It has been an odd week. Well, every week is odd these days, as we’re doing things and changing our lives in ways we probably hadn’t imagined. But I distinctly remember thinking on Tuesday morning,

This is starting to feel routine. The things that were an ordeal, a big deal a couple of weeks ago now feel ordinary.

That felt good. It felt sustainable.

A few weeks before that, I’d had a rough emotional week as I realized that I’d been operating in what I called sprint-energy, and that I’d have to transition to marathon-energy in order to not exhaust myself into illness (whether mental or physical). I did that, and then, for a moment, it felt like it bore fruit in life feeling routine.

But as the week went on I noticed that I was sleeping horribly, waking up 2 – 4 times a night. I hadn’t gone for a walk or chosen to exercise at home in days. There was a book I was looking forward to reading, but I’d glance at it and then go back to watching endless British shows or cooking competitions on YouTube. All of these are signs I know well; they say that depression is creeping back in.

It was as if a new normal was developing, but I was rebelling against that new normal at the same time. As if everything inside me was saying,

No. I don’t like this. I refuse to let it feel normal, to let you feel normal.

I described myself on Facebook as feeling like my emotional soup was murky and fully of mushy pasta. If you’ve ever left pasta in soup to be heated up the next day, you’ll know how unpleasant this is. The soup started out good and delicious, but the pasta soaked up too much liquid and somehow stole a bunch of the flavor until it’s a bland, pulpy mess.

So I made a full-court press and in the last two days did almost every single thing that I know is good for me to do when I’m feeling that old depression trying to sneak back in (note that I already take medication for this, so I kept on keeping on with that).

1. Talk about it with others. As I mentioned, I posted about this feeling on Facebook and 28 of my far-flung friends and family responded to encourage me and to talk about how they were feeling. I also talked with my kids about how they were feeling. I didn’t feel alone, and it was good to know we’re all struggling to manage the emotional side-effects of what is happening these days.
   
   
2. Talk with God. Not just in my head, but I filled out a resource I sent around to my congregation in the weekly email on Thursday, and I wrote a Pandemic Psalm. It takes you through the steps of most psalms of lament: telling God what’s happening, how you feel about it, what you want God’s help with, and then reminding yourself what you know about God and God’s character, and declaring what you will do. I took myself through an “and yet” move, and reminded myself that there are things I can do.
   
   
3. Notice beauty around me. The weather in Michigan the last two weeks has been lousy, chilly and rainy/snowy. I am not here for it. But it did contribute to how long my forsythia has been in full bloom.
   
   
   
4. Take care of the home. My mother gave me great advice: when you’re feeling poor, clean your house and make a pot of soup, that way your environment isn’t dragging you down further and you’ve got sustenance. I’m not feeling particularly poor, but it’s good advice for when you’re feeling down, too. So I put away the laundry, cleaned the dishes,
   
   
   
   cut flowers to distribute throughout the house (see photo at the top), and made granola (because I already bake bread, making granola is my new coronavirus cooking adventure).
   
   
   
5. Help other people. Doing things for others can knock us out of the ever-tightening spiral thinking that comes with depression. So I brought a load of new-to-them kid books to a family in my church (if your kids are older and you have lots of books, lending them out to families who can’t go to the library is a great thing to do in this season),
   
   
   
   gave a tub of margarine to another man in the church who said he couldn’t find any, ordered take-out from a local restaurant to keep supporting restaurant workers,
   
   
   
   and made a video to remind myself, and others, that Jesus can be found in the gaps, that Jesus is with us in the low times (below the list).
   
   
6. Go for a walk. Anywhere is good, but I love to walk amongst the trees. I can feel my shoulders unclench and lower a good inch after walking in nature. So I headed to the Calvin Nature Preserve, hoping for wildflowers. There was only one Trout Lily bloom that was almost open.
   
   
   
   But more exciting than that: for the first time in the 30 years I’ve been walking there, I saw a pileated woodpecker! Those are the Woody Woodpecker-type birds, and they are huge. (It’s in the middle of the photo below, look for a reddish blur.) I was thrilled.
   
   

I didn’t read, but I think I’ll be able to get to that book this weekend. It feels like my full-court press has done its job. The reality of my life hasn’t changed, and I’m still sad about the things I miss, but I’m not mired in murky emotional soup anymore.

What do you do to knock yourself out of a downward spiral?

I was reading the story of Jesus turning water into wine, his first miracle, in preparation for teaching it to the kids in Sunday school, when I saw something I’d never noticed before. I’ll give it to you first in Biblespeak; then I’ll make it more colloquial.

Biblespeak

There was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. The wine supply ran out during the festivities, so Jesus’ mother told him, “They have no more wine.”

“Dear woman, that’s not our problem,” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.”

But his mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Standing nearby were six stone water jars, used for Jewish ceremonial washing. Each could hold twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told the servants, “Fill the jars with water.”

John 2:1-7 NLT

Colloquial

There was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. The wine supply ran out during the festivities, so Jesus’ mother sidled up to him and said, totally passive-aggressively, “They have no more wine.”

“Mom.” Jesus dragged out the word in a sing-song. “Dad said I don’t have to.”

But his mother ignored his whining and told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Jesus might be the Son of God, but he still had to deal with his mother. He told the servants, “Fill the jars with water.”

Maybe I exaggerated a little–but not much.

Unpacking the little family drama

How passive-aggressive was Mary?! She presented a problem to Jesus. She didn’t ask him to solve it. She didn’t even ask him to solve it miraculously. But she assumed he could and he assumed that she was asking for a miracle.

How did she know he could solve that problem in that way? Had he been turning things into other things at home? I mean, that’s a whole different level than saying, “It’s cold in here,” when what you want is, “Please close the window.” I don’t have too many passive-aggressive people in my life, but it seems like Mary’s game is up there with the best.

And then Jesus’s attitude? No matter how you interpret the tone of Jesus’s response to his mother, he’s essentially saying, “Don’t bother me.” Parents, how many times have your kids said this to you, either out loud or with their body language, when you ask them to do something they don’t want to do? I’m guessing that you’re like me and this is a familiar family dynamic.

I like to imagine Jesus a little whiny here, but staying respectful, because his brand-new disciples are close by and he can’t push back too hard without looking bad. And, you know, he’s God, so he’s not going to blast the dear woman for being a little annoying. The NIV gives us a little saltier of a Jesus than the NLT: “Woman, why do you involve me?”

Jesus even tries to invoke his heavenly Father with, “My time has not yet come.”

But Mary is such a mother.

She totally ignores him. Whether he is a little whiny or he’s irritable or he’s as calm and dignified as we’re supposed to imagine he is, she discounts his refusal and bypasses any further conversation about the matter and tells the servants to do what he tells them to do.

Just like many mothers do when their child doesn’t have a good reason for refusing to do the thing. No arguing, no negotiating. Jesus gets to talk to the hand while Mary goes around him and gives order to the servants.

I love seeing such utterly human and familiar moments in Bible stories. When the people are in situations I recognize, then I feel at home in the Bible. Then, despite every other context being different, I can find myself in the family drama, in the all-too-human interactions.

Jesus is our brother and our friend–maybe even to the point of being able to complain about overbearing mothers together. Well, if I’m being perfectly honest, I do not have an overbearing mother, but I might be one, so technically the person I relate to in this story is Mary.

And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Matthew 3:17 NIV

Two weeks in a row I got to tell the story of Jesus being baptized by John to two different groups of kids at church, and the same thing struck me each time: the line, “with him I am well pleased.”

You know what Jesus had done at this point in his ministry?

Nothing.

Okay, once, after traveling with his family to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Passover he stayed behind and talked with the teachers in the Temple court and amazed them with his understanding. But that’s it.

All it took for God to be well pleased with Jesus, was for Jesus to be. After all, Jesus was God’s son, God’s beloved child. And because we’ve been adopted into God’s family through Jesus, we have that same status.

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Ephesians 1:5 NLT

So all we need to do for God to look at us and say, “You are my child, whom I love. With you I am very pleased,” is nothing.

God will not love you any more if you fast every week, if you sit on five committees or serve in three ministries at your church. God will not be any more pleased with you if you give up alcohol and sugar or if you spend three hours a day in prayer and Bible study. Those may make a big difference for you and for your church family, but none of them will make God love you any more than he already does–which is enough to send his only son to die for you.

As a do-er, I need this reminder.

It also made me think of the opening lines of “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, which has been much on social media lately:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

My friend Ed Czyewski has a book entirely devoted to this subject, Flee, Be Silent, Pray, that is coming out next month (pre-order here). I’ve written before about the deep impact Ed has had on my spiritual life with this focus on being God’s beloved (Beloved), and now that I re-read the quote below that I highlighted a few years ago when he indie published Flee, it makes me laugh, because I literally typed it just now as if it were fresh to me.

“Whether you need a booming voice from heaven to shake you free from your anxious thoughts or you need a gentle whisper to call you back to your first love, God is speaking to you right now in this place…This message is for you if you can take it on faith, even right now: ‘You are my child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.'”

This is why faith is the task of a lifetime: we need to hear the same stories, the same verses, the same ideas over and over and over, not only because we forget them over and over and over, but also because life changes us and we need them differently at different points.

Maybe you need this reminder now for different reasons than I needed it, so I’ll type it for a third time:

God says, “You are my child, whom I love. With you I am well pleased.”

https://youtu.be/TAdW-ehGLIw

One of my favorite images for God in the Bible is the hen sheltering her chicks under her wings.

Let me live forever in your sanctuary,
    safe beneath the shelter of your wings! 

Psalm 61:4 (NLT)

He alone is my refuge, my place of safety;
    he is my God, and I trust him….
He will cover you with his feathers.
    He will shelter you with his wings.
    His faithful promises are your armor and protection.

Psalm 91:2,4 (NLT)

How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
    in the shadow of your wings.

Psalm 36:7 (NLT)

These are favorite verses of preachers and writers searching for more stereotypically feminine attributes of God, and one of the reasons I like them so much. They bring up images that are nurturing and cozy.

Sometimes we just need comfort and a little warmth, and those sheltering wings snuggling us close sounds just right. But life is not always cozy. Storms of all kinds descend on us (and sometimes we create them ourselves). 

For those times, I like the image of God-as-hen from the video at the beginning. God is sheltering us under his wings, but we are wet and cold and suffering. It is far better to be with God than exposed to our storms on our own, but it isn’t necessarily going to be comfortable.

I am comforted by the assurance that my sadness or my misery in a stormy situation doesn’t mean that God isn’t with me, isn’t sheltering me: I am protected, but things are still kind of lousy.

Isn’t that just how life feels sometimes?

Lord God, for everything good or bad, happy or sad, exciting or scary that happened for us, personally, the last few days, this is a hard weekend. This is a hard weekend because we saw a geyser of hate shoot high and proud in Charlottesville. We saw the result of the sin of racism, of white supremacy, being allowed to flourish.

Lord God, this is not the flourishing you call your children to.

We lament at the state of our country, where racists and white supremacists feel so empowered. We lament the state of the church, because it hasn’t done enough to call out racism as sin, and it has even provided support.

I pray, Lord, for you to plow up the hard ground of the hearts of those who espouse white supremacy–give them such a full and unmistakable experience of your love that it drives out fear. Drive out their fear.

Drive out the fear of speaking out, for those who want to root out this poison.

Raise up prophetic voices. May we live prophetic lives, Lord God, fueled by you and by your word. May this be a turning point in our country, in the church, and in our church, here at Grace–where there is racism, heal it, Lord. Root it out of our hearts, root it out of our ministries, root it out of our organization. May your love flourish here.

I pray for myself and for all who lead the children here. May we speak and may we live in such a way that every single child who comes through our doors leaves with a secure foundation in your love. May they be so filled with the knowledge that you love them, that no matter what the world says about them, they are your beloved children, that there is no ground for the seeds of fear and hatred and violence to find purchase in.

We pray for those who marched against the white supremacist rally. Bring your healing to those who were injured and your comfort to the loved ones of those who were killed. Be with all who march and attend vigils today, Lord, whether in Charlottesville or in cities across the country. Keep them safe, Lord. Give them courage.

We pray for those who feel terrorized by this resurgence of public racism. Be with them, Lord.

Lord God, we need you. We need you now more than ever, even as we say with the Psalmist: How long, oh Lord, how long?

We look forward to that time when nothing evil will be allowed to enter the city, when the nations will walk in the light of the glory of God. Bring the light of your glory right now to us in Charlottesville, to us in Grand Rapids. May we bring your light to our city, to our schools and workplaces and playgrounds and parks and homes and everywhere we go.

You have sent us out to live in the light of your glory right now–may we do it.

In your holy name,
Amen

My Obamacare story starts with the end of my marriage. In August 2015, my 21-year marriage ended and my then-husband lost both his jobs and his health insurance, which meant that the kids and I lost our health insurance, as well. I was a stay-at-home mom who’d worked freelance jobs from home for most of my years as a parent, so I didn’t have a job outside the home at that time.

Without warning, we had nothing.

My ex’s company was generous with giving us a little time to work out our medical coverage situation, which was good, because it took a while to get the bureaucracy going. I applied for the Affordable Care Act immediately, but was rejected — because we qualified for the Medicaid expansion that Michigan made as part of the Obamacare deal.

So we went on Medicaid.

It was a godsend. To have everything ripped away and everything in my life upended, but to know that if something were to happen, the kids and I had medical coverage, was a bone-deep relief. This system that I’d paid into, that you’d paid into, was the lifeline we needed in our desperate moment.

The system worked.

Within a year, and the finding of three part-time jobs, I was earning (just barely) too much for me to qualify for Medicaid, so I went to the Marketplace. But the kids are still covered. It is still a relief. The coverage is pretty basic, but when our doctor told me to take my daughter to the E.R. for her third bout of vomiting and diarrhea in three weeks, I could go with only the worry of her condition, not how I was going to pay for it.

There are so many more dramatic Obamacare stories, and don’t get me started on the demonizing of the poor who use Medicaid (when our love of cheap goods requires that some people make barely any money and need government assistance to get basic services, which we should really call a corporate entitlement system, because they’re the ones who are feeling entitled to not pay a living wage or supply benefits, not to mention the economy’s switch away from full-time benefits-paying work to contract non-benefits-paying work). But this is my story of a government program that helped me when I’d suddenly lost everything.

Thanks, Obama.

And thanks, Governor Snyder, for making sure Michigan did the Medicaid expansion when many of your fellow Republicans were dead-set against it.

If the current administration’s changes to the health care law go through, I don’t know that someone in my situation would get help, that the system their taxes helped pay for would be there in their temporary hour of need. I don’t even want to imagine what the stress of that would have done to me and my kids.

 

[This is a story I wrote for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction competition. I had to write 1,000 words of historical fiction that took place at a book signing and involved a pumpkin. I don’t think it’s a great story, but I learned some interesting stuff about American history that I didn’t know before, so I’m sharing it and the painting that inspired the story.]

***

“Oh, they call me Tomochichi Mico, or Chief, but like they are humoring a child who has declared himself to be a rabbit for the day. There is a different tone than when they say My Lord or Your Grace to each other.”

“But you are not theirs and they are not yours.” Scenawki smoothed the ends of the deerskin cord against my chest.

As usual, my wife was right.

Her eyes crinkled with affection. “Was it only a few moons ago that Toonahowi insisted on being called Sir Hare?”

I snorted. “And now look at him, in his white stockings and blue silk coat, prancing like an English horse.”

“It’s fun to put on another’s skin.” She swished her skirts so they sounded like dry leaves.

“What do they call that color?”

“Orange.”

“It suits you. But I miss seeing your beautiful brown legs.”

She laughed. “Ever the diplomat, Tomo. Ever the diplomat.”

“Better than constant war.”

“With me or with the English?”

But I couldn’t answer her teasing, because it was time to pose for the painting. The men of the Georgia Trustees were in place, most of them on the stairs, higher than us by several heads. Oglethorpe was in the center, of course, holding my nephew’s hand, putting Toonahowi in a position of greater honor than his chief. They would never have treated their King George that way, and he would never have allowed it, but for the sake of my people, I bore it with dignity.

And a little one-upmanship.

I could see them cutting glances at our bare shoulders and legs. Jealous. Their bodies were like puffball mushrooms. It was laughable how they tried to show off their legs or square their padded coats at us. I had seen at least ninety summers, and I could’ve run them all into the ground.

Was it petty to make sure my right leg was visible up to the top of my thigh? To reach out my arm so the muscles were in relief? Yes. But I do not apologize for it. Neither do I apologize for Lamochattee, who turned his back to the painter and looked over his massive shoulder. Or Yaholo, who fanned out his eagle feather stick and turned his leg so his knee tassel showed.

None of that would derail my diplomacy. Still, Scenawki looked in the opposite direction. Whether she disapproved or was trying not to giggle, I don’t know.

I could wait in perfect stillness from sunup to sundown while hunting, but posing for the painting almost did me in. And after that, making my mark on all those books. But tonight’s event was why we came. I would suffer through anything to hold up the seedling of my dreams for my people and for theirs, and see whether it would get watered or get scorched.

**

My clothes were those the English would like: garments that covered my skin and were, themselves, covered in tassels, shell embroidery, and bone inlays. I wore sprays of feathers and quills in my hair. I was ready.

Oglethorpe brought me to the front of the room. “Esteemed Georgia Trustees, and friends of exploration and trade, thank you for coming to meet my friend, Tomochichi Mico. We have worked well together in the year since we settled southern Georgia in February of 1733, and unlike some other areas, we have peace. It is our hope that we always do. The Chief gave this speech in his language to our colleague Mary Musgrove, who translated it and taught it to him in English. I trust that you will find him as eloquent and as compelling as I do.”

“Friends of General Oglethorpe, and, I hope, friends of the Yamacraw, thank you. We are not so different, you and I.”

Oglethorpe looked back and forth between us, and the people laughed.

“I was born in the Isti nation, who you call the Creek, but I gathered together some Creek and some Yamasee and settled new land as a new people, the Yamacraw. So I understand the impulse of your people to settle new lands. We are pleased to share our mutual new home, but I do not want my people and your people to merely survive. I want us to grow in strength—together.

“We left to come here in the time you call June, and my people were planting a food that has gotten us through many a hard winter: the Pumpkin.”

My family moved through the crowd, offering them strips of roasted and dried pumpkin, and Toonahowi tossed me a whole, dried one—a deep clay colored beauty with dark green streaks. I rattled the seeds in a circle dance rhythm until I felt like myself again.

“After all your hospitality, please accept this gift. But it is more than a gift for now. I know that you have received reports of struggling crops from your settlers. Accept our offer to share the seeds and the knowledge of local growing conditions that have sustained my people for generations. In return, may I confess my deepest desire? It is for my people to learn your language and to learn to read. We can do so much more trade in goods, in knowledge, and in sustained peace when we know the same tongue. Will you help us, friends?”

Then it was Oglethorpe’s turn to convince the Trustees to buy a signed chapbook of the speech I just gave, to support what he called an Indian school.

So many wrong names they gave us, but to keep their favor I bit my tongue.

Again.

I lifted a book above my head. “It is too late for this old warrior to learn to read these chicken scratches you call words, but it is not too late for my nephew. You have grown to love him during these days. Please love his future, as well.”

**

Two summers later, we had our school. And the Yamacraw had a chance at fair trade.

 

 

The United States is my father’s fourth country. He was born in the Netherlands at the beginning of World War II. His first memory is of playing outside while an air ride siren blared and his terrified mother screamed at him from the house to come in; he was two, so he ignored her. They had to move in with two other families during the Hunger Winter. The relative who owned the house also owned a soup factory, so they had food stores, but the Nazis had commandeered all the good stuff that went into the soups. They were left with fish heads and skeletons, which they ground into a paste and mixed with whatever rotten vegetables they managed to hide. My dad ate it happily because he was so young, but the older kids and adults ate separately so the little ones wouldn’t see them gag. At least one Jewish person was hidden in plain sight in this household, and my father’s aunt would feed any itinerant person who knocked at the gate. His father was in the Resistance, so he was often gone, but if the Nazis got wind that he might be home, they’d come calling. One evening, he was there, but an aunt put him in a nightgown and a lace cap and plunked a baby in his arms. She then took the soldiers on a tour of the house: “Women and babies. Women and babies. That’s all who’s here.” They bought it (which may be as much a commentary on the hairiness of Dutch women, but I digress).

On October 23, 1953, when my dad was ten, they immigrated to Canada and he became a Canadian citizen. He came to the U.S. for college, married an American woman and brought her back to Toronto with him. We lived in Australia for three years in the mid-70s, and then in the early 90s, they moved to California, and have lived in the U.S. since then. Like all immigrants, he worked hard. Like many immigrants, he started his own companies and employed others, both in Canada and here in the States. Truly, he is one of the hardest working and most hopeful people I know. But he hasn’t become an American citizen. Even though he is oh so anti-Trump, he can’t vote.

So I dedicate my No-Trump vote to my dad, Peter Hart, who grew up in a time when a politician whipped up hatred and distrust against certain segments of society; and who knows how important it is to Resist those calls to hate, to fear, to blame people who others say are “not us.” It is a family legacy I fully embrace.

***

DedicateYourNoTrumpVote is a website started by author Julianna Baggott. You can submit your own dedication there or write your own and use the hashtag #DedicateYourNoTrumpVote. Many, many authors have dedications posted there; it’s a great read.

***

My mother is also totally awesome, but since she can cast her vote in this election, she misses out on the dedication 😉

At around 2:40, on August 26, 2015, your life will utterly and irrevocably change. It will be hideous and heart-rending and be both a total shock and not a surprise.

Likewise, nothing I can tell you now can prepare you for it, yet you’ve been preparing for it for many years. I say that not only because you’ve always known something was hollow and hurtful in your marriage, but also because many things you’ve done and the ways you’ve grown have laid the groundwork for how you will get through the next year:
* your years of prayer and intimacy with God
* your years of (trying to) be there for others when they needed you
* your tendency to be open about your struggles
* your truthfulness with your kids
* your dealing with your depression and anxiety.

All these things will serve you well in the year to come. It will be worse than you have ever imagined, and that’s saying something. You will cry so hard and so much that you will not have to pee when you wake up in the morning. You will stop eating and drinking; I’d tell you to remember to drink water, but your anxiety over this upcoming one-year anniversary has gotten you not drinking enough again.

Here’s what I want to tell you, Natalie of one year ago: It will be horrible but you’ll get through it. People will help you, both practically and spiritually. You will get this message from many different directions: you are God’s beloved. Soak it up whenever you can. You will struggle to learn to rest in God’s presence, but it is a consistent refrain over the next year: trust it. Your friendships will deepen. Your relationship with your kids will get even closer. Work will find you, which is good, because your ability to get out and hustle will be impaired, but God and your friends will place work in front of you. It will be good work that uses your writing gifts. Your dream of being published will happen — As Real As It Gets, the project you officially announced with such hope just yesterday, will make its Kickstarter and the book will come out in the Spring and it will be beautiful. At the end of the year, you will even find a counselor who asks you questions you don’t have an immediate answer to, questions that really get you thinking.

It will be the worst year of your life. You will be called upon to make tough decisions, to say things to people you’d never imagined you’d have to say, to draw uncomfortable boundaries, to fill out so much paperwork, to ask for help. You will be so hurt and so angry. And also relieved. You will have compassion for your current self, but you’ll learn, right at the end of the year, that you don’t have compassion for the girl who tried so hard to make her marriage work. There is much work to do in the realm of forgiveness, both of yourself and of your ex, but don’t you dare think about that now, one-year-ago Natalie.

It will take all of the strength of your war- and poverty-surviving immigrant ancestors, all of the strength and vulnerability God will give you, to make it through the next year.

But you will make it.

love, Natalie of 8/26/16

[I’m taking a course called Making Blogging Fun Again, and “write a letter to yourself of a year ago” was one of the prompts.]

…the garage.

I’ve enjoyed my pretty-much-every-Tuesday posts, so I’m going to keep it going although this is mostly to say that I won’t have much of a post today: we’re painting my garage.

Yesterday was a fun work with, my mother, my kids and I all working together.

Today, it’ll be just my mother and I, and because my garage is tiny, we should finish today.

In the build-up for my mother coming and staying here two days, I cleaned the living daylights out of my house so she wouldn’t even have the impulse to take a break from painting the garage by mopping my floor. (It should be noted that she would do this with no sense of recrimination or guilt-inducing for me for having a floor that needed mopping [which she’d do on her hands and knees, of course], but just an, “Oh, I just did it quick a minute.” I hope I can be the same for my children.) But there are things one cannot control. When my daughter cleaned her room, she revealed a constellation of spots on her carpet that nobody had seen before, because of the three inches of clothes and detritus that had covered the floor for months. So my mother is upstairs right now, treating those spots with rubbing alcohol.

In the sweetest, most patient way possible, my mother will not be denied her opportunity to do a cleaning job, just quick a minute, for her children.

So here’s to summer work crews — I salute you!

May we all get done what we need to get done!!
What nagging jobs are you tackling this summer?