I don't know how.

Listen, I can't be a saint today.

I can only be a psalmist.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. -from Psalm 22

I love you both- desperately, achingly, immensely,

Mama

An Honest Post from 6 AM

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 12:46:00 +0000

From my journal this morning...

Here's what I need to say, as I sit here at Starbucks at 6:20am with an almond croissant, a black venti, and a baby who was up at 5 (after multiple night wakings)-

Sometimes, this feels like torture. I am so. so. so. tired.

And I worry I'll look back and wish I would have savored more or written more or enjoyed more, so I need that future version of myself to know this:

I'm doing the best I can.

Yes, choking back a sob as I write those words this A.M-

I'm doing the best I can.

I know they'll grow fast. I know the days of gummy grins and chubby hands are short, and that I'll miss them when they're over. But lest you think, dear future self, that you aren't making the most of them now-- You ARE.

You are just very, very tired. And very, very pressed for writing time. And you aren't wishing this time away, even when you reach the end of your rope and sit in the baby's room irrationally pleading with your 8-month-old to be quiet, because waking his brother in the next room would make everything 100 times worse...and you've learned that while it's hard to deal with your own tiredness, and harder still to deal with a tired baby, it is IMPOSSIBLE to deal with an overtired 2-year-old.

Lord, have mercy.

It is a small grace that Starbucks is within walking distance, and that this time of year, it is 60 degrees and sunny at 6 in the morning. Yes, that is grace.

You feel guilty--and frustrated and conflicted--when you walk in past the news rack and spot yet another headline about the horrors in war-torn Syria and Palestine and Ebola-ravaged West Africa.

Your problems are so small, you with the two healthy, thriving children and idyllic New England neighborhood and your freakin' coffee and croissant.

Boo hoo. Cry me a big fat river.

But, as they say, the struggle is real. And from time to time, you may fantasize about life when you might actually watch a movie or read a book after dinner, or write again or linger over coffee or sleep a whole night or do ANYTHING not dictated in some way by two tiny boys.

But even with its hardships, you are drinking in this season. You are. And when the time comes that you inevitably miss & romanticize these days, and you worry that you didn't enjoy them enough, remember--

You are, right now, doing the best you can.

This is as REAL as it gets!

I Only Have You for a Minute

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 16:48:00 +0000

Dear Reece Jacob,

I only have you for a minute.

That's why I broke "the rules" tonight, and let you come back in the kitchen for a snack after bath time and story time, when you should have been in bed.

Daddy was at college Bible study, and Cade was asleep. You hadn't eaten much dinner, and you asked so sweetly.

All of those were my rationalizations.

Those, and the fact that I only have you for a minute.

You are growing so fast, and soon you won't wear Cars pajamas or smell like Mr. Bubble when you come out of the bath or want to sit and eat "four pieces of cereal" with Mommy at the table before bed.

I only have you like this for a minute.

So I'm going to squeeze every second out of this one precious minute.

On the Day We Heard "Providence"

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 20:34:00 +0000

Dear Boys,

It was the call we'd been waiting to receive for weeks.

Actually, it was the call we'd been waiting to receive for two years.

After interviews and applications and offers that weren't quite right....

After rejections and wrong fits and a particularly agonizing decision to say "no" last summer and stay put....

Last week, we finally got THE call for THE job that will propel our little family into our next adventure.

And appropriately--poetically,even--it came on the same day that I finished my job for the year and closed the door of my classroom for the last time.

Your daddy has had an ongoing relationship with this organization for some time now, so the call offering him a position was exciting, though not unexpected. What made the days and weeks leading up to it so nerve-wracking was that we didn't know, until the moment of that phone call, where they would ask us to go.

It was around 4pm when Daddy's phone rang. As he answered, he silently gestured to me that he was going to take it outside. While I waited inside with you two, I did what anyone on the verge of potentially life-changing news might do: I took a selfie.

Nervous...excited....ready to hear the news!

Meanwhile....Reece, you were busy dumping out every toy bucket in the playroom and combing through the mess. I really didn't care, though, and was happy to let you do whatever it took to keep your unsuspecting little self busy and happy.

I decided to do something productive next, so I folded laundry with Cade's "help."

Boys, there's this thing your Daddy does sometimes--this half-smile that he tries to conceal when he's is excited about something--and I kept thinking that no matter what the outcome of the call was, as long as I saw that little smile when he came back inside, everything would be ok. As it turned out, I didn't even have to wait for him to come inside. At one point, I glanced out the window and saw him pacing, on the phone, on the side of the house...with that unmistakable curve lighting up his face.

Whatever was being said, he was happy with it.

And we've waited a long time for that kind of news.

When he finally got off the phone, he came inside. And then, while the two of you sat near, oblivious to just how momentous this news would be in all of our lives, he told me:

Providence.

They want us to go to Brown.

And just like that, that foggy, abstract "next step" that's been eluding us for two years came at least slightly into focus.

Boys, we're moving to Rhode Island.

On the Year I (Really) Became a Teacher

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 15:49:00 +0000

Dear Boys,

I'm sitting at my desk in Room D06 for the last time.

The shelves are bare, the cabinets have been emptied, the board wiped clean.

As I cleaned out my files from the year, I was reminded of the journey I've traveled with my students these last ten months, through the Iroquois’colorful creation myths, the Puritans’ pious poetry, the Patriots’ impassioned rhetoric. I bid farewell to the familiar cast- Miller and Fitzgerald, Poe and Hurston. Whitman and Thoreau.

I’ve never felt a sadness like this at the end of a teaching year.

This has been the school year of many things--

The year of having a baby.

The year of living in my hometown on purpose.

The year of being a "working" mother, the year of sink-or-swim in the work/life balance.

And yet, when all is said and done and I comb back through the years of my life one day, I think it will be apparent to me that this was also the year I really became a teacher.

It seems strange to write that, since my year at Belton High this year marked my fourth teaching gig, and it's been nine years since I was first certified and employed as a teacher in the state of Texas.

But there has been something about this year--even in the midst of the monumental process of adding another human to the world and to our family--that clicked ever-so-subtly for me professionally.

I've dipped my toes in a variety of professional settings through the years-- public high schools, large hospitals, small counseling centers, a non-profit, and a private special education school. Though each experience has provided me with something valuable, all I've really wanted to do in life is write and be a full-time mama. So, I continued looking and learning and drifting a bit professionally, doubting I would ever really feel 100% alive in any given job outside my home.

This year, I learned that I was wrong. Even with two very small children at home, I found myself driven and inspired and energized by my job in the classroom. Aside from the initial return after my maternity leave, there was never a day I dreaded going to work the entire year. I've never been able to say that about any other job I've had. I learned, I grew, I enjoyed myself. And now, I feel sad that it's over.

Of course, I couldn't be more excited about the job that awaits me now: being a full-time mama to you two precious boys who are so young and fun and impressionable and loving. I can't wait to focus more time and attention on you, and not feel pulled in as many directions. But I needed to write this, to keep it tucked away somewhere on my little blog, just what this year has meant for me as an educator. I am a teacher. Professionally, I feel more confident than ever that I was meant to teach high school students.

And one day, I will again.

On My {Much Neglected} Love Affair with Reading

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 03:21:00 +0000

The table next to my nursing chair, a couple of weeks after Cade's birth

Dear Boys,

They've been building up for months-- in my Kindle, on my "saved records" list at the library, on my nightstand, and spilling over onto the floor beside the bed.

Last night, I decided to count the books that I have been meaning to read. And the grand total? 31.

Yes, 31 books that are just waiting--in one form or another--for me to pick up and begin. And that number doesn't count the three that I've at least started.

With the halfway mark of 2014 rapidly approaching, I have only read two complete books, and one of those (Zora Neale Hurston's masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God) was a re-read that I taught to my eleventh-graders this semester.

(The other book I've read cover to cover is Addie Zierman's memoir When We Were On Fire. I read that one fast, furious, and at the expense of much precious sleep over a 36-hr period, only because it hit such a profound nerve that I almost felt like leaving it unfinished would have left something deep in me unresolved, like I was abandoning therapy or something.)

Now that I think about it, I should also count Shauna Niequist's Bread & Wine as completed, since I've read at least 80% of it since January-- all on the iPhone kindle app while nursing Cade in the middle of the night.

Other than those three, however, my book list for this year remains little more than wishful thinking. With school ending, I'd like to think I'll have more time to dive in. But of course, even without my teaching responsibilities, finding time to read is nearly impossible right now. So even though I may not get around to some of these for awhile (or ever), I thought I'd share my list of "Waiting to Read"s...because even a list of wishes says something about who I am and what I value right now.

Fiction:
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
The Eternal Wonder by Pearl Buck
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseini
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Housseini
Glittering Images by Susan Howatch

Memoir:
Bloom by Kelle Hampton (I've had a hard print copy of this book for over a year!)
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
Sparkly Green Earrings by Melanie Shankle
The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan
Any Day a Beautiful Change by Katherine Willis Pershey
Notes from a Blue Bike by Tsh Oxenreider
Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of Sinner & Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber
Something Other than God by Jennifer Fulwiler

Faith/Theology:
Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, & Everyday Prayer by Micha Boyett
God and the Gay Christian by Matthew Vines
Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey
Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus by Lois Tverberg
God and Harry Potter at Yale by Rev. Danielle Tumminio
100 Foreskins: Wrestling with the Random Bits of the Bible by Jason Micheli
The Lost World of Genesis 1 by John Walton
Raw Revelation: The Bible They Never Tell You About by Mark Roncace
Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James

Current International/Social Justice Issues:
Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (been on my Kindle for two years!)
Preemptive Love by Jeremy Courtney (by my bed since January!)

Other/Miscellaneous:
Walden by Henry David Thoreau (yes, I teach American Lit, and no, I've never read it)
The Extreme Life of the Sea by Stephen & Anthony Palumbi
The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan
The Body Book by Cameron Diaz

So there you have it. I didn't link any of them, because I honestly don't have the time, and there's always google/amazon, right? But these are the books that I hope I can squeeze in, starting this summer, between Llama Llama Mad at Mama, Curious George at the Aquarium, and Big Red Barn. :)

The Ones You Never Forget

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Tue, 03 Jun 2014 16:16:00 +0000

I asked him if I would see him again, knowing that it was unlikely he’d show up for the obligatory “attendance purposes only” period the day after the class took the final exam.

He gave me a half-smile and said, “Uh, sure…it’s only a half day tomorrow, anyway.”

“Well, just in case I don’t,” --I looked him straight in the eyes-- “take care of yourself.”

He was never one to shy away from a pointed look.

“You, too.” –was his genuine response.

“I mean it. You’re smart. Please take care of yourself.”

Now his eyes dropped slightly, but not before I saw them cloud a bit with shame.

“Next year. I’m gonna turn over that new leaf next year.”

One last smile and he was gone.

He's one I’ll never forget. He failed my class for the year (despite making an 88 on the final exam) because he had over 70 absences and too many missing assignments to make up. Some of the absences were due to some pretty serious legal trouble, but most of the absences were because he spent much of the year living on his own with a friend, rather than with a parent or an adult. At 17, that’s a pretty insurmountable obstacle if you’re going to avoid truancy.

Earlier in the year, I wasn’t sure what I thought of him. I didn't like his attitude. Even though he never caused a problem, he sat in the back with earbuds in, cocky and unengaged. Then there was the day when another student loudly instigated something with him in class, startling all of us out of an otherwise quiet working environment. Twenty-six pairs of unblinking eyes waited to see what he would do—what Iwould do. I walked as calmly as possible to the back of the room, and gave him direct, unquestionable instructions in the lowest voice I could manage. Eyes trained forward and every muscle in his body visibly tensed, he complied.

After that day, something changed in me. The next day he wound up in ISS for an unrelated incident, and I went to see him there. We talked about what happened in class, and he requested a seat change to get away from the student who had caused a scene. I assured him it’d already been done, and after that day, I felt we had an understanding between us.

News of his arrest shortly after I returned from maternity leave spooked me a bit. These were no light charges, and even I felt a little nervous when I received an email saying he was back at school just a week later. He stayed in ISS for several weeks, but all the work I received from him was impeccable. When I went to see him in the ISS room one day, all trepidation I might have felt about having him return to my classroom fell away in an instant.

He was cautious with his words, yet stumbled over them when the subject of his arrest came up. He seemed embarrassed, and spoke in hushed tones about what would happen if the charges turned out to be a felony.

The next day, I found in my school mailbox a poem he wrote as part of an assignment I’d given. It didn’t have the tone of someone disenfranchised with life, or even with school. It had a far more hopeful tone than most of the poems the students in my classroom were churning out at the same time, and it was titled simply, Excitement. The excitement he spoke of ranged from a childlike anticipation of visiting a waterpark this summer to the sweeping hopefulness of one day falling in love and having a child of his own.

This year, something shifted for me professionally, and I think a major factor in that shift was that this was the year I taught after having children of my own. My babies are just that—babies—and my students are on the verge of adulthood. But now that the impossibly painful, soul-crushing love of a mother has taken root in me, I can't help but see these teenaged babies differently, too.

Reece and Cade, I want you to know that when he walked into my room for the last time that day, I saw the two of you in his combed hair, collared shirt, and freckled face. He’s been through things I pray you two will never, ever experience…and yet, he was a little, too, once upon a time; a wide-eyed manchild with dimples in his chubby hands and impossibly long baby eyelashes.

My path will likely never cross with his again. But I held on to his poem, and when I see the optimism scrawled in red ink on notebook paper, I will think of him, and say a prayer.

The Evolution of How We Spend a Long Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Mon, 26 May 2014 02:34:00 +0000

This afternoon, as I was loading Cade in the car so that Matt could drive him around to get him to sleep (and also make a dash through the Starbucks drive-thru for a much-needed caffeine fix for us both), I found myself vaguely remembering a blog post I wrote a few years ago on Memorial Day, detailing how Matt and I spent our holiday weekend before we had children.

The snapshot of that post that flashed through my mind was a picture of my craft paints spread out on our porch as I leisurely worked on some creative project or another, and as I stood there in our garage today with my unbrushed hair and pajama shorts, keenly aware of the mess of a kitchen that needed my attention as soon as I walked back into the house, I had to chuckle. My, how times have changed since we had children.

Just for fun (or punishment, maybe), I pulled up that old post, and by the time I scrolled through it in its entirety, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. My, how things have changed, indeed. To commemorate the evolution of how we spend our holiday weekends, I thought I'd re-post the original pictures and content from 2010, alongside the updated version-- Memorial Day Weekend 2014...

(It's worth noting that all of the pictures from the original post 4 years ago were carefully staged and shot with a real camera. All of the pictures from 2014 were taken on an iPhone and left unedited. I mean, really, who has the time? Oh yeah...I did. Four years ago.)

2010: Three straight days of gorgeous, 75-degree weather

2014: Three straight days of humid, 87-degree weather. (So far, not that different...)

2010: S'mores after a dinner of Trader Joe's all-natural beef hot dogs and Sam Adams

2014: Dinner was leftover faijtas we snagged from my parents' house, half of which ended up on the floor beneath Reece's chair. (Do you know how hard it is to sweep up cooked rice and soft shredded cheese in its non-dried up state?)

2010: An early morning run here

2014: An early morning praying Cade will go back to sleep for just thirty more minutes so I can at least not get up while its still dark

2010: A leisurely morning drinking coffee at our favorite spot in New Haven

2014: A morning spent glancing wistfully at the mug of untouched coffee (made from two-week-old grounds) that I haven't gotten around to drinking yet

2010: A game of Yahtzee in front of the open window

2014: A game of peekaboo on the floor

2010: Homemade watermelon-raspberry slush with a sprig of fresh mint

2014: OMG. I forgot I actually have fresh mint leaves on hand. Maybe I can toss them into the remnants of this not-so-freshly-brewed iced tea?

2010: Mid-afternoon reading

2014: Watching Reece have mid-afternoon "reading" time in lieu of a nap (which he no longer takes--sigh) on the monitor, while trying to race to get as much done as possible in the meantime

2010: Painting on the porch

2014: Wait--what?! Who does that?! Scrambling to finish lesson plans for my last week of instruction before finals. (Decidedly indoors.)

2010: History channel marathon of the miniseries America, The Story of Us.

2014: We finally watched the DVRed season finale of Parks and Rec (the one and only show we can even sort of keep up with), which aired exactly one month ago.

2010: Three days of quality time with the one I love

2014: Three days of quality time with the three I love.

Our long weekends at this moment in life may not consist of drinking coffee over deep conversation on lazy mornings, or losing ourselves in good books all afternoon. One day, Lord willing, these activities will find their place in our rhythm again. And when they do, I have a sneaking suspicion that I will look back at the pictures of rice on the floor and Reece reading on the baby monitor, and long to spend my holiday weekend in precisely this way again.

At the End of Maternity Leave

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 13:00:00 +0000

Today is my final day of maternity leave.

Tomorrow morning, I will step back into my classroom and, for a few hours at least, trade babies for teenagers and Dr. Seuss for Zora Neale Hurston.

I've been fortunate to get to stay home this long after giving birth (Cade will be three months old tomorrow!), but the time still went by way too fast.

For as long as I can remember, I've had this inexplicable urge to maximize my time. I've never been a person who (back in my pre-Mommy days when this was an option) slept 'til noon or spent a day off watching TV. I always have a to-do list; I have a tremendous fear of wasting time. When the end of a designated time period draws near (be it the end of a weekend or the end of a break from school or the end of the five hours of Mother's Day Out), I fear that I didn't "make the most of it." And for me, "making the most of it" always means being completely intentional.

There is a lot to be said about being intentional: intentional with our resources, intentional in our relationships, intentional with our time. But that last one has the ability to really trip me up sometimes, because my standard for being intentional with my time is absurdly high. You can imagine how this translates to maternity leave. The postpartum/newborn stage doesn't exactly lend itself well to moving intentionally throughout the day. Many of these last 90 days have slipped by with no showering, wearing pjs all day, lamenting about a dirty house and a sink piled with dishes, a fussy baby, and a toddler who spent a little too much time on the iPad that day.

I can't stand those days. And I've had a lot of them since December 17.

So I'm now wondering how I can keep myself from feeling like I didn't "make the most of" my maternity leave, and the answer, I think, is by realizing this--

The quality of this season is not necessarily determined by what I spent the most time doing, but, rather, by those moments and days that most stand out to me in retrospect. When I look back on these 90 days, instead of remembering day after day of bleary-eyed hibernation in an unkempt house, covered in spit-up and feeding my toddler grilled nuggets from Chick-fil-a again, I will remember...

Sitting on the couch on Christmas Eve, cuddling my week-old baby while Matt put together Reece's new train table.

The day my mom took off to spend the whole day at our house when Cade was about two weeks old. She opened all the blinds, cleaned all the bathrooms, cooked & cleaned the kitchen, and entertained Reece all day. She made our little cluttered, post-baby cave feel like home again.

The night I slept over at my parents' house with Cade, and then spent the entire next day alone with him at their house, rocking and dozing and nursing and taking a bath and just focusing on getting to know my littlest son. (At the time, this was an invaluable gift, as I'd spent a lot of time and energy focused on Reece after "missing" my big boy in the days following Cade's birth. That day at my parents' allowed me to slow down and focus on bonding with Cade while Reece had a fun day with his daddy. Also, it should be noted that there was quite a bit of fussiness and crying that day, as Cade's reflux was pretty terrible at that point. So lest I look back and think it was all butterflies and rainbows that day, it was not. Still, it was memorable. And part of the journey.)

The day Reece was at Mother's Day Out and Cade slept, and my house was relatively in order and I was relatively rested, and I actually chose to sit down and finally watch The Help. What was remarkable about that day was that I gave myself permission to do something like watch a movie (so yes, it was still intentional), and I really enjoyed it.

The night of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, when we ate fajitas at my parents' house, and then Matt brought Reece home to go to bed while I stayed to watch in front of the fire with a glass of wine and white chocolate cranberry cookies, swapping commentary with my dad while my mom and Cade slept in an armchair.

The day I decided to brave the Stratford-to-Hickory hill again for the first time postpartum with Reece in the jogging stroller. It was admittedly too much for me that day, but the little boy telling me about the pretend picnic he was having in his stroller and sloshing water from his cup into his tray in the springlike warmth of the day helped take my mind off of how hard it felt.

That same afternoon, when Reece wouldn't nap, but let me rock him for half an hour while Cade was asleep and the rain machines were the only sound in the house.

There are many more moments, too, of course-- playing at the park over Valentine's Day weekend when JJ, Steph, and Parker were here and it was 75 and gorgeous; celebrating the impending arrival of our first niece over lasagna and mini-cupcakes when Jenny and Matt visited from Chicago; taking a bubble bath and reading in the middle of the afternoon on my birthday while Cade slept in his carrier nearby.

There was also Matt's birthday dinner at Cheeves, where the lobster bisque and Irish coffee outdid even the delicious steak and salmon we had as our entrees.

There were the Monday nights when Matt led college Bible study and my dad would take it upon himself to come over just to help bathe Reece or hold Cade while I put Reece to bed.

There were all the Sunday nights we would end up at my parents' house around dinner time and order pizza, with the good-natured clash between my sausage-and-peppers purist husband and chicken-is-a-legitimate-pizza-topping insistent dad.

These the moments that will characterize this season of transitioning to a family of four. These are the moments that mark my maternity leave. No matter how many "wasted" days came in between as I struggled to get my bearings as a new mama-to-two, those days fade away, and these moments remain.

On Giving Up for Lent

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 16:42:00 +0000

Dear Reece and Cade,

Today is the fifth day of Lent.

Although I've become more mindful of the church calendar over the last few years, I've still not really made it a practice to give up something specific during the Lenten season. This year in particular, nothing stood out to me as a good candidate for sacrifice, so I didn't intend to make one.

But on the first night of Lent, an idea took root in my mind and grew until I couldn't ignore it. It's either stupid or brilliant (and I'm still working on which), but either way, it feels worthy to pursue.

As I hinted in the prayer letter, I've been wallowing in doubt and cynicism for awhile now. And it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, that's what I should give up for Lent. Maybe I need to give up the cynical attitude that is poisoning my interaction with God and causing a standstill in my faith.

I will never be a proponent of blithely dismissing genuine doubts, or brushing aside the serious questions of this mysterious and bewildering faith. So that's not what this is. I'm a firm believer in the importance of journeying through the questions and contradictions, rather than merely around them. But the truth is that I've reached a point where I'm not really even fighting my way through them anymore; I'm just letting them continue to grow and fester.

So I'm going to try to lay them down, at least for Lent. At least for the next 40 days, I'm giving up my "right" to question and doubt and think I am smarter or more perceptive than God in how this whole thing works. This may not revolutionize the course of my faith for years to come, .but maybe I just need a break, a rest. Rest is not really a major theme of Lent the way sacrifice and repentance and transformation are, but maybe a rest from my spiritual struggling is just what I need.

Edit: I wrote this letter on Friday morning without posting; On Friday night, I found out that this week a family in our community lost their baby boy, who was born the same morning as Cade, right down the hall from where we were. This, coupled with several other tragic losses around me, has been my first major test in laying down my spiritual fury and angst. I wrote in my journal Friday night simply, I am tired of a world where babies die. The very things that make me want to push God away are so often the very things that bring into sharp focus our desperate need for the Resurrection to be true.

I had fun today.

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 04:30:00 +0000

Dear Reece and Cade,

There is lots going on right now, and there are several letters waiting in the wings to be written, but tonight as I fall asleep, I want you to know just this:

I had fun with you today.

I genuinely had fun being with you and being your mommy.

Not every moment of the day was fun, of course.

I wasn't having fun when you were waking me up for the fourth time during the night last night, Cade, or when I was changing the sheets on my bed that you spit up all over.

I wasn't having fun when you were pulling (breakable) jars out of the fridge and rearranging the pantry while I was trying to make dinner, Reece, or when I was cleaning up a rather messy pull-up this afternoon.

But those aren't the moments I'll be thinking about when my head hits the pillow in a few minutes. Instead, I'll be thinking about how you, Reece, announced that the white bedspread made Mommy & Daddy's bed your iceberg, and how the green sheets underneath were the grasslands. I'll be thinking about how we lined up every one of your jungle animals on those green "grassland" sheets. I'll be thinking about how you cuddled with me while we listened to new Daniel Tiger songs on my phone, and how we read Curious George Feeds the Animals...and Curious George Goes to a Pizza Party...and Curious George at the Aquariaum.

Cade, I'll be thinking about how I held you at the dinner table tonight, and how fun it was to sit as a family of four while Reece entertained us with his latest antics. I'll be thinking about how you and I ended our day cuddling on the couch with Daddy after your brother was asleep, and how you were calm and wide-eyed as you watched the candles burning in our fireplace.

Sometimes, in the midst of all the weighty responsibility and hard work of parenting, I find myself thinking about motherhood merely in "noble" terms like fulfilling or significant, and I forget that it is also, at its core, so very fun. And you, my darling boys, make it that way.

So I want you to know: I had fun with you today.

On What You're Into as Winter's Ending

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 16:39:00 +0000

Dear Reece & Cade,

It's the the second day of March, which, as usual, means that anything goes weather-wise here in Central Texas. Last weekend, it was sunny and 80 degrees. Then it turned damp and chilly, before returning to nearly 80 yesterday. As I type this, it is 30 degrees again and sleeting.

Despite our lack of seasonal continuity, however, the transition from February to March always seems to mean (symbolically, at least) that winter is ending and spring is beginning. So as we wrap up this winter, here are a few things that you are into...

Cade, your current favorites include falling asleep in Daddy's arms to the sound of the ocean on the iPad, being carried in the Ergo, and rocking with Mommy while listening to All Sons & Daughters on my phone. At your 2-month check-up with the pediatrician two weeks ago, you already weighed over 15 pounds, which means that you are even bigger than your brother was at your age. (And that's saying something, because he was a chunky baby!)

You are incredibly smiley and responsive to us--all it takes is direct eye contact and smiling, talking, or singing to you, and you grin and coo right back at us. I hope that joy is a sign of things to come, and that you will continue to have such a cheery disposition and love for interaction as you grow.

Reece, In addition to your never-ending love for all things animals, you are really into Thomas & Friends right now. You know the names of all of the trains, and every word to the theme song of the Thomas TV show. We read Thomas books on a daily basis, and you play with Thomas, James, Dash, and Victor (the 4 you have for your train table) multiple times daily.

You are also into playing with (pretend) food. We have had several picnics on a quilt on our kitchen floor over the last few weeks, and one of your favorite toys this winter was your felt sandwich set by Melissa & Doug.

Your imagination blows us away. You have started pretending certain toys are other things (in the bath, you'll line up rubber ducks and other bath toys and designate each one as a different sea creature. Some nights, your rubber ducks and fish toys become a crab, shark, walrus, and orca.) You still love the Madagascar Christmas DVD (we haven't watched the full-length movie, but in early December we got you the half-hour Christmas show). You also love Lion King, and Daddy and I gave you The Jungle Book for Valentine's Day, so now in addition to Simba, Timon, and Pumba, you are into Baloo, Bagheera, and Mowgli.

You are also into your little brother in a BIG way. You love tickling Cade's feet, hugging him, "holding him" in your chair, and talking to him. Daddy and I have been so proud of you for loving your little brother like you do, even though over the last week or so, you've started swiping at his face or hands to see if he'll cry. You are so sweet and interested in Cade the rest of the time, so we aren't sure if it's jealousy/resentment so much as just curiosity that motivate this behavior, but either way, this has presented the first real discipline challenge that Daddy and I have had with you so far. You have not really grasped the concept of "time out." Yesterday when you scratched Cade on purpose, before I even opened my mouth, you looked at me and said cheerfully, "I go to my corner now, bye!" and ran to the spot where I'd previously put you in time out.

I guess we'll have to find another strategy.

Most of the time, though, your sweetness towards your brother warms my heart. You like to see him first thing in the morning, and to read books with him. You also frequently show your toys to him while explaining, "I have a train track, Cade," or "This is a lion, Cade." I hope your interest in including your brother in your life and teaching him things will continue for your entire lives.

All my love,
Mommy

This Moment

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 21:34:00 +0000

There are toys all over the floor.

Veggies to be chopped for tonight's soup.

Some bills to pay, a to-do list to tend to.

I think every towel we own is piled up in the laundry room, waiting to be washed.

But right now, I'm doing my best to ignore it all and just rest, with a candle, chocolate, and black coffee.

Reece has been sick since Monday night with fever/coughing/congestion, and today, I'm feeling it, too--in my throat and in my bones. While the baby has been spared from that, his battle with reflux continues, and some days are just harder than others.

It was nothing short of a miracle that as Matt headed out to do some work and errands shortly after 1pm, both babies had just gone to sleep. With the sound of Reece's rain sound machine coming through the monitor and the ocean sound playing on the iPad for Cade in the swing, I laid down on the couch and closed my eyes at 1:36pm.

If I can just stay this way until 2:36, I thought, all will be okay in the world.

I didn't get my hour. Instead, I got eighteen minutes (and those were fitful, as Reece continued to cough through the monitor).

Eighteen minutes until Cade started screeching, and rest time for sore-throat, tired-bones Mama was over.

After half an hour of soothing, walking, and nursing, the baby is now back asleep in the swing, and Reece is coughing again.

But the house is still dark. The ocean waves and rain are still sending out their lulling reverberation. And so even though sleep eludes me now, I stepped over the pretend picnic on the kitchen floor, lit a candle, and sat down at my tiny computer desk.

Type-A Me has a hard time with the mess. And the less-than-efficient use of time. And the swirling to-do list. I am notorious for thinking that I can relax better if only I clean up one more thing first, or if only I cross one more item off the to-do list first. But as everybody knows, that mindset is a never-ending taskmaster, and before you know it, you never got around to that moment of rest or enjoyment that was the goal to begin with.

My babies will be up soon, and the toys and veggies and towels will still be here...but my moment of stillness and solitude will be gone.

So I needed to redeem this moment with in-the-moment writing and contemplation.

And coffee.

On the Secret to Praying Again

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 16:12:00 +0000

Dear Reece,

Every night, right after book time, when I turn your lamp off and your sound machine on, I scoop you up in your post-bath, footed-pajama, end-of-the-day heaviness and you ask for it:

Say the prayer, Mommy.

I'm ashamed to admit that incorporating it into your routine was not that intentional.

I just happened to pray out loud for you one night, (I think to see if I still could), and now every night since, you expect it.

This is good for me in ways that you can't possibly know, because it forces me, at least once a day, in the dark, quiet stillness, to bring myself before God with words and vulnerability and you, my precious firstborn.

These moments at night have been my first consistent prayers in....well, a long while.

When you were a baby, I prayed so fervently. Each and every night once you were asleep, I would fall face to the ground beside you and pray

...a prayer of thanksgiving for you, that I conceived you and grew you and birthed you;

...a prayer for protection in the night, that you would be safe and healthy and kept from danger and harm and sickness

...a prayer for God's help in parenting you, and specifically the strength to rise and take care of you during the night

...a prayer for your growth and development, physically and spiritually, and that you would have "eyes to see and ears to hear" what God's spirit is doing in your life and the world as you grow

These were the prayers of an exhausted, wide-eyed, love-consumed mama who relied on these words over and over to express to God the beggy desperation I felt when it came to you and your well-being. And even writing about this now, I get a little knotted-up inside, remembering.

But since those early days of fervent prayer for you, something has weeded its way in to my psyche--gradually, inconspicuously, insidiously--and choked my spirit and silenced my prayers. And not just my prayers for you (if anything, those are still the easiest to access), but my prayers about anything, period.

I don't know whether I am mad at God or just distrustful these days, but I am stuck in this place mentally where it seems wholly unjust and even cruel if He should care about my little requests for sleep or protection or our various circumstances when so much else is just horribly wrong in the world.

But more on that rabbit trail in another letter.

For now, back to prayer.

In times when prayer seems pointless or selfish or inaccessible, I've learned that I have to do one of two things: I become very liturgical or very charismatic.

The only way I know how to pray when I just can't pray is to either use the words countless souls before me have used, as written in places like the Book of Common Prayer...or to pray wild, "hallelujah in the name of Jesus" prayers with my arms raised to the heavens or face flat on the ground.

Right now, these are the only two ways I can break through...when I can break through at all.

Liturgy is like an anchor. When I'm drifting, as I am now, it is there to hold on to. It is there to provide the words that I can't find on my own; the words I might even doubt whether I believe. But it's there, and the ritual of recitation itself can be helpful, even when the rest of me feels disengaged or disenchanted. When I can muster words of my own, I sometimes write them down and then return to my "own" liturgy of sorts.

As for the charismania, all I can say is that while it might seem the most mystical of modes to many, to me there is a realness and hereness and nowness to those kind of prayers. It's the most desperate and fervent way I can throw myself into the practice of prayer. Sometimes, it's the only way I can believe. When God seems abstract and Jesus distant, the Spirit is the most accessible.

Another way to pray when praying seems impossible is to pray the Psalms out loud. This is especially useful, I've found, if you pray the "darker" Psalms that are full of complaint and lamentation, rather than exuberant praise. Again, sometimes that's all you can do.

What I most want you to know, my dear boy, is not that your mama actually has "the secret" to praying when praying seems difficult. It's that there are many, many ways to pray--many that are far more creative and unconventional than what I've shared here. Sometimes, even our silence may be a prayer of sorts. In Seven Sacred Pauses, Macrina Wiederkehr writes about her night vigil prayer as "simply one of waiting in silence, waiting in darkness, listening...It is a prayer of surrender. In my night watch I do not ordinarily use words. My prayer is a prayer of intent."

I can't say I fully understand what this looks like, but it encourages me that sometimes I may be praying even when I do not realize it; that my yearning itself, brought feebly before God, is itself a prayer.

Still, even that is sometimes easier said than done.

For now, as I continue to struggle in a season of (nearly) utter prayerlessness, I just rely on the nighttime, waiting for the moment when I turn your lamp off and your sound machine on, when I scoop you up in your post-bath, pajama-footed, end-of-the-day heaviness, and when I hear you say,

Say the prayer, Mommy.

8 Confessions a Month(ish) Postpartum

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 16:15:00 +0000

Before I shift gears and begin writing most of my blog posts as letters to my boys, I wanted to record a series of reflections on Cade's arrival and first weeks with us, including...

his birth story here,

thoughts on my postpartum body here,

the ups and downs of starting to breastfeed again here.

Last Friday, Cade was one month old. It blows my mind how fast this month has gone by, especially compared to the eternity that was Reece's first month of life.

As I reflect on these game-changing five weeks, I have a several confessions to make...

1. I didn't anticipate that the shift in dynamic with my firstborn would be so hard....on me.

Before Cade was born, I wondered all the time how the baby would affect Reece and how he would handle the less exclusive attention. However, I didn't give much thought to how the divide in my attention might affect me. Since Cade's arrival, Reece has taken everything in stride. So far, he hasn't displayed the slightest hint of jealousy or resentment towards his new brother.

Yet, there are times that I resent having to give up engaging in some of the more "fun," interactive parenting you do with a toddler, in order to tend to the more task-based parenting (nursing, changing, etc.) required by a newborn who doesn't yet do much of anything.

Thankfully, with each passing week, I am finding my balance, though I still sometimes miss what it was like when it was just me and my big boy.

2. Life "went on" a little quicker than I would have liked this time.

After I had Reece, everything else in life came to a grinding halt. Not so this time. Instead of having weeks on end to focus exclusively on my newborn, this time we came home from the hospital to a 2-year-old to care for and Christmas (with all that it entails) to prepare for.

Three days postpartum with Reece, I was a disheveled, bleary-eyed mess who was still sitting on the ice pack from the hospital and trying to process the presence of this new creature that had come into our world. Three days postpartum with Cade, I was baking Christmas cookies and schlepping my 30-pound toddler around town to buy last minute Christmas gifts. While this might seem like a victory to some, I actually like the idea of extended time set aside after birth for nothing but experiencing the postpartum time in all its bewilderment, mess, and glory.

3. Having previous experience with baby nighttime waking has made that aspect easier this time around.

Since my firstborn just started really sleeping through the night a mere two weeks before the arrival of my second, I am used to getting up at night to tend to a child. That 2+ years of practice has made things easier (or at least less shocking to my system) this time around--though, admittedly, getting up with a toddler is quite different than being up with a newborn who needs feeding, changing, etc. multiple times a night, every night. What has helped me more has been remembering how I eventually came to view those nighttime wakings when Reece was a baby.

I came across this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer during a particularly difficult season of nighttime parenting with Reece. I love it because it not only gives me the words to pray when my mind is weary, but it also reminds me of the sacredness of those hours spent awake while others sleep. The words now hang on a slate next to my nursing chair.

4. Having previous experience with baby nighttime waking has also NOT made that aspect easier this time around.

Waking up and staying up half the night still sucks. And lest #3 makes me sound like a saint, let me just shoot that down by admitting that I find myself getting angry sometimes in the middle of the night when I just.want.to.sleep and Cade is fussing to be held again or is being just plain noisy. I get angry that I don't get to sleep more, and angry that all that awake time leaves me tired during the day and takes away from Reece and other things I want to do be doing. I don't remember feeling that way before.......yet, This, too, shall pass.

5. I do not want to go back to work. When the day comes, I will cry an ocean of tears, and return kicking and screaming. Also, I kinda miss it.

I did not expect that. I expected to dread the end of my maternity leave. I did not expect to miss my job and my students like this, or to feel the occasional twinge of excitement about going back. That excitement has nothing to do with wanting to escape my home or children for a few hours everyday (not that there would be anything wrong with feeling that way, mind you). For me, there is still nowhere I'd rather be than at home with my babies, and no work that I find more fulfilling. Yet I do truly love my job, too, and I don't think I realized quite how much I loved it until I'd been away from it for a month.

6. Getting an iPhone for Christmas has revolutionized the newborn experience for me this time around.

Yes, it's official: the Woodards have joined the 21st century, just a mere 13 years after the rest of America. Goodbye, flip phones (ok, technically mine was not a flip...but Matt's was) and Hello, smartphones. Do you know what this means for a mama of a newborn?

It means tracking nursing side & time on a nursing app.

It means using Notes to quickly record the important thoughts that occur to me in the middle of the night when I'm rocking or nursing and have no paper handy.

It means easy access to the internet when that middle-of-the-night time drags on and on and I can't stay awake without a diversion. (Now if only someone or something besides NPR would post new stories on Facebook between the hours of 3 & 5 am.)

It means taking more pics of my babies, since it's not always practical to run and pop the lens on the DSLR when Reece starts singing to his brother or reading a book to him.

And, yes, it means I'm finally on instagram.

7. Having another baby has reminded me of my longing for community.

As a solid INFJ, the last thing I want is to be around others 24/7. I want and need alone time to process and recharge. I start to feel stifled if there are too many people around too much of the time. And yet, there is something about having a new baby that can be so isolating, even when (like me), you give birth in your hometown, surrounded by people who know and love you.

I recently began re-reading Anita Diamant's beautiful novel, The Red Tent. I was drawn back to this story (which is a rendition of the Genesis narratives told through the eyes of the women) because I love what the red tent itself represents: a place for the women to tend to their needs and each others' needs in the seasons unique to womanhood, like childbirth and the postpartum period. There is something beautiful about the way women in that culture (and in most cultures throughout history) surround one another with support, transmitting knowledge and skills from one generation to the next, when faced with these certain rites. Don't get me wrong--I'm thankful for kellymom.com in the middle of the night when I have a burning question about milk storage or infant gas remedies, but just because we can transmit information to new mothers impersonally and efficiently now doesn't mean that the need for a strong community is diminished.

8. The experience of pregnancy and childbirth is a paradox like no other.

In the first trimester of this pregnancy, I was sicker than I had been with my first. I was also a big ball of anxiety, worried about miscarriage or birth defects or whether I nuked the turkey sandwich that I was craving long enough before eating it.

Second trimester brought more weight gain, stretch marks, and worry than my last pregnancy did. I also developed an irrational preoccupation with my blood sugar. (You want a really real confession here? Even though I passed my glucose test, I became so neurotic about blood sugar and whether the test might be mistaken that I bought a home blood glucose monitor at HEB and stuck my finger multiple times a day for a couple of weeks. I even started sneaking around to do it because Matt did not approve of my new-found compulsion. Thankfully, I came to my senses and stopped.)

In the third trimester, fatigue set back in, and the middle of the night trips to the bathroom became a bi-hourly occurrence. Oh, and then there's labor. Labor hurts. A lot. And after labor comes sleep deprivation and all kinds of unmentionable bodily things and hormonal shifts that left me sobbing every night for two weeks at exactly 6pm, for no reason.

And yet, (here comes the paradox)...after all that, all I can think is, When can I do it again?

This is 33

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 03:54:00 +0000

Starbucks, writing time, new running shoes, an afternoon bath, chocolate cake, wine, and my boys {including the husband, not pictured}.

What else does a girl need to usher in a new year of life?

{Oh, we did have fajitas for dinner, too.}

Cheers.

On Breastfeeding Again...

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 21:43:00 +0000

(Even though I know we are all sooo over the whole "Keep Calm" thing, this one was just too fitting not to include here...)

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had a baby.

And the girl breastfed her baby.

And though there were ups and downs along the way, the girl and her baby ultimately thrived in their nursing relationship, which ended at her babe's initiative after nearly 18 months.

Two months later, the girl stood in a public library bathroom stall with her toddler in tow, staring at a positive pregnant test. (Have I ever shared that story? Maybe I need to go back and revisit that one soon.)

As the reality of another pregnancy and baby sunk in over the next several days, the girl realized that in eight short months, she would once again be a nursing mama, and this time, she thought, it will be a snap! I will know just what to do!

Sure enough, precisely eight months to the day after the positive pregnancy test in the library bathroom, the girl gave birth once again, and it was time to start a new breastfeeding journey....

****************************

We are now nearly a month into Breastfeeding, Round 2.

Already, we've dealt with the initial engorgement, newborn sleepiness, concerns about length of feeding time, a blocked duct, latch issues, and a thrush scare.

A month in, breastfeeding is causing me a great deal of stress and anxiety. I'm reduced to tears on nearly a daily basis (usually in the wee hours of the morning when I'm most sleep-deprived and Cade won't latch and is fussy and I don't know what else to do), and the other night, the thought flickered through my mind, What if I can't do it this time? What if I fail?

I never asked myself that question when I nursed Reece, and I've generally been of the mindset that breastfeeding is one of those things I can do, no matter what, as long as I set my mind to it and get the appropriate help when needed. (I am not making a blanket statement out of this, as I realize that many women face obstacles to breastfeeding that are far greater than any I've encountered. I am speaking only to what my own personal circumstances have been thus far.)

In my more rational moments, I remember that things weren't easy-peasy in the beginning with Reece, either. I can remember that it took awhile for both of us to get the hang of things, and it wasn't until sometime after Reece's first birthday (and when I finally said sayonara to the pump) that I quit worrying altogether about things like the occasional low supply.

Nonetheless, the "learning period" is taking longer this time. Because my nursing relationship with Reece was (eventually) so seamless and gratifying, I seem to have forgotten that breastfeeding can be hard. Even when you've successfully done it before.

Aside from the difficulties of mechanics, there are other things I don't love about breastfeeding, as well:

I don't love having to plan my day around a nursing babe...especially one who has not been introduced to a bottle and therefore can't be fed breastmilk by anyone other than the one who produces it, no matter the hour of day or night.

I don't love limiting my wardrobe to nursing-friendly attire and wireless nursing bras, which are not at all supportive of my larger-than-life postpartum chest.

Pumping. I don't love pumping. I don't like pumping. Pumping, while helpful at various times for various reasons, is a pain.

I don't love worrying about keeping up my supply or if the baby is getting enough hindmilk or if he's getting enough, period; I don't love worrying about blocked ducts and mastitis, or having soreness, fullness, and leakage.

But.

I also love breastfeeding.

I love providing my baby with the short-term and long-term health benefits that breastmilk uniquely provides.

I love that I don't have to mess with preparing and cleaning bottles and nipples, or spending money on formula.

I love the rhythm of nursing, and that it forces me to stop what I'm doing in order to sit, be still, and breathe in the closeness of my baby every couple of hours.

I love having nursing as just one more means of soothing and nurturing my baby.

I love the bonding and closeness that breastfeeding fosters.

Nursing can be such a sweet time, precisely because it is a fleeting season that only comes (at most, and if at all) a few times in a lifetime.

I'm so very glad that I was able to nurse Reece until he was ready to stop, and I would be devastated if I didn't have the same outcome with Cade. That's what keeps me poring over kellymom.com at all hours of the night, and calling the lactation consultants yet again. (I'm headed back to see them again tomorrow.) Breastfeeding is so important to me, and I'm driven to make it work.

But therein also lies the problem, which hit me like a ton of bricks when I read this status on my friend's facebook page yesterday:

Never let the problem to be solved become more important than the person to be loved.

I'm fairly certain that the context in which this quote originated had nothing to do with newborns or breastfeeding. Nonetheless, it spoke volumes to me in my current circumstance. Breastfeeding itself is the means, not the end. The goal is not to perfect my nursing ability. The goal is to love and nurture my baby. And I have to believe that if that is my priority and focus, even in the midst of the early challenges of establishing the breastfeeding relationship, then it all will work out in the end.

I've had to remind myself that the best way to ensure "success" is to get to know my son and his needs, rather than measuring myself against the standards the books and experts set forth. As long as Cade is growing and together we are thriving, then our nursing relationship is successful. (And considering he already weighed in at 10 pounds at his 2-week check-up, I'd say we're on the right track in the growth department, at least!)

When it comes down to it, breastfeeding-- like all of child care and parenting-- is hard work.

But it is hard work I want to do.

It is the hard work that is meant for me to do right now.

And so I will do my best to "keep calm & latch on," knowing a day will come soon when it won't seem like work at all.

A Postpartum Body at the Most Photographed Time of Year

noreply@blogger.com (allison) — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:23:00 +0000

The holiday season may be the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, but if, like me, you happened to give birth eight days before Christmas, you become keenly aware that it is also, in fact, the Most Photographed Time of the Year.

When your first child is born in September, as mine was, the holiday paparazzi is not there to document you opening presents in all your postpartum glory, or to ask you to pose for a New Year's Photo to be sent to sixty of your parents' closest friends (ahem). In September, a few reasonable upper-body shots of mama and her newborn suffice, and then everyone leaves you and your "fanny pack of jell-o" (as Shauna Niequist so delicately dubbed the post-baby belly pooch) alone.

Not so when it's the holidays.

Instead, you are immediately thrust into family gatherings and photo shoots where yoga pants and nursing tanks are not entirely appropriate attire. (As I write this, now nineteen days postpartum, I am happily sitting on my bed in sweatpants, a nursing bra & t-shirt, and an XL fleece--the wintertime uniform of new mamas everywhere, Thankyouverymuch.)

I know that I should just be thankful and amazed at what my body did in growing and birthing another baby (and trust me, I am.)

I know I should think about all those who would jump at the chance to give up every aesthetically pleasing part of their physique, if only they could experience pregnancy and birth (and trust me, I do.)

I know that I should just focus on my gorgeous, healthy, indescribably precious newborn and remind myself that he is worth it (and trust me, he is.)

But somehow, as I sat in my parents' living room on Christmas night and scrolled through the pictures on our camera that Matt took of me helping Reece open his presents, all those thoughts fell to the wayside and it took all the self-control I could muster to not delete every single shot.

In picture after picture, all I saw was a massive chest (I'm up 3 cup sizes from where I was before my first pregnancy) and still-pregnant-looking belly burgeoning under maternity jeans and what used to be a very loose-fitting top.

I wish I could say that I cut myself some slack since I had just given birth the week before. I wish I could be evolved and enlightened enough to celebrate how my body looked in those shots, to embrace the sentiments expressed by Sarah Bessey after the Duchess of Cambridge delivered, or by the author of this stunning post I read just last week.

But instead, I just reverted back to that ridiculous impulse of, I wish my postpartum self didn't look so....postpartum.

Later that night, Matt asked me about the pictures. He could tell I wasn't happy with them, and he was afraid that it was his photography skills that had disappointed me. When I told him the real reason I was hung-up about the photos, he said one of those perfect, sincere husband things to say:

"I like that you look like that in those pictures, because we'll look back at them and always remember what had just happened in our lives."

Where I saw flab and baby weight, Matt saw the evidence of a most precious season of our life. The more I let his words sink in, the more I realized how wrong it would have been for me to cover up or hide in those pictures, because it would be like denying the incredibly big thing we'd all just been through at Christmas 2013.

Despite moments like I had while initially perusing our pictures, and despite moments when the prideful part of me would still love to be back in my normal wardrobe tomorrow, I actually have embraced my postpartum body a little bit better this time around. Truth be told, if I were back in my pre-pregnancy clothes tomorrow, I'd feel a little sad, because right now, my inconveniently large chest and not-yet-faded stretch marks and yes, even that good ol' "fanny pack of jell-o" are all a continuation of the season of pregnancy and childbirth that I've just been through.

And I'm not quite ready to leave it all behind just yet.