Disney Dream

Disney Dream,  thats what they call it.  The boat.  And it is!  I have never been on a cruise before and me and my little family had been counting down the weeks and days until our trip for months.  We had the most amazing fun time ever.  I mean ever. I love Disney,  they so live up to all the hype.  It was magical,  just like they promised.  We set sail from Port Canaveral in Florida, and landed in the Bahamas.  We had a day trip there to the huge hotel Atalantis and it was pretty cool.  The Bahamas are beautiful and the weather was great.  I have, to say the the city of Nassau you can tell is stricken by poverty and quite run down in some of the places we drove through on the way to the hotel.  Like you wouldn't want to walk around there.  But back to the glossy world of vacations.  Next we sailed to Disneys private little island called CastAway Cay.  It was really cute.  We swam with and fed stingrays,  played on the beach,  and attempted snorkeling.   On the boat Ellas favorite thing was the huge waterslide called the Aquaduck that wraped around the the whole deck of the boat.  She even talked me into riding it with her a couple of times and I am glad I did.  The shows were amazing and the food was...argh....the food!  We all put on a few I think.  Now I am so ready for warmer weather.  I am all convinced that I want to go somewhere tropical for every vacation.  Thanks a million to my wonderful hubby who earned this trip through all his hard work.  And to Edward Jones,  those guys really know how to make you feel happy to be part of the company.  He are a million pics for you to ooh and awe over or completely disregard.  Either- or. 

The Icky Stuff

It started with a gag, and then a horrible smell. One glance in the review mirror and I knew we were in serious trouble. Just keep your head down and keep driving I told myself, you are two blocks from home. Turns out two blocks was way too far. Second glance was just in time to see a second stream of projectile vomit erupt for my one year old's mouth.

"Eww MOM, there is puke everywhere," screamed my oldest, and then she started to gag also. And it was everywhere, including covering the five bags of groceries I had just barely bought and placed on the car floor in front of my babies car seat. Rookie mistake. Once home I removed a slippery stinking goo covered child from her seat and carried her straight into the bathroom, leaving of trail of grossness in our wake. I washed her and cradled her and rocked her to sleep, cleaned myself up, cleaned the bathroom, the hallway, started the washing machine, and then remembered the van. The puke devastated minivan. Mother Trucker. Once again I scooped and scraped and scrubbed. The van was clean, clean car seat, puke covered me. I looked at the five bags of ruined groceries. Should I try to salvage them? On one had they were covered in vomit, on the other had they had cost me roughly seventy bucks.

"What's for dinner?" my husband queried as he came in the door from work. Don't ask honey, just don't ask!

That night as I collapsed into bed only slightly more exhausted than usual I remembered a guest panel I had recently sat on at a local college. It was a career planning course, taught by a friend, consisting only of freshmen girls, and I was there to talk to them about being a stay at home mom. They asked questions, me and two other mothers gave advice.

"What's hardest about being a stay at home mom?" Uh, ya they came out with the heavy hitters right away. How to explain. How to tell these sweet innocent doe eyed girls about the horrors of cesarean scars and lack of a private moment ever. E V E R! That they would be in charge of keeping a helpless little living human alive, and fed and clean. Not only cared for but well adjusted and kind and compassionate and a million other things. That the career choice of motherhood meant no quiting time, no coffee breaks, no paid vacation. That on their best days they would look beraggled and on their worst days like three shades of hell warmed over. What were they doing thinking about motherhood anyway? I wanted to scream at them to bloody well finish college, run away to Italy for a year, get something pierced or tattooed, you are only babies yourselves! What I settled on saying was that being a mom is great, the best and hardest thing I had ever done, and that they should worry about giving birth to themselves first. I hope it stuck.

As I picked a chunk of who knows what out of my hair I thought about the freshmen girl who wanted to know how you handle the icky stuff.

"You know," she had said, "like the bloody noses and scraped knees and poo and stuff. That's gross and I don't think I could do that."

I started to laugh hysterically. Motherhood is the icky stuff. It is buggers on your shirt, and the five second rule. It is four people sharing the same spoon without blinking. It is crusty and messy and sticky. You will count down the days until its over, and then cry like a baby when it really is. You will never ever love so hard. The love will fill you up right in that spot under your rib cage until it hurts and you think you might burst with love. Then your daughter will lay her soft cheek on your shoulder and her downy curls with brush against your face and all your bones and joints will creek and groan with the weight of that love. And that's what you will get for braving the icky stuff.

30 days keeping the darkness at bay.

  A month has passed since that terrible day.   That day when a nightmare entered our living rooms by way of a television a screen.   Each parents worst nightmare playing out on continuous repeat as we learned the name Sandy Hook.   That night I slept in restless fits.  I walked the hall of my little house checking and rechecking on my precious daughters, both obliviously lost in peaceful dreams.   Around six am the flood gates finally broke.   I sobbed into a couch cushion,  consumed with grief.  With the grief I imagined was being felt on the other side of the country,  and God knows, I could never fully understand.   Grief sent like a massive shockwave across a nation with a broken heart.

   The next morning I timed the 18 minute drive to my daughters school.   Mentally making a ridiculous plan of action if anything should ever happen.  If I sped and ran all the lights I could be there in 15... and I could leave the baby with a  neighbor if I had to.  Because, that's what we do as mothers.   We imagine every worst case scenario and  hundreds of heroic solutions.  A twisted insurance plan.  I try to outsmart the unknown and shore myself up against possible heartache.   Always be prepared.   As if thinking it through could somehow keep the darkness away. 

  In effort to curb the tears that never seem to end my husband soon banned all news media from our home.   Which was probably for the best.   Just a glimpse of one of those little faces sends me headlong over a cliff of despair.  Pictures of six year olds with earnest trusting eyes. Six year olds that wont get to open Christmas presents that have already been bought and wrapped by adoring mothers. It is all so unspeakable and too much to bear.  "You can't live your life in fear," my husband whispers softly and I know he's right. It is not so much that I fear this happening in my town or to my child.  Maybe I am foolish in that regard.   Mostly I am grieving.  If I fear anything,  it is that this country might loose its soul if it doesn't come together under the weight of this tragedy to find a solution.

 When I pick up  Ella from second grade she spouts off the erie details of "intruder drills" and panic rises in my throat.   She says how they all huddled together in the corner of the classroom and couldn't make any noise or move for five minutes.   My heart aches and stretches as I remember the simple innocence of my childhood,  something she won't experience.   I stare at two little immunized,  well harnessed,  organic fed girls through my rear view mirror and wonder how I will ever get them safely to the other side.  Can the words "I love you," ever be enough ?  If I arm them with forgiveness and compassion,  with hope and wonder can those things add up to being enough?   
The words of J R R Tolkien ring like a bell for me and give me peace in a time when peace is hard to find:

"Some believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I've found it is the small things. Everyday deeds by ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay."

   And I pray that is true, because it has been a month and we'll never forget what the darkness looks like.