Cacophony

Being a mother of four has produced a variety of experiences that I have never had before so I have needed to expand my vocabulary in order to describe them. Here is the latest.

Cacophony- noun-loud confusing disagreeable sounds

This can easily be produced on a beautiful Saturday morning at the local farmers market. It starts out nice and quite with Shillelagh in the sling, Fiona holding my hand, and Athena walking alongside holding the bag. We casually stroll through and view all the wonderful goods for sale and stop for a few moments to enjoy the live music. We stop and pick a few good looking eggplant and also find some lovely cherry tomatoes. Shillelagh decides that since cherry tomatoes are her absolute favorite food, she must twist and lean out of the sling to reach them almost knocking the entire container out of my hand. At that point Jesse and Huckleberry arrive. (This many kids means we take 2 cars) Shillelagh is kicking and crying to get more tomatoes for herself, unhappy with the speed that I am trying to shove them in her face. So, Jesse offers to take Shillelagh and I take her out of the sling to hand her over. BUT, she then grabs my index finger and proceeds to pull very hard saying "Pull, pull!!!" meaning she wants me to go with her. So I follow the child that has a death grip on my finger while the entire family follows behind closely, all seeming to talk to me and each other at the same time.

We make our way over to the candy store, which, by the way, is the main reason the kids wanted to come. We all pass the store and while Shillelagh has taken notice of a teddy bear in the store window, I get a chance to ask why they aren't going to get the candy they are so anxious for. That is when we become a cacophony. The older kids immediately start to argue while Jesse is trying to talk to me and Fiona is in her continuous 3 year old ramble, while Shillelagh has again decided to move along immediately with her death grip on my finger and our entire group is blocking the sidewalk so that no one can pass by.

So you may ask, why are we here, in this evil mix of chaos and pleasure? We thought that perhaps we could all get along for more than 5 minutes to enjoy our last Saturday at the Farmers Market. Stroll, enjoy some free samples, great live music, and pick up some candy as a special treat. But you just can't do these things with 4 kids. It is physically impossible because your brain is fried before you even think about why you are there in the first place.

The big kids went into the candy store, Jesse sat to talk with Fiona and answer some of her questions, while I struggled with Shillelagh, trying to keep her from running into the street. In the end I think we stayed for a total of 15 minutes. The last 5 minutes of which I was in the car with Shillelagh feeding her tomatoes while she was buckled into a car seat. To top it all off, the gang strolls over to the car after their jaunt to the candy store and Huckleberry and Fiona both step into an enormously soft pile of doggy doo doo. It was so large that Fiona had a huge chuck on the toe of her sparkly pink princess shoe. Thank goodness she didn't try to get into the car!

We are home and exhausted and don't plan on leaving the house with children until the move next Sunday. And perhaps not even that soon!

Grandmother

Jesse and I decided to take Shillelagh out to Target the other day. She had tons of fun playing with all the different sorts of balls in the toy department as well as running through the clothing section! We had finally gotten her back into the cart and decided it was time to check out. While we were in line she decided that she wasn't going to be patient and started fussing and straining against the belt. So, instead of letting her get into a fit, I decided to start playing some hand games with her. We started out with the classic Patty-cake which she absolutely adores. (And is quite adorable herself while she is clapping and singing along :))
When it was our turn, the cashier said, (specifically now, this is her word for word)..."It's asking for your date of birth." Now being the semi-intelligent person I am, I realized that while she didn't actually acknowledge my existence with a "Hello" she was speaking to me and although I probably look old enough to purchase the beer she scanned, the register won't move along unless she types in a birthdate. So, I give her the date and continued my game with my lovely little toddler which had progressed into the Itsy Bitsy Spider.
The cashier then says to me, " Grandmother?".
Now, I wasn't quite sure if she was talking to me or not. Perhaps she just remembered something that made her blurt out the word Grandmother. Perhaps she is a grandmother and wanted to share in her pride. Perhaps she thought that their should be a grandmother in the Itsy Bitsy Spider.
I stared at her with a questioning look while these thoughts spun around my head. Sort of like a dog will look at you when you are calling it's name and has no idea what you are trying to communicate.
She then says, "Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that usually when their young only the grandmother has time for silly games. You usually don't have time for that when they are young."
Now, that seems like a logical train of thought, sort of. But I had just given her my birthdate which makes me 33. While it is possible that I had a child at sixteen and then my child had a child at 16, it is highly unlikely. And then again, do I look like a grandmother????

So while I stood there dumbfounded and searching for reason, Jesse comes to the rescue with "Yes, we like to play silly games. We think it is a lot of fun. We don't mind being silly at all."

So I have officially been grandmothered! Now, I really don't have a problem with getting older. Actually, I like being in my 30's. There is a sense of accomplishment and I don't have so many silly and petty thoughts running through my head. But I hadn't realize that I could be considered a grandmother to some. It always amazes me how other people see things and how their standards for judgment, like this cashiers' judgment for what a grandmother is and does, is so very very different from mine. I truly appreciated the enlightenment she gave me that came from her assumption.

Jesse also so lovingly put it, "You are the sexiest grandmother I know!!:)"

What a sweet and endearing husband!

Jesse and I started walking together in the mornings. Good, long walks that are keeping us in shape physically and helping us mentally as well. We have always been talkers and the only way the two of us can have a decent conversation is by leaving the house without any children :) Thank goodness that Athena and Huckleberry are so very capable of taking care of their little sisters. Perhaps they see how much the walks are keeping us sane!

We found a Green way a neighborhood or two over that must run a couple of miles long. It is a paved path that follows the electricity lines from Falls Of Neuse just about all the way to the New Falls of Neuse. We have been walking it for a couple of days now, even brought the girls in the double stroller while Huckleberry rode his bike yesterday. Today though, I happened to notice the graveyard in the above picture. It is undeniably old with some of the stones dating back to 1790. There is even information there about the cemetery and how it is the descendants of the original white families that settled in the area.

The strange part is that this cemetery is hidden behind the long line of shrubbery that lines the road nearby. Never mind the enormous electrical lines and support structures. A hidden cemetery is a strange find among this large rolling neighborhoods of organized classist communities. Perhaps they don't really want anyone to remember who came here before.

The small house

Our family strives to live fairly simply and coming from a middle class background where I thought everyone was spoiled like myself, I have come to the realization that I still have very spoiled ways. While my husband grew up thankful and poor, sometimes eating only brown rice for weeks at a time and the occasional candy stolen from the corner market, I was feasting. Pancakes, french toast, eggs or cereal for breakfast, sandwiches with my choices of chips and cookies for lunch, and supper was a traditional meat, starch, vegetable meal with desert, of course. It extends throughout my family as well. I remember one of my sisters complaining about having broccoli twice in one week and how boring that was. I am still having trouble eating the same meal more than twice in a week, but I am working on it. It also doesn't help that I am an emotional eater, another side effect from an affluent lifestyle.

I found this wonderful article in our old local paper. It is tiny but I can see it's magic!

Things I will miss about North Carolina

The things I will miss about North Carolina...

1- The sunsets that seem to happen in the middle of the sky

2- The heat! I just love hot weather although the rest of my family is looking forward to snow...yuck! That means cold, cold and more cold. I am a small person without enough insulation to keep me warm, even in the fall. I usually end up wearing sweaters for about 8 months out of the years.

3- The smell. I can't define it but it is a smell I have never smelled anywhere else. I noticed it the moment we got out of the car.

4- WSHA A college jazz radio station that plays the greatest music. From Shaw University.

5- The ability to buy beer and wine at the grocery store any time of day any day of the week! Not like that in CT.

6-Big John at our local Food Lion. He is usually does the bagging and the "buggy" return. He always has a big smile and something positive to say. He even helps me put my groceries in my car! Some stores even have baggers that bag your groceries, bring them to your car and load them. It's wonderful when you are trying to handle 2 hungry toddlers.

7- The Wake Forest Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. It's just so full of life and beautiful treasures. Never mind great live music and the store that you can buy candy by the pound from beautiful glass jars.

8- The wonderful Crape Myrtle trees that smell wonderful and look beautiful.

9- The great people at Youngs Gym that let Fiona play, bounce, run, and climb all over their equipment. They were so positive and enthusiastic they made me feel so great every Monday at 3:00.

10- All the supportive and interesting families we met through homeschooling.

Surrender

About 3 years ago right before the fall equinox of 2005 and so many many many strange changes had taken place in the previous 12 months, a word kept popping into my mind.

Surrender

Here is what Merriam-Webster has to say.

1 a: to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand b: to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another2 a: to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner b: to give (oneself) over to something (as an influence)intransitive verb: to give oneself up into the power of another : yield

I used to view this word with the meaning in the sense of failure. Ya know, surrender with your hands up and all that sort of thing. Someone taking control of you, with force and making you surrender. Not the willful acceptance of the universal spirit in your life and how you really have very little control over it and the best thing to do is acknowledge the lack of that control and well........surrender to life.

Jesse has been layed off and we are enjoying spending long days all together as a tight knit family. While there certainly are many emotions flying around with all of this uncertainty in front of us and choices we need to make, we have been able to get reconnected with him and he with us without the immediate stress of a full time manual labor job in the way of our conversations. Luckily this also means that I am getting some time to myself to do things like write in my blog and read some books. He even picked one up for me at Goodwill. "Surrendering to Motherhood" by Iris Krasnow. It is exactly what I needed.

She was a successful journalist of the baby boom era that lived the high life of singledom into her thirties only to feel as if she is missing something essential. She then get's married and has 4 babies before the age of 40. Not just any sort of babies but four boy babies including a set of twins. Talk about a forced surrender! Her thoughts and anecdotes and all of the quotes about mothering from the famous women she interviewed make for a wonderful read. Putting the essential ideas of Buddhism to the test and being the mother, yin. It's the first time I have read a book about mothering where I wasn't put off. Her thoughts and emotions are very real and understandable. Not only during the early years filled with freedom and excitement but later on when she finds fulfillment in picking up all of the eggs her toddlers just threw onto the floor.

Being in the moment. The here and the now.

The only task truly at hand on a daily basis. To enjoy the fullness, the richness of who you are and where you are. To fully live the life that can only be yours. To see your purpose right in front of you. Surrendering to life.