home and parents

I have a bunch of blog posts in as drafts and I have wanted to get them finished and posted, but my moral compass feels too dishonest to post anything about our sugarcoated bubble life when my mind and heart has been so distracted by what is happening on the border.

I sat down with my two big kids yesterday, to just talk through things that are happening. I do this often as I care about giving them a wider lens of the world. They are so vastly blessed in so many ways and I hope and strive to raise them up to use their voices for those who have none.

Here were our conversations:

Gemma, 6
Mum: what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you so far?
Gem: um, nothing. No bad things really happen.

Mum: what's the worst thing that could ever happen to you?
Gem: not being with you and Dad. you guys getting dead.

Mum: what do you think could be a reason that me and Dad would ever say, we have to leave our house right now and run away?
Gem: you would never say that

Mum: but let's pretend that we did say that. Why do you think me and Dad would ever take you guys away from our home and go far away?
Gem: maybe because something bad was happening here. Like bad guys?

Greyson, 8
Mum: what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you so far?
Grey: being embarrassed

Mum: like when have you ever been embarrassed!?
Grey: at the championship game yesterday!

Mum: What?! I didn't see anything embarrassing!
Grey: (through fits of giggling) They walked the batter and the guy on first started to run to second and I screamed 'He's going!' and the kid was like, "Dude, it's a walk you can't get me out"

Mum: (laughing) did anyone on your team hear you?
Grey: (hysterically laughing) yea! I screamed it

Mum: okay, let's call Dad quick and tell him that because he will have a brighter day, that is FUNNY, Grey, not embarassing!

--call Dad ---

Mum: okay, questions again - what's the worst thing that could ever happen to you?
Grey: You or Dad dying.

Mum: what do you think could be a reason that me and Dad would ever say, we have to leave our house right now and run away?
Grey: our house burns down? you can't live in ashes

Mum: Okay, any other reason?
Grey: um, someone is trying to kill us? and the first place they'd look for us is in our house?


After the questions with each (during which they sit on or close to my lap while I look them in the face), I told them a little bit about why I was asking those questions.

Mum: I asked you those questions because right now, families are running away from home and going to a place they think will be safe for their kids. The place they think is safe, is here, The United States, but when they get here, they are getting in trouble because they didn't ask to come first.
Grey: why didn't they ask first?

Mum: well, there could be a lot of reasons, if you think of running away, usually it's quick and you don't have time to really do anything.  And most times, it takes a long time to get permission, there's a lot of paperwork and forms and a waiting list. And when you're in danger- or you think your kids are in danger - you can't wait for anything, you just have to go. So what do you think should happen when you get to the safe place even if you didn't ask to come?
Gem: they should help you
Grey: you should say why you came and then they say okay but you have to do the papers still but in the safe place

Mum: well, what is happening right now is that the Mom and Dad are going to jail because they didn't ask and since the kids can't go to jail, they are going to a different building. So they get separated from their parents

Looking at the picture of the centers (while I try to stay quiet and just let them sort through their own questions)
Grey: why are they in cages though?
Gem: what are those blankets?
Grey: do they still get to play? do they get to go to school?
Gem: will they get their moms and dads back?
Grey: how long do they have to stay?
Gem: is the bad thing still at their house? Can they just go back home again with their moms and dads?

I showed them the (now well known) picture of that baby girl crying and told them,
Mum: it says she's two
Gem: Rusty is two.
Grey: she has to go to the cage too?
Gem: I would take care of the babies, momma. and then I would break out of there and come save you and Dad.

After our chats, we spent some time doing read alouds with the babies and then played a fun Mommy-monster game which always leaves them squealing and shrieking in giggles. We had a normal summer day in our safe home in which I could choose to distance myself from facebook and the news and go about my day because it's not happening to me and my children.

because that is privilege. to be able to ever say, 'that difficult thing is not happening to me, so I don't have to think about it.'

And 'difficult thing' could be so much: a sick child, a lost loved one, addiction, racism, infertility, discrimination, weather disasters, depression, a car accident, no wheelchair ramp, unfair pay, over-priced meds, mental illness, broken marriage...fill-in-the-blank.

The important thing to remember is that it's not happening to you...this time. Each of us will go through difficult moments of our life (and at varying degrees of difficulty) and when it is your turn, will anyone help you carry the weight of hardship? Will anyone fight on your behalf?

----
So much of our grown up worldviews are determined by who said what or little portions of the whole picture framed in distorted justification.

But kids strip all that away because they can look at something and see it in black and white: it is either good or bad. period.

kids being taken away from their moms and dads is bad. It is literally the worst thing that my own children could ever imagine happening to them.
This is bad. period.

a viral post and some writer soul searching

Almost six years ago now, my first child; our son, Greyson, was a year and a half and I felt like I was losing my mind.  As a brother-less mother, I felt blindsided with every new age and stage as our son started to grow out of his babyhood and turn into a toddler.  In a panic, I bought a ton of raising son type books, talked to and asked questions of as many Boy moms as I could, and scoured Pinterest for tips of raising boys.

Finally, after being inspired by a list I saw for Dads raising daughters by Michael Mitchell, I put together a list that I would be able to come back to if and when I started to doubt myself as a Mom again (and I have doubted myself about three million times since then!).  Something I could use as a foundation for the kind of Mum I wanted to be for our son(s) based on what I aspire towards and all the good that was raised up in my husband (thank you Gigi!)

This was how 25 Rules for Moms with Sons was written in November 2011.

About three months later, in early 2012, that post got swept up in an internet tornado and has been on a journey all its own - even into present day. In fact, just this week, my original post was re-shared by MOPS International on facebook (thank you), and I'm always so humbled and grateful when my friends/readers tag me in the comments to let me know they saw my words out in the world.

My original post has been run by plenty of websites through the years.  The Good Men Project was the best about it, adding me to their list of contributors and running other pieces of writing I've done.  Many other sites have shared the article and linked back to my site, and unfortunately, some bloggers have done much worse and simply copied & pasted my writing and linked me only as "a blog I read" with no mention of my name as the author.

This post has been discussed in podcasts, run through online newspapers, and re-pinned so many times I've lost count.  I have heard from readers the most heartfelt messages of how it touched them and I am constantly blown away by the kind and loving responses various Moms have to reading it. I even wrote a One Year Later Reflection post about the whirlwind of the piece's internet journey. Just a few months ago, I heard from a Mum that said she still has a copy of it hanging on her fridge.  And my dearest friend just told me that she re-reads it once a year as she's now a mother of two sons (I wrote the piece before she became a momma).  It's also seen it's fair share of critics and haters too (but that comes with the territory).

That singular post -within my whole almost nine years of blogging- has been the biggest thing to ever come out of this blog.  I'm grateful to that post for bringing into my life so many of my now loyal readers and sweetest internet friends.  And I'm appreciative of and so very very humbled by the positive ways it has touched Moms over the years.

So, (finally getting to it now, hah), two Fridays ago, my 25 Rules for Moms with Sons post experienced another bizarre moment, enough so that it's taken me almost two weeks to let my emotions simmer enough to be in a place to share here now with a clear head and grateful heart.

I woke up on Friday morning before the kids, got my coffee, and quickly hopped onto Instagram to see a notification that someone had tagged me in a photo that included the words from my #25 of my Moms of Sons post as the caption without credit to me as the writer.  My knee jerk reaction is kindness and benefit-of-the-doubt, so I responded in kind to both Adrian (who alerted me) and Rachael (who had posted my words without tagging me).  And went about my morning.

Then I logged into facebook and realized what all the fuss was about. The Instagram photo was also shared to her blog page five days earlier and over the course of the week had been shared by:  Scary Mommy, Good Housekeeping, Babble, Yahoo, and PopSugar.  By the time I had even seen it, the original post was shared over 30K times and the reshares were over a combined 20K. And it wasn't until it had already 'gone viral,' before I was mentioned at all as the writer.

I spent most of the rest of the day trying to do some investigative work, figuring out who exactly had shared it and with how much credit to me...

College Candy was better than most quoting my response to Rachael on Instagram (which was my first reaction when I received Adrian's note on Friday morning).

Celebrity Rave did worst than most mentioning me, as almost a nuisance to their story; a bullet point they begrudgingly had to add,  "shared a touching message written by a fellow blogger."  (By the way, in the spirit of internet justice - Daily Mail UK, you should take a look at Celebrity Rave's post  because it looks like they simply copy&pasted from you, never linked up to your post, and also left out any of the decent bits).

I also spent the day, messaging back and forth with Adrian from Tales of an Educated Debutante who was so passionate about making it right for me as a writer that she directed her own readers to join my facebook page (thank you!).  Emailing back and forth with Scary Mommy who apologized for how the whole thing went down.  Responding to a beautiful and kind message from Kara from Mothering the Divide about how she empathizes with how frustrating it can be as a writer, especially knowing that in today's world the likes & shares matter to get your voice heard.

It was certainly disheartening to see firsthand the sort of state of internet 'reporting' that we are in right now.  Lots of people were picking up the photo and caption - some even reaching out to Rachael to interview her about how it felt to go viral.  Do you want to guess how many websites reached out to the writer of the words of the photo?  None of them.  Not one single website that ran the story (even when they linked to my original post) emailed or messaged me to ask for a response from me!  I had a real internal struggle with trying to digest that big time sites were interviewing another small time blogger (who doesn't know me nor even regularly reads my blog) about how something I wrote made her feel....? I just find that it so very disappointing.  It doesn't appear to be about the actual story, but rather it's about being viral  -and that feels disingenuous and shallow.

There were certainly lessons that came out of the experience.  First and most astounding, I may only have a small group of readers, but they are loyal to the core.  I was honestly blown away by their ferocity of loyalty and cry for justice for my words.  I have made some new actual friends across social media, and received quite a few new followers thanks to (although late arriving) credit to my words as the author of the 'homebase' language.

I also had the incredible and important opportunity to practice loving kindness and made, surprisingly, a new friend in Rachael.  We had a chance to talk throughout the day via messenger and as I told her, there are no hard feelings.  I really do understand the nature of the internet and how things can get away from all of us, and also how mistakes can be made.  It does me no good to hold a grudge in my heart, and so I don't, truly.  I deeply believe that what you send out into the world is what comes back, so I choose to send out kindness, understanding, and patience, every darn time.  And at the end of the day - the mommas who needed the message found it in Rachael's post. That is surely the greater good in all of it.

The most difficult part was trying to find a healthy balance within myself.  After six years of my 25 Rules for Moms with Sons post being used and re-shared so many times, it really does feel like something that no longer belongs to me.  Almost like it's just property of the world; of all mothers now.  I think it if had been any other pieces of my writing that had been used without my consent, it would have broken my heart.  But that particular post has been such a beast of it's own in the past six years that it barely stings anymore.  And yet also, trying to justify that it is My writing, My words, My feelings that I poured out onto that page.  It continues to be My words that I have been writing about My family for the past six years. That I should be just as proud and ferocious about my writing as those loyal readers were who wanted to seek out justice for me when they saw this unfold.  That I should see my writer's voice as valuable in the wider world.  To see myself as a 'real writer' who deserves the recognition that comes with people being touched by something that was born out of my heart and experiences.

At the root of this still on-going (?!), six year long journey of this piece - it was My son who inspired this list.  I appreciate so much that it applies to so many mothers and sons (and even plenty of mothers and daughters ), but it wasn't written about Every boy...it was written about My boy.  My boy inspired a list that has been read and shared literally millions of times.  My boy who STILL inspires me to have to continually go back to and cling to that list while he's driving me crazy with his seven year old wild, yet wonderful self.   In my One Year Reflection post, I wrote this and it's still true:

"At the end of the line, for me, the greatest of all prides in this journey of my blogpost (that went from our silly little family blog - to making its way around the internet and has been read millions of times):  it is that it grew from inspiration from a boy.  my boy.   I have printed all of the comments from my post to add to his baby book with this note:  Because of your life and the inspiration you have given my heart that spoke to my brain and moved my fingers - you have inspired moms and their sons around the world, my sweet darling. You are a history maker.  I love you forever and ever - thank you for the inspiration everyday."

Booboo,
my oldest baby.
(I can't think too much about it without crying, but)
I will love you forever.
even when you make me mad, sad, and crazy.
even when you're bigger than me.
even as your wildness breaks all our things.
and your smart mouth breaks my heart.
even then.
my darling,
i love you.
mum.

Lu.

our Lulu was our first pet.  Brandon and I got her back in 2008 in our first shared home (our teeny tiny Punxsy apartment) when she was technically too little to come home with us yet.  B spent a few nights feeding her milk from a dropper when she woke up crying; she gave me the first opportunity to see B in Dad mode.

Lu has lived in every home that B and I have shared together.  She's been with us in Punxsy apartment, Erie apartment, our first home in Erie, the chalet we borrowed from my best friend's family for a summer in Blue Knob, to our home now.  Lulu was kind and patient and sweet with all four of our kids.  She loved snuggling up on the couch if anyone would sit still for a few minutes with a blanket.  She was such a good cat.

It has been a choreographed dance with the dogs and cats since we've had them all together. Bullet's breed (Belgian Malinois/Dutch Shepherd - which we didn't discover was his breed until six years later) has an extreme prey drive and Lulu has never backed down from him chasing - so it's been seven years of keeping them separated, checking doors and gates, making sure the dogs are exercised, etc.  It's been an effort to keep the pets away and safe from each other, but many times of the past seven years, we've found ourselves between them; the dogs' faces scratched and Lulu backed into a corner. It has been a constant feeling of anxiety for me making sure everyone is safe and separated and everyone is good.

It is with a heavy heart to share the news that our sweet Lu died last night.  We found her when we got home from the end of season baseball picnic.  The gate wasn't up and so she must have come up and the dogs were down and the three of them had a tragic encounter.  When we got home, Bullet and Trixie were standing near her, ears and tails hanging down like they knew something was wrong (we believe they probably fatally shook her in the kitchen or laundry room and then carried her over to the cat door to the basement, where they knew she was supposed to be).

Grey was the first to walk in the house, he saw her, turned around sobbing and called out her name.  It was terrible.  Violet and Rusty were already sleep, so B and I held and comforted Gem and Grey as they both wept for about a half hour before the four of us went outside to bury her and say our goodbyes.  It was awful, both as pet owners and as parents to heartbroken kids.

We're going through all the guilt and regret - we coulda, woulda, shoulda a million times and a million different ways.  I keep trying to remind us though that we were always trying to do right by all of them.  To keep them all in our family and all safe and loved.  We could have given the cats to someone way back when, and I think we would have been coulda, woulda, shoulda 'ing that decision.  Or gave Bullet away and we would have been coulda, woulda, shoulda'ing that too.  Is there a right and perfect way to do anything?  I don't know - I think we just have to try to do our best, love with our whole hearts, and try do right by those we care for.

We are hugging a lot today and stopping mid-task with tears in our eyes.  Pets make themselves real members of a family and she did with her snuggling up with a blanket, and her letting Rust chase her around, jumping up into the sink when anyone went into the bathrooms, walking along the bathtub between the shower curtain and liner while the kids were in there.  I often said Lu was the only one in this house who listened to her momma. She will be missed everyday and remembered with loving kindness.  She was a good cat, our first pet, and we loved her.

If you have any extra prayers and thoughts of love and peace - we'd appreciate to have you send them over to our kids.  When I told Violet this morning, "Something sad happened last night, honey.  Lulu went to heaven." she looked up into my eyes and asked, "Can she come back?" and I told her no, you don't come back from heaven and she said, "But I love Lulu." And Gemmi and Grey both woke up today saying, "I'm still sad about Lulu." and I had to confirm that we'll probably be sad about Lulu for a very long time.

a speck in the vastness

Last night, Bullet was making us all a little batty.  He kept stealing the kids' stuffed animals and chasing his tail and basically being the physical manifestation of cabin fever.

So, even though I really really really (did I say really?) didn't want to, I pulled on my sneakers for the first time in about ten days and took him out for a jog because he needed to smell and pee on weird things and be in wide open spaces of the fields behind our house.  And once we got back there and dusk was already blanketing us and, as I was headphoneless, the crickets were singing their favorite tune for us, I realized that was exactly what I needed to...not the smelling and peeing on weird things of course, but to be in the wide open spaces.

I've been all wrapped up in my own head the past two weeks between the start of the school year, which truthfully has not been going anywhere as smoothly as I had imagined (like everything in life, right?) Grey has been feeling homesick at school and whines about going every day.  every.day.  so my mind has been a whirlwind of how to support him, how to encourage him, how I've basically done a poor job of preparation and I'm bad at being a mom (I know, that's going off the deep end, Tabitha - but this is how I speak to myself inside of my brain at 11:30pm, so let's just be real).

Plus, the news.  ugh, the news that's been breaking my heart and I have not been able to drag myself to this keyboard and write anything that seems important when there are babies washing ashore in Greece.  what is wrong with the world, everyone seems to ask.  to point fingers at everyone else.  there's an us and a them everyone seems to agree.  everywhere you look everyone is distinguishing between an us and a them.

So back to last night, Bullet and I were jogging in the mostly dark trails behind our house, and it is rare to see another living human.  We see all sorts of living things, deer, turkey, last night I swear there was an anteater like 50 yards away...I know it couldn't have been, but then what was that?  And I get to look across the fields, and over at the mountains, and running past the forest lined trail, I can feel myself coming back into focus.  If you zoomed out to helicopter height, would you even see Bullet and I?  Wouldn't we just blend in with the topography of the landscape?  All of my worries and thoughts and stresses contained to just this one tiny person on a back dirt road in the middle of corn fields and meadows.  A speck.

It has always been a great comfort to me to know I'm a speck in the vastness.  When we travel to the beach, one of my favorite things to do at least once while we are there, is to take a kayak out past the waves and the reef and as my husband holds his breath in panic and shakes his head at me incredulously but supportively (the story of our marriage), I hop off the side and drop myself into the deep blue sea.  I only stay in for a moment or two (mostly because Brandon is scanning the vicinity with expectant eyes of any giant sea creature to just jump up and swallow me whole), but I can picture myself zoomed out in that moment: me and my heart full of so much and my brain full of so much feeling as grand and big as the world itself, then I drop into the ocean and it would be impossible for me to make a smaller dent.  Sinking underwater with a big leap but only dropping a few feet in with the whole of the ocean beneath me.  A speck.

I love the city, which many people find incredible considering I was born and raised country and also love living in the country as an adult.  Who in a stable mental capacity loves both the city and the country?  well, me.

Anyway, I can get the speck feeling in the city too, I used to walk home from teaching and pass apartment building after apartment building, each building holding a hundred apartments, and knowing each apartment holds a different person or family.  And each of them are bursting with their own heart full of so much and their own brain full of so much.  There I was walking on the sidewalk while hundreds, thousands, millions of families were eating their dinner, or arguing, or falling in love.  A speck.

There's a freedom that comes with recognizing that you are only a speck.  Because life does not usually exist in the zoom out, but rather the zoom in, which is incredibly overwhelming.

Zoomed in, I am actually everything, all things - especially in this home and to my family.  If I'm off center, the whole of our daily life is crooked a bit and everyone feels it.  There's chores and bills and the stress of our bank account numbers and worrying about loving the kids enough each day, and don't forget to schedule that appointment, and make time to write on the blog, and I can't believe a friend would share that divisive article on facebook, and how long has it been since the dogs got a bath, and crap, I need to order new photos of the kids for the grandparents, and why are we out of diapers again already?

"How Mom feels," the elusive 'they' say, "is how everyone feels."
In my day to day living, a speck is the opposite of how I feel.

I wrote about this idea of recognizing that each of us are only a speck in the vastness in my 25 Lessons for my Daughters post:

17. Remember you are just a very, very small part of this great big world
It's a harsh reality, sweetheart, but nearly everything that happens to you in your life has also happened to someone else. Yes, you are unique and wonderful and completely you - but this world and her history is so great and big that you are really only a teeny, tiny piece of a vast puzzle. You fit just right into the picture that we all make together, but keep an anchor in knowing that you are but one small part. When you forget this fact, it's easy to believe that your own problems are all-encompassing and more important than everyone else's. Sorry baby, but they aren't. Time marches on, my girl, no matter what happens to any of us.

And it's liberating to know that I am one of many.  So, so many.  One of billions of women.  One of billions of Mummas, one of millions of bloggers, one of millions of writers, one of thousands of people who call their favorite book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, one of the hundreds of people that woke up this morning and thought 'I want a biscotti to dip in my coffee right now so much it's bizarre." All the things that make up me, there are other people that are feeling, doing, experiencing, and thinking that too.  In no things am I alone.

and yet.
there is also no one else on the planet and in the history of the planet that has had all of those things that make up me all together at once.  I share all the things about me with billions, millions, thousands, hundreds of other people through space and time.  But no single other person has all of the things at once like I do.  And that too is quite extraordinary.

As I said in my post for my daughters:

18. Remember, too though, that your actions have never-ending ripples that will go on to affect people that you may never meet.
Even though we are each a very small part of this great big world, every action we extend to another person leaves an imprint. Try to choose kindness to which you react and distribute to others. It's no easy task to choose patience and kindness when others are not doing the same, but remember that you are in charge of your own ripples that will make their way out into the world. Make it so that when people think of their experience with you - it is with a smile and gratitude for getting to have crossed their path with yours.

So friends, on this Saturday morning while all three of my kids are still sleeping (!! joy of joys) and my coffee is still hot, I'll finish with this.

There is no us and them.
We are all just specks among other specks.
All of your worries and problems and stress is also being experienced by someone else, lots of someone elses.  Someone else that you might initially believe is a 'them' to your 'us.'
Nope, all just specks.

But don't lose sight too, that your speck is important and unique and singular.  Still just a speck, but an important speck.  Just like every single one of everyone else's speck that is unique and singular and valuable.

Just a drop in the ocean...but oh how our ripples float out.