the single most important societal problem of our day

If I had to say what the single most important societal problem of our day is I would say it is the ‘disconnect’. Funny, we think we are so ‘connected’ with all our technology but in reality we have become increasingly disconnected from everything that is important in life – the people closest to us, the environment around us, and even our own selves.

We think that having the new hot phone will help us stay connected to everything and everyone but we use it as a distraction tool, something to occupy time. Instead of making a connection with the person sitting next to us outside our daughter’s ballet class we check our emails and browse the internet.

I would not even say that it is the fault of the technology we use so much as the choices we are making. Mobile phones are great for many situations. It is not the devices but the users who seem to have lost touch, or disconnected from those around them.

We have disconnected ourselves from the earth and air that surrounds us, we hide inside out of fear or laziness and fail to make a real connection with nature. Maybe this makes it easier to go on using plastic bags and driving gas-guzzling high-pollution vehicles – if we don’t see the beauty that we are destroying through our own daily choices we don’t have to feel bad about what we do.

We also disconnect from our own being, from our physical body through not paying attention to aches and pains and reactions to certain foods that may be causing us more ill than good, and from our spiritual self constant worry about the future and keeping up with the Jones’ rather than being fully present in experiencing the joy in each fleeting moment.

Staying connected to others, to the space around us and to our innermost being is something that takes effort. It requires of us something more than most are willing to give but the payoff is so much greater than we could ever expect – the hug from an understanding friend, the tranquility of sitting peacefully, watching the waves crash on the shore, the incredible peace you can experience when you know that you have made positive decisions that will make not only your own, but someone else’s life a little bit better. That is why regaining the lost connection is worth the effort.

Rewards

I spent the day today creating what I hope will solve all behavior issues in this house. Cool. I bet you want to know what it is, huh?

Well, I started thinking last week when I went to a home party where a behavior reward system was offered for sale. It was jars with marbles, similar to what my daughter’s second grade teacher does in her classroom - you do good, you get a marble. Once the marble jar is full, you pick a prize. Basically the carrot idea.

Now, having a degree in psychology and almost a degree in education I know that reward systems are used frequently and I also know that they are the cause of great debate. There are several great books out there that explain in detail why reward systems don’t really work. Alfie Kohn’s book, 'Punished By Rewards’ is the one that comes to mind first.

"Kohn, the author of other iconoclastic books, among them You Know What They Say: The Truth About Popular Beliefs ( LJ 8/90), here shows how rewards of all sorts undermine our efforts to teach students, manage workers, and raise children. Although aimed at a general audience, the book is based on extensive research and documented with almost 100 pages of notes and references. The first six review the behaviorist tradition and lay out in a clear and convincing manner Kohn's central argument that "pop behaviorism" is dangerously prevalent in our society. Here Kohn discusses why rewards, including praise, fail to promote lasting behavior change or enhance performance and frequently make things worse. The remaining six chapters examine the effect of rewards and alternatives to them in companies, schools, and the home. Recommended for all types of libraries.

- Mary Chatfield, Angelo State Univ., San Angelo, Tex.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.”

Knowing all of this has not stopped me from using rewards at all with my own children, it is really hard not to. It usually works very well with young children, they love to get a sticker or a lollipop or watch a movie. Rewards can be easy to come up with. So it is very tempting to fall into a trap of always relying on them. I’ll admit that I used rewards with my kids for potty training, although I think I did this more so with the last one. I know the first two kids got a big prize when they went for a week with no accidents, they never got something for each time they went potty. I had seen a friend attempt this and her kid trained himself to let out a little bit at a time in order to rack up the prizes - I’m sure that is not good for a kid physically! I used a random rewards system instead, a reward was given maybe every five or ten times. I often forgot to give one and there was no arguing (worth it just for that!). The final prize was something picked by the child as a celebration of their accomplishments, something they were proud to pick out. not to say this is the way to go, but it did work for us.

It has been a while since the older kids have had any sort of chart for their responsibilities. They had one when they were in preschool and all it entailed was placing a smiley-faced magnet under each task they completed that day before bedtime. There were no prizes that I can remember, but they were excited to see that they had filled in all their smiles.

Recently we revisited the idea of a chore chart in order to keep the kids on task for what they need to be doing each day without my having to scream it at them repeatedly. Every Mom out there knows what I mean. “Seriously, it is almost spring break of your second year of school and you still need to be reminded to wash your hands when you get home???!!!” I have tried to use Dr. Driekurs suggestion of the natural consequence - “If you don’t hurry up, you’ll miss the bus and you WILL be walking today!!!” (his idea is that you make the kids walk just once, with you driving alongside to make sure they are safe, to teach them the idea of why it is important to get themselves ready in the morning). It is a wonderful idea but when I look at my precious little blue-eyed-pouting-lipped little boy I just cannot bring myself to so it.

I saw an article posted on my facebook page about gentle parenting and why gentle parents do not use rewards and punishments. I want to be a gentle parent. I feel that we are gentle parents in many ways with our kids so I immediately decided I had to change the plan. Doing a marble jar was not going to be our thing. I can just picture myself, taunting them with the marbles in hopes of getting them to win the prize because I don’t want to see them not get it. It would get ugly. Just as ugly as having no system.

Instead I went and bought four small wooden plaques and one larger one. I talked with the kids at breakfast and we agreed that a self-assessment system would be our goal. I am in the middle of painting the four signs with our house rules/responsibilities - “Be Helpful” “Be Responsible” “Be Honest” and “Be Kind”. The fifth plaque has the days of the week and each child’s name. They will be responsible for honestly recording how they did each day on the four rules/responsibilities. A smile means “I did great and feel good about this”; a frown means “I know I messed this up today but I will try to do better tomorrow” and a straight lipped mouth will mean “I did some good and some not so good today”. I’m sure there will be days when being honest is too hard, but that is yet another good lesson to be learned.

There may be a surprise movie or dinner out every once in a while when weeks have been particularly good, to let them know how much we appreciate their efforts and recognize that it is not easy.

Sure, we will have to spend a lot of time talking about these values and what things in our daily life are encompassed by each one but I think this will be a good thing and ought to get much discussion anyway. Instead of holding the carrot out in front of them and using the stick when they veer off the course, they will know why they are on the course and what they need to do to stay on it.

Lofty goals, I know. I’ll let you know how it goes. So far today it went pretty well. There was discussion of what needed to get done rather than orders being barked. It felt good for a change and I hope it can stick.

(while I was writing this, Jeremy was watching this:

PNG - My Life in a Tropical Paradox

I was recently at a party with friends when someone asked some questions about my experience growing up in Papua New Guinea. I had not talked about it in a long time and while talking I realized how much I had missed sharing this experience with people who were interested.

If you did not know this already, I was born in a remote village in the jungles of the Enga province of Papua New Guinea. Enga meris (women from Enga) are known for being quite fearsome. I like to think I can be fearsome. I was delivered by a New Guinean midwife since the Scottish doctor who delivered my older sister was on furlough. Perhaps this is the beginnings of my fascination with the miracle of birth (and an insane admiration of my Mama).

I spent the first few years of my life playing with leaves and sticks and dirt, wearing a grass skirt, being carried over vine bridges on the shoulders of New Guinean men (I don’t think they trusted my parents and their slippery white-folk hair that was no good for a kid to hold on to), and riding in helicopters to go grocery shopping. I honestly do not recall a thing about those early years beyond what I have seen in pictures and been told in stories.

Apparently I could speak three languages by the time I was three. English, Melanesian Pidgin and Duna, the local language (there are over 800 languages in PNG). And I could tell who spoke which language. I am impressed with me. If only I could remember one of those languages well now! I learned recently about myself that my early exposure to many languages while making it easier for me to learn other languages as I grew up, also made me incapable of communicating fully to the extent of my intellectual desire - I reduce everything to the simplest of terms. Perhaps I am always preparing to have to change something into another language. I’ll claim that as my excuse. Please tell my professors!

There were some funny stories surrounding our return to the US when I was three. Like me and my sister diving for cover under the car in the grocery store parking lot when we heard a helicopter - in PNG it would have been a police helicopter coming to break up a tribal war with tear gas. Or my Mom trying to tell us that snow was soft stuff and us jumping off the steps onto our faces in three inches of it.

There was the confusion for me of living in a really white town for a few years and then moving to Hyde Park in chicago and having African American kids - who looked like my first friends - being angry towards me. It took years for me to understand that.

We returned to PNG when I was ten and quickly learned that the paradise we had left behind seven years before was now a pretty scary place to be. Violence, especially against expats and women was rampant. Our home had bars on the windows and alarm switches in every room that could send the Seminary students running to our rescue should we need them. We could not go out at night. The few times we tried to ended badly. Once my Dad picked a few of us up from a school dance and our car was attacked as we neared the one-lane bridge that led to home. He desperately tried to turn the car around but the engine died as the men beat on the windows of the van and my friends and I sat paralyzed in fear. We eventually got turned around and back to the police station where we waited for hours for an escort home. There were even times in broad daylight that were quite terrifying. My younger sister and I were in a friends’ car on the way to their house when a man jumped out and threw a rock into the windshield of the car, leaving us covered in glass and blood. Thankfully my friend’s Mom had the presence of mind to keep driving us to safety. It was impossible to deny the fear that we all lived with.

Yet at the same time there were beautiful moments - we would drive down close to the coast and smell the salty air, or I would climb the tree in our back yard and watch as the sun began to set and the palm trees swayed lightly in the breeze. Between the two different houses we lived in over those eight years, we had pineapples, guavas, lemons, star fruit, papaya, bananas, passion fruit and mangoes growing either in our yard or across the street. I used to make a game of eating lemons and daring other kids to do it too. (One poor girl threw up from it.) And we had a pool. A round, corrugated tin pool that we could make an awesome wave in by pushing down repeatedly on a large inner tube until the wave would crash over our heads and sometimes over the sides of the pool. I remember trips into town when we would get to pick out a treat at the grocery store, maybe some gum or a dove bar. There was a smell about the city. A combination of sweat and buai (it is chewed and spit out like tobacco) and rain. Thinking about that smell makes me happy. I remember trips into town to go to the international hotel and swim in the big pool and eat fries and drink a lemon lime bitter. Once the toucan that resided there caught a ball that was being thrown around in the pool. School was usually fun too, especially when we had to run from building to building through the rain. We would arrive at the next class refreshed and exhilarated! The sound of the rain at night, beating down on the tin roof, was so peaceful. I miss that. So while there was a very real risk and danger involved every day, there was always beauty and fun to balance it out. And that it what life is - balance.

Surrogacy

“I’ll do it.”

It was that simple. I did not hesitate. My friend had been talking about how she was thinking about looking for a gestational surrogate. She had been diagnosed with lupus after having her first child and was told she should not attempt to get pregnant again. Most of us in the playgroup that were gathered at her house that day had just recently had our second children.

We were driving home from an appointment one day, several months later, when she turned to me and said, “why are you doing this?” I could not tell if she was still surprised that I would do this or if she thought that I was a little insane for doing it, but it was easy for me, I knew that she and her husband had two blastocysts that were still cryogenically frozen from their previous round of IVF and I knew that they needed a chance to grow into the life that they had the potential for. I am not choosing sides in the abortion debate here, nowhere near. I am not even judging whether or not people should use medicine in this way. All I knew was that if it were me, and I had two little possible babies out there I would want them to have a chance at life.

Sometime during my pregnancy with my own first child my husband and I were watching the show Everwood and there was an episode where one of the character, Nina, was a gestational surrogate for a friend of hers. I thought it was such a beautiful and selfless gift. I knew that two of my husband’s cousins were struggling with infertility and even though it had only taken a few months for us to conceive our first, each time it did not happen was agony for me. I could not imagine living with that kind of painful longing for so long.

So I signed on the lines and I took the blood tests and I went to the fertility office appointments and met with a lawyer and learned how to give myself injections. We prepared. We got giddy every once in a while, thinking about this beautiful experience we were hoping to share.

My husband was a little reluctant at first but was always fully supportive of me. Others were weary and admitted their concern, if only through their lack of encouragement. I came to learn a lot about those around me as I viewed their reactions to my experience. I did worry about my own children’s understanding of what was going on and how they might handle it if Mommy had a baby and it was not their baby to keep. I knew they would understand when the time came. They were only 3 years old and 18 months.

I don’t remember when they set they appointment for the transfer (it is not called implantation because the blastocysts have to implant themselves, they only deposit them into the uterus). I remember being anxious. I remember them telling us that the blastocysts had thawed well and were of good quality. Then we watched the monitor as they guided the thin tube into my uterus and carefully transferred the tiny blastocysts - we could actually see them on the monitor! It was pretty cool. I was worried that movement might decrease the odds of success, so I lay still for as long as I could (but having had a full bladder for the procedure made it impossible to wait long).

The whole process did not take long and afterwards we went to the Cheesecake Factory on Michigan Ave. for lunch. We were all holding our breath, hoping that it would work. It was December, so they were worried about the ice on the sidewalks.

I was to go in to the office for a blood draw pregnancy test in a few days.

I went home and my wonderful husband agreed to give me the shots of hormones because I was too chicken to give them to myself. He does not do well with needles (usually passes out at the sight of them) so this was huge for him. Every evening he would give me the shot. I was a little surprised at how big the needle was but it was part of the process and I desperately wanted this to work for my friends.

It was just before Christmas and we were headed down to my parent’s house to celebrate early with them. We stopped at the fertility office so that I could run in and have the blood draw that would tell us what we’d all been waiting for.

The next day I received a phone call from my friend. “It WORKED!!!” She yelled through joyful tears. I sat down and laughed and cried with her over the phone.

A few days later we were back at home and preparing to go in to my in-laws for Christmas. I was beginning to feel the nausea and finally feeling like this was all very real. My husband had become quite good at giving the shots and my poor pjs were showing signs of the two weeks’ worth of injections - small drops of blood had stained the waistband. As we headed in to grandma and grandpa’s house the day before Christmas Eve, we stopped for another quick blood draw to confirm the pregnancy for a second time.

I was laying on a bed upstairs reading a Jodi Picoult book while my little boy slept nearby when I heard my phone vibrating. I decided not to answer it and risk waking him up. After a few minutes I checked my messages. It was a nurse from the fertility office.

I don’t even remember what she said in the message but she was talking about the hormone levels being low and something about how I could quit doing the shots. It all became something of a blur as I rushed down the stairs with hot tears streaming down my face. I called my friend. She had heard as well. I had miscarried. But I did not believe it. Physically, nothing had changed. I insisted that they were wrong. Part of me knew that they knew what they were talking about but I did not want to face it, so I still did the shot that night.

We went out to a comedy club with my brothers in law and their wives and a cousin. Everyone had margaritas but I could not bring myself to drink. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe. The comedy skits must have been funny but I don’t remember laughing.

The next morning I woke up and knew they were right. A chill ran through me when I knew the baby(ies?) had passed. I bawled. Relatives tried to comfort me and tell me it was for the best. It would have been too hard anyway. Something like that. Maybe they were right. But it still did not feel right to me.

Days passed. I finally saw my friend about a week later. We drove around for a while and then parked near the river and talked. She seemed so much more together than I had expected. She was worried about me. I was worried about her. We cried and hugged. Someday it would all be okay.

I guess I am naive. It was only about a year and a half later, just after having talked with her about her hopes for adoption that I learned that she had been cheating on her husband for a while and was planning on leaving him. It would seem to be another story altogether but after what we had gone through together I was incredibly shocked. I know that infertility can take it’s toll on relationships but she knew this too and they had one child that they had gone through a lot to have. How she could do this was beyond me and I was furious with her. It damaged our relationship beyond repair. The one thing that kept running through my head was, “if you are so sure that this is what is right for your life, would you have done this even if the surrogacy had worked out? Because you are making a fool of me now too.”

The light at the end of all of this is that as I was talking with her husband as he was trying to understand what was going on, how his world was crashing all around him, my husband and I (I like to claim responsibility) hooked him up with another friend who had gone through a divorce and the two of them hit it off. They have been engaged for a year now! Not how I had ever really pictured things turning out but it is good to have some happy to the ending.

For the two years after the surrogacy I cried a lot right before Christmas. I had also found a new respect for Mary in the Christmas story. She was the first surrogate, after all. I suppose her story did not have the happiest of endings either. At least not the earthly story. Not that I rate myself so highly as to compare myself to Mary. Heavens no! But it does make me pause to think about everything I went through and how there can be little glimmers of hope where we least expect it and even when things don’t go how we’d hoped we can still learn about ourselves and those around us.

Every once in a while we are faced with the opportunity to do something that just feels right. Sure, it did not ‘work’ in the way that we had hoped. But the question was answered. There is peace in that. And I believe it is that gift of knowing and not having to live with the not knowing that was my gift to them. People like to make a bigger deal out of it than I think it is worthy of. I just did what I could to help some friends find a bit of peace in their lives. We all do it in some way or other at some point in our lives.

Christmas Without Santa

We are those parents. The ones whose kids know that Santa is a lie. (and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, you get the picture.)

Okay, I know you are wondering why would parents ruin their kids' childhood by telling them this?? (you are also thinking “I better keep my kids away from their kids!!” aren’t you??)

It might not be what you are thinking and it is not nearly as bad as you are picturing.

They do enjoy being children, they love Christmas just as much as any other kids out there. They made me crazy begging to decorate the tree, Eli bounds down the stairs every morning, excited to open the next window on the advent calendar, and they even talk about the excitement of getting gifts from ‘Santa’.

It was my husband, Jeremy, who decided it should be this way when we first had Hannah eight years ago and when he explained his reasoning to me, it made sense. He just wanted our kids to know to whom they should be grateful for their stockings-full of presents. But out of that one reason have grown a plethora of reasons that I am now thankful that we don’t have to keep up with a lie.

First of all - it is a lie. It is the one thing that almost all parents consistently lie to their kids about. Do you remember how you felt when you found out the truth?? A little disappointed? Or were you the older sibling who spoiled it for a younger one? It was ruined for me when our family was staying in a hotel on Christmas Eve and my sister woke me up and pointed to the end of the bed where our Dad was trying to quietly fill the stockings. Sure, it did not destroy Christmas for me, but there was that lingering feeling of, "gee, what else are they lying about?”

It is just plain creepy. Sorry, I really don’t want to offend anyone who is trying to keep up the Santa thing, but think about it, we tell our little kids to go sit on a stranger’s lap?? I just saw a link to a HuffPost story about Sketchy Santas - Santas who’s laps you would not want your kids to sit on. When we are all worked up about having our kids patted down at the airport for security reasons and yet we have no qualms about telling them that they better be nice and sit on Santa’s lap? My eight year old is the one who told me this year that it is creepy when I asked if she wanted to see the Santa house in town. I feel a little more comfortable knowing that she knows that something like that is creepy. Not to even mention the fact that we act as if it is a wonderful thing that some creepy old man is breaking and entering into every house in the world. I don’t think I’d sleep to well if I had been scared of the Santa at the mall if I was told that he was coming to my house while I was asleep!

Jesus is the reason for the season. No, we aren’t going to go all Evangelical on you. Our kids are not going to be competing in the Bible bee any day soon. We are a good sampling of the ‘frozen chosen’. That said, when our kids talk about Christmas, they talk about baby Jesus. The two year old took baby Jesus out of his manger and made him give me hugs and kisses the other day. She said, "baby Jesus loves you!” And I know that she gets it. We are celebrating Jesus. Not some jolly old man. They enjoy singing in church on Christmas Eve and are not anxious to get out of there so that Santa can come already.

Work. Jeremy overheard a co-worker talking about the great lengths she was going to in order to keep her two middle-school aged sons believing in Santa. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t have time to stress out about keeping up the task of establishing proof of a non-existent being.

Gratitude. It was the original reason we had for teaching them that these things are not real. They know that Mommy and Daddy are Santa, the Easter bunny and the Tooth fairy. They know that Mommy and Daddy have a limited budget so they don’t get worked up when they don’t get some really expensive toy in their stocking. And when the tooth fairy forgets, they know who to hit up! They know that listening to us and behaving themselves really does matter because who knows if Santa can see, but Mommy is right here and you better not do that! And when we can pull off that one cool gift, we get little arms wrapped around our necks in gratitude. And it feels so good.

All this said, I do believe that we are all entitled to our own holiday traditions and I have no intention of messing with yours or judging you for yours, this is what works for us and I thought I’d share it in case you are trying to decide for yourself or wondering what it is like when they know.

Christmas is magical because of friends and family and the birth of Christ. We don’t need much more than that.

Storms

I woke up in heaven. The clock read 7:21 instead of 6:04 (we are on Thanksgiving break!). No alarm went off. The kids had slept in and the girls had just come to snuggle in my bed. They were whispering “I love you’s” to each other. And to top it off - rain was tapping on my window. Followed by a flash of lightening and a roll of thunder. Happiness, peace, love. Can’t get better than this. (okay, it could have - Jer could have had the day off too.)

I don’t remember the first time I realized that I loved rain storms this much. I think I was scared of them as a small child. Check with my Mom on that one. What I do know is that I became intensely aware of their power when we lived in PNG in the early 90s. I was eleven or twelve and we had come to the realization that the country we had been sent to as missionaries had changed significantly in the past eight years into a country wrought with civil unrest, drunkenness, violence - particularly toward women. I heard stories of it every day at school. Thankfully PNG is a rainforest nation so I could count on the tropical downpours to lull me to sleep. I felt safer, as though God himself was wrapping me in His almighty hands to bring me safe through the night. We had corrugated tin roofs which made the pitter patter of raindrops more like a crashing drumming sound. It was delightful. Knowing that there was something bigger than me, and He was taking care of things so I could sleep.

When it rained during the day, we would hug our books to our chests and run between classroom buildings, exhilarated by the feel of raindrops splashing on our faces and not even thinking of wanting to keep the rain off of us. It was a good 90 degrees every day so the daytime rains were always welcome. Even when it meant soaking wet shoes that squished with each step for the rest of the day. I loved seeing the white spider flowers after the rain, the delicate drip of water on the tips of their petals. Some days we would huddle closer to the center of the common area while we ate lunch because the water was splashing heavily around the sides. (our lunch area was the concrete slab under a raised building, no walls needed)

Later, in high school (a boarding school in Australia) we did not get as much rain, but of all of Australia, Brisbane is one of the rainier places. We again had the metal roofs, so if I had a room on the second floor I could hear the sound I loved at night (that and the occasional possum falling out of the tree and screeching!). When it rained on the weekends it was like God had pressed ‘pause’ and people would stay indoors and just hang out playing games and watching movies and maybe (maybe) doing homework together as the sisters we had become. We would run out the back to the tuck shop in the next dorm to buy a handful of candy to share. Maybe a microwaved pizza for lunch. Or a bowl of ramen noodles, made with hot water from the bathroom. Rainy days were together times. Of course if it rained on a school day, we were in trouble in our white uniform dresses!

In college, at St. Olaf in Northfield MN, I recall a heavy rainfall early in my freshman year. We put on our oldest clothes and ran to the soccer field that had rain gushing down the corners, forming giant waterslides/mudslides which we took to on our backsides. Good thing we were not returning to our mothers’ bathrooms to wash off! People came together in the spirit of fun. Unbounded joy. No holding back, did not matter if you knew anyone or what you looked like, we were just there to have fun. (in the winter we would take cafeteria trays to sled down the same hills)

My favorite places are those that I associate with rain - New Zealand, The Northwestern US, the East Coast to name a few. Some days I’d love nothing more than to be in one of these places with the family, sitting at a coffee shop outside where the rain splashes on a metal roof above us and we can soak up that much needed moisture while sipping our tea or hot chocolate and talking about what to do next.

Now as a grown-up (am I?), I still love storms. I love the light mist that we had yesterday as we walked to the library, gently tickling my face and soothing dry skin. Such a refreshing feeling! I love the heavy rains that keep us inside as a family playing games or snuggling together to watch a movie. Baking. That big pause button gets hit and we can do things we might otherwise have justified not doing because we were too busy. We don’t get enough storms here. Or have not lately at least. Even as I finish writing this, the clouds are clearing and I can see blue sky.

I was not ready for the blue sky yet this morning. We are still in our jammies, needing breakfast and needing to clean. While the rain lasted we could justify just laying here and watching shows together but alas now we must get up and get going.

In Sickness and in Health

I lied. I so totally and utterly lied. I am not a good wife when my husband is sick. I’ll take the health but to be completely honest, I am not good with the sickness part of marriage.

Hubby emailed earlier today to tell me that he thought he was coming down with a cold. Nothing else. No greeting, just that. “I think I am getting a cold.” I should not have been surprised then, when he walked through the door coughing, sputtering, sniffling and doing this little whine/moan thing he does when he wants sympathy and to be let off the hook from all responsibility. I’ll admit it - I was feeling hostile. I had been scouring the house from top to bottom with my sidekick in tow all day. Took her to her tumbling class and then on a quick errand to pick up a few things for my eldest’s birthday party that is five days away. Oh, and getting ready to teach from home tonight, making dinner, taking the kids to the playground and cleaning up after dinner. Now I’m not saying that I don’t think he worked hard all day, of course he did. But his day ends when he walks through the door moaning and I guarantee that before the oldest two are asleep, he will be out. And I will be wrapping up class and cleaning up, getting things squared away for the morning and finishing up a few other household chores that need to be done.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband dearly. He is a wonderful father, amazingly supportive and kind and, well, everything good a husband should be and I know that he puts up with more than his fair share of my own faults (should I be hoping that he never blogs about me?). I am no saint. I’ll give him that. But why is it that men feel they have the right to become an extra child in the house when they are sick and yet if I were to be ill, I would still be doing everything that needed to be done for everyone else in this house. There was the time that I was incredibly sick with strep last year when I did have a few days ‘off’ (I still had to get the kids ready and out the door as I was barely able to stand and was running to the bathroom to hurl and desperately trying to reach him on his cell phone - oh and I was still breastfeeding the youngest). Or maybe I don’t cut myself slack?

It has been interesting to me now that I am aware of this fault of mine, my inability to show true sympathy to my husband when he is sick, to monitor myself and my responses to him. Like when he stood up from the dinner table and asked if I wanted him to help clean up (hey, he asked and I DO give him credit for that!) but knowing full-well that he was only phrasing his statement of “I’m heading up to bed now” into a question to make it sound better. Of course part of me wanted to snap a come-back about feeling over-burdened. But I was good, I said "no, you go upstairs, I’ve got this.” I am aware that my reactions are negative and counter-productive so I am working on being more kind. I am trying.

Still, I hear the gross man-cold sounds coming from upstairs and I shudder. I have to ask myself why is it that someone else being sick is so irksome to me? Maybe because it does not fit my pretty picture of how I want life to be? Is it because I have perfectionist tendencies and anything that falls outside of perfection is just not cool with me.

I do tend to try to deny my kids’ ailments, I like to assume that there really is not anything wrong with them, at least nothing bad. “It’s just nerves, you don’t have a tummy ache” (followed by child puking on me as if to prove their point) “it is just a little baby sniffles” (followed by baby hospitalized with RSV) “oh, you’ll be fine, just shake it off” (okay, this one I have thankfully been right about so far, knock on wood!). I have been really lucky that my kids just do not get sick much at all. Luck, genetics, healthy eating, hand washing, a combination perhaps.

I do believe that to a degree it is a control issue for me. Nerves we can work on with some breathing. Boo boos I can kiss better. Most things that reach beyond this make me feel out of control. If a kid were sick enough to stay home from school, it would throw the whole day into chaos. I don’t dare imagine worse scenarios.

A husband who is always there helping clean up and folding laundry and helping with bedtime and piano practice and who is now coughing and stuffy and moaning in head-cold agony leaves me feeling like the world is up-ended. My helpmate is temporarily out of service and I don’t function as well without him.

I do get the feeling that I am not the only Mom/Wife out there who tend to feel more angst that sympathy for her husband when he is ill. Knowing that I am not alone (I hope?!) in this helps me to a degree but also knowing that I am aware of my not-so-sympathetic tendencies and trying to be intentional about changing this will hopefully make me a better wife. Because he does deserve that. After all, I need to stop making a liar of myself. I promised.