Got Milk? Got kids? I prefer the milk, thanks.

Have you ever told your kids, "You don't know how good you have it?" I have. So many times that now I don't say it anymore. The last time I said it, my youngest son rolled his eyes so far up into his head, I thought he'd turned into a blind alien. "Moooommmm....." And I'm reminded, once again, how many times I've said that truism. So now I just smugly think it.

Here's another truism I just think: Someday, I'm going to get even. Now, if I said that one aloud, both my sons would collapse in a mountain of crowing entertainment. Yeah. How ya gonna get even Mom? Make us go to Walmart and stand in line for another box of Depends? Make us push the cart for you at the grocery store while you meander down the aisle beside us, popping one, small, aeromatic "butt-bubble" with each shuffling step? Or maybe you'll have us fetch your false teeth after you absent-mindedly wrapped them in your paper napkin at a restaurant and the busboy returned them to the kitchen? What'll it be Mom? What awful thing will you be using as payback for the deplorable way us kids have treated you? I'll think of something.

And I will. In my mind, I promise, I will. Why? Are you a parent? Then you know why. In case you aren't, or it's been too many years to remember, let me give you a fine example of why.

My youngest son has carried on a bloody boxing match with his own temper all his young life, and that's been a long time because he's 15 now. And, of course (as all us parents know) it's not his fault that he's angry. It's my fault. It's Dad's fault. It's the teacher's fault. It's the dog's fault. It's the goldfishes fault. But it's not his fault. Something else causes his uninhibited explosions of unbridled rage.

Yesterday I cleaned the second bathroom in the house. The bathroom used only by my two sons and guests. Once clean, I decided to spruce it up a bit with a few new things from Walmart---a new rug, a few matching towels, a shower curtain, and a toilet lid cover. But I wanted the boys to have their choice of color and theme.

Approaching the oldest son, I pointed a finger at his chest (if I look up to find his face I throw my back out), and said in my most commanding voice, "You have an errand to run." I have to use the voice of Caesar, or I'll hear at least 3 flawless, well-founded reasons why such an errand (and, mind you, he doesn't know what it is yet) is profoundly impossible at this time.

And then I turn to the younger of the two.

"And you, (again, the finger-pointing is vital) go with him."

Sometimes it's not clear how different 2 kids from the same mother can be, but this conversation was one of those opportunities that made it crystal clear.

The oldest (22): Geeze, Mom, I was going to spend some time with Derek." Spoken quietly, reasoningly, into my face.

The younger (15): Geeze, Mom, I just got home from school. I'm hungry. Can't I eat first?" Spoken with a "I-better-give-this-my-best-shot" whine.

"I want you both to go to Walmart and pick up a few things. Here's my charge card and a list."

Oldest: (as he becons his brother, already installed on the sofa with a bowl of Top Ramen) "Okay. C'mon."

Now, here's the up-front-in-your-face difference between the two:

The oldest, fishing for his keys, heads out the door and down the driveway toward his car.

The younger hurls himself off the sofa, pounds into the kitchen, flings the Top Ramen onto the counter (noodles erupting from the cup and baptising the freshly cleaned surface) and heads for the door, shouting, "Can't even eat in peace!"

I, being the oldest and most apt to be in complete control of myself, march to the back door and shout after him, "You're going to clean this mess up when you get home!"

Here, the differences in my angels shows again.

The oldest: Grins at his younger sibling with that "na-na-nana-na" look while climbing into his car.

The youngest: Shouts back at me, "--------- ----" I won't put the expletive here. Hopefully you see what I mean.

At this point, I have a choice. I can draw my head inside the door, shrug my shoulders at my husband, who's standing open-mouthed as a witness to this. Or, I can do what any middle-aged mother with complete self control would do. I shout at the younger one.

"For that, you can find another place to stay tonight! Call a friend!"

Those words were the sound of the soft, mothering, smooth-as-a-baby's-bottom suede gauntlet I've always used with my youngest son as it whacked him squarely across his flippy little mouth. For a split second I felt nothing---well, maybe a bit smug, or a bit satisfied. Then I felt scared.

Never, ever, ever had I said to either of my sons, "Get out." No matter how hard things have been at times, the fight always remained here. This was their safe haven. The place they could say anything and there was forgivness and healing. Today I canned the Sanctuary sign and rolled up the Mommy mat.

While at Walmart, he made phone calls to friends to try to secure a place to bunk for the night. When he got home, I got another taste of my kids differences.

In walks the oldest: "Geeze, Mom, I never knew how expensive a few bathroom accessories could be. Here's your charge card. I picked these up myself. After all, it's my bathroom."

In walks the youngest: Past the table he glides, ignoring (snubbing, as in, "I'm just too upset to eat!") his dinner plate. "Okay everyone," he says, adapting a sickening-sweet, quiet, condecending voice, "Here comes the kid from Hell. You can stop talking about me now."

*SIGH*

After a long shower, he writes down the number where he will be and heads out the door. Only if you've ever "been there" do you realize what an effort it takes not to dash to the door to persuade him to "talk things over." But I didn't. I actually let him go.

NEVER LET THEM SEE YOU SWEAT. I could change that...like many moms. Never let them see you cry.

I called the number where he said he would be to check on him as I said I would. He hadn't arrived yet (even though it had been nearly and hour), andI got to talk to his friend who lives there. Here's how the coversation went.

"Hi there. This is Andrew's mom. Is he there yet?"

"No. Is he supposed to be coming over?"

"I thought you guys made arrangements. Andrew said he's be at your house."

"Oh. Okay. I guess he will be then."

*********pregnant silence*********

"_____________, are you there?"

"Yes. Uhhh....I guess you guys finally decided to make it stick, huh?"

"What?"

"Well, Andrew's told me how many times you guys have kicked him out, but he says he must be stupid because he always comes back to the same house that doesn't want him."

That one sentence changed everything. I closed my conversation and replaced the receiver. I grabbed a Kleenex and dried my face off. My son was at his friend's house for the night, and safe. I went to bed and after crying myself to sleep, I slept soundly.

It's interesting how serene you feel when you realize that you didn't do an injustice to someone else, but that the injustice was done to you. Suddenly, you aren't the bad guy---the meany---the person with the guilty conscience. Suddenly you're the one who can, with all justification, feel vindictive.

And you know, that may work for bosses and co-workers, and brothers and sisters and friends, but not for our children. For most of us moms and dads, vindication isn't an option. For our problem children, we'll resign ourselves to sleepless nights, feelings of confusion, pain and desperation. We'll build strengths we never knew we had. We'll pray for guidance until we sweat blood.

But for many of us, we'll also be drawn closer to our spouse for strength. At times, it will feel as if they're the only lifesaver thrown from the boat of life. We'll make new resolutions about how we look at things. As we get older, so will our kids. And with age, comes wisdom, we hope. Someday, if God is merciful, we'll hear those words, "Mom, Dad, I was wrong and I'm sorry for everything I put you through." AAhhh...those golden words. And maybe, if we're really fortunate, we'll get to bounce our grandbabies on our knee.

But if this all fails to take place, there's always that big RV with the multiple slide-outs. Oh, and retirement in...say, Idaho. Maybe Alaska...or...Vermont....yeah....

Where do we come from?

"Where did I come from, Momma?" Years ago, when we asked that question we'd be given the classic answer, "Well, honey, I found you in the garden under a big cabbage leaf." That was the answer I was given, and it was always satisfactory. Then I grew up and discovered the only thing under cabbage leaves were slugs. I was back where I began, wondering where I came from. But I was young. School and friends occupied all my thoughts.

I'm not sure when the fuzzy, slightly puzzling questions began to slip into my more quiet moments. Maybe it was when I started slowing down. When backaches and headaches and a bit of extra pounds around my middle forced me to "sit a spell." That's when I began asking myself the question again, "Where did I come from?" Only I couldn't ask Momma, she was gone to her reward. So was Gramma and Grampa. And at first, it was only questions about people in my own generation. And it was only in the sit-a-spell moments. They were few and far between so, again, I didn't give it much thought.

Then along came the middle years, and the question came back again. This time I wanted serious answers. Over the years, in bits and pieces of contemplation, I'd developed a need to know where I came from. This "dangling" feeling began in my 40's. It was more of a notion. The not-to-clear image of myself, hanging like a leaf way out on a limb on a big tree devoid of any leaves within my reach. Suspended by...what? Nothing touches me, but I exist. And that image began to grow into a search for who I was.

Why do some of us need to know where we fit in the grande scheme of things? There's lots of answers---cut and dry answers---but what about the intangible answers? I remember the dangling feeling I had when I didn't know my ancestors beyond my grandfather and grandmother. Sort of like the edge of a genealogical earth, so to speak. It went to my grampa and gramma and dropped off. Many people are perfectly content to accept the fact that they're here. End of story. I couldn't. I had to know why.

And you know what? You can chase that question in your family line back to the beginning of recorded time. No. Before recorded time. Because aeons ago, somewhere on the earth, a man loved a woman and they had children. If that man had not loved that woman, I wouldn't be here.

Do I want to know so I can thank them when I see them someday? I'm not sure, but I think that's part of it. The biggest reason, though, is so I'm not dangling out there on that limb all alone. Somewhere, down through time, the tree of my family was full and all the leaves joined hands. Even though they're gone, their spirit lives on in the leaves of books and records and pictures. It's that need to put all the leaves of data back onto the limbs so the tree fills out and I can again grab the hand of my past and say I belong. This is the reason I draw breath. Because my mother, Alice Gertrude Traver, loved my father, Lamar Joseph Stonemetz. Suddenly, two leaves burst forth very near me on my branch. And another leaf appears. It's my gramma, holding the hand of my grampa. And they hold the hand of my mother, and suddenly I'm not alone on the branch any longer. I belong, and I'm gaining strength through the knowledge of the existence of my family.

Most of them weren't famous, and most didn't even live eventful lives. They were farmers and blacksmiths and ship captains. They fought in the civil war, WWI and WWII and the Revolutionary War. But their strong hands seem to reach out through the generations and take mine and remind me of who I am. I'm no longer dangling. I'm part of the centuries and the people who inhabited the centuries before me. Yes, I think I will thank them. Not for being whatever they were, but for loving each other enough that today, I'm here.

Cookie Crumbs and Onion Skins...

You can tell alot about a family from what's on their kitchen floor. Not what the floor's made of, but what's there to be swept up.



I have friends with floors so hygienic I could eat a meal then lick the spot clean (not that I would indulge in that privelege, but you get my meaning).



I have to give them credit, they work dilligently maintaining this level of pristeen madness. They walk through a room, stop and gaze, puzzled, at a fixed spot on the carpet. With the locked glare of an owl eyeing it's prey, they bend and pluck an errant shred of trash from their immaculate floor. Between two fingers, at arm's length, still examining the microscopic entity that had dared to contaminate their carpet, they head to the garbage can. That's when it fleetingly occurs to me that my eyesight must be failing me. I didn't see what they picked up. I didn't see it before they picked it up, and I didn't see it as they carried it to the trash can.
I'm immediately ashamed of myself. The fact that I couldn't see that looming boulder of trash sullying my friend's pristine home is bad enough, but her level of cleanliness makes me want to creep quietly back to my house and scrub everything until my fingers bleed. Almost.
Then there's my friend with kids. Her floors are almost as perfect, but she has a defense for her cleanliness slipups. Kids. Plain and simple. From clear across the room she can spot the offending crayon...the wayward Hotwheels car...the stray block. Like an eagle swooping in for a trout, she's across the room in two swift, gliding steps. She sweeps the sinning toy off the floor, and in one graceful move swings around and gives you the "so-sorry-you-had-to-see-that" sort of smile.
These kind of people are admirable. I mean, my gramma used to say, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." But I'm more of a realist. I say, "Cleanliness is next to impossible." Each time I meticulously sweep my kitchen floor, then even more carefully mop it, I form a new resolve: Damp mop---just a quick "lick-and-a-prayer," each day. Then comes the next day. The first day of my damp-mop-each-day resolution.
And the phone rings. Chatting happily, my subconcious hearing picks up running water. "Gotta go...someone didn't jiggle the toilet handle." Then I'm in the bathroom, staring at a pile of towels and jeans, leaning on the counter and absently drawing x's and o's in a glob of toothpaste on the sink. Man, why does it always have to be me that cleans the bathroom? Well...there goes my kitchen floor resolve. Days later, I'm drawing a breath over an iced tea and contemplating my kitchen floor.
It's covered with cookie crumbs and onion skins. Well, not covered, but sort of dusted. "Shreddies" are in all the corners and kind of drifted up against the fronts of my dishwasher and stove.
I bake hundreds of cookies a week for my oldest son's co-workers. He sells them, and I pay my small charge card bills with that hard-earned money. He came home one day and, munching on a cookie, slid me a look. "Mom, how 'bout you make up somma these cookies and I'll take 'em to work and see if the guys wanna buy 'em?" I'll never forget that first cookie day. He came home and proudly handed me twenty dollars. His eyes smiled and I think he was as suprised and excited about it as I was. "Make lots more, Mom. They love 'em!" The rest is history.
Since then, I've re-arranged my kitchen to making the baking more streamline, but when you do this volume of cookie baking, you're bound to drop alot of "shreddy things" on the floor. Oatmeal, flour, brown sugar...it's all there. The cookies are baked, bagged (at which time more shreddies litter the floor), and sold. And then I pay my charge card bills. And then I use the same card to buy things for my family that brings them joy.
My Family loves soup, and I use alot of onions. Have you ever chased an onion skin across a floor being cooled by the breeze of a back door? I have. You won't catch it. It'll hang up somewhere, in a corner or against an appliance. Like the day the dog came tearing in the back door, drooling around a multicolored tennis ball. The air current scooted the onion skin in another direction, with me after it. And then came a teenage boy, laughing hysterically, dashing up the steps in sweaty t-shirt, grass-stained jeans, and ripped tennis shoes. Grabbing the dog, they both took a football roll over the kitchen floor and my attention---and heart---were distracted by the unbridled joy of the moment and the onion skin was forgotten.
There's a fork lying in the crevas between the refrigerator and the bottom cupboard door. It was my son's. As his hands genticulated like a mad orchestra conductor, he gave me a blow by blow reinactment of his winning throw in shotput that day. His face shone as he laughed and careened around the kitchen with his gangling teenage limbs. The Top Ramen was forgotten as his fork accidentally flew from his hand and bolted through the air, landing in the crevas. We both stopped, looked at each other, and burst out laughing. It was my intention to let him finish with his animated story, then retrieve the fork. Intentionally, I didn't rise to pick it up. I wanted nothing to kill this moment. So rarely was he like this. Laughing with complete abandon and joy. Many days were dampened with the typical teenage sulliness. My heart was dancing, and the fork was forgotten.
A milk cap lies under the edge of the dishwasher. My oldest son comes home from work very early in the morning, sometimes two or two-thirty. There's nights when physical problems have me sitting in the quiet, subdued kitchen at that time, and when he comes into the house it's so quiet that it feels like just the two of us in the world. It was one of those mornings when he came home and I was up. He popped the top on a new jug of milk and the lid rolled across the floor and slid almost out of sight. At that moment I realized how hard he worked and how tired he was. His eyes followed the milk cap, his shoulders dropped, and he turned to me with a baleful look.
"Leave it. I'll sweep it out in the morning," I said. "Come sit down."
That morning, we sat in the silent, dark kitchen and talked. Exhausted as he was, he sat and talked to me. We shared so much. For an hour or more, I learned about my oldest son. The person he'd become and the person he'd like to become. His aspirations and hopes. And then we both went off to bed.
Who knows. If he'd stooped to pick up that cap, he may have decided it was the last physical effort he wanted to make for the day. Who knows. If I had gotten up and swept it out, maybe I wouldn't have wanted to sit back down. Maybe I would have just drifted back off to bed.
The bottle cap is still there. And so are the cookie crumbs and onion skins. But I look at this way, I can sweep tomorrow. And besides, I have a defense for my cleanliness slipups. It's called love.