A writer friend of mine recently asked me to write the forward to her latest book. This friend lives in San Francisco, where things are very, very different than they are here in small town Ohio. But even as different as these places are, being a mom is the same no matter where you live, which is the point I was trying to get across.
So in writing the forward, I offered up this little anecdote which I think best summarizes my philosophy on motherhood...
It all started on a fall afternoon, when I was grossly pregnant with my third child. And because the veins in my legs had had just about enough of this pregnancy stuff, they gave out and I was required by my doctor to wear full length compression hose which I mention only because they made me flammable from head to toe. I was attempting to race (read: waddle) around the house, trying to achieve some order and neatness so that the playgroup friends who would be over in a short while to celebrate my son’s birthday wouldn’t think I had totally given up on cleanliness. But I also had to pick up my oldest daughter from school. All at the same time.
At this point you may ask yourself, “why would she plan things so close together? Why wouldn’t she give herself some more time?” Let me tell you, the thought crossed my mind. But in order for everyone to be happy (read: except me), this is what had to be done.
And I also had to make “sweetie popcorn,” my son’s favorite snack, for the gathering. So there, belly bulging, I poured the oil, sugar, salt, and popcorn kernels into the pot. I cranked up the stove and began the popping process. When it came time to start shaking the pot so that the bottom kernels didn’t turn into a black burnt mess, I grabbed some potholders to protect my hands.
To make a short story long, I caught one of the potholders on fire so I had to run it to the sink which meant that I was creating that black burnt mess in the pot. So I ran back to the stove, turned it off, and whipped the lid off the pot to cool down the contents and stop the cooking process.
And then a sticky kernel shot right out and burnt a big red dot into my forehead, just above my right eyebrow.
Somehow I managed to find a moment to be thankful that I hadn’t caught my entire body on fire before I raced out the door to pick up my eldest child and back home just in time greet our playdate friends. While the kids played, I had to explain to the other moms why I looked the way I did and why I was telling them to eat the darn popcorn because I lost valuable skin (and a potholder) for my son’s special snack.
And they ate it, and they laughed, because they understood.
They understood why I did the things I did, because they do them too. We’re all just a bunch of nuts, but nuts that go together, bound by our maternal job description.
We’re women, we’re mothers. We stick together like caramelized popcorn to forehead skin because in understanding each other’s stories, we become better mothers. That’s why we need to hear the tales of other mommies’ mishaps and story-time struggles. We need to hear that we’re not the first to watch a baby fall off the bed, and we need to hear that if it happens, baby will be OK. We need to see that we’re not the only one in the world going gray over where to send our kids to preschool. We need to know, even in our weakest moments, that we do what we do because we love our kids and that most importantly, we are not alone in this, the second hardest job in the world.
The first hardest, if you didn’t know, is making “sweetie popcorn.”
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Putting on an addition in our side yard
Not many will deny that one of the best parts about being a parent is the privilege and the right to slip back into the magic of childhood now and then. Even in my ripe old age I find myself indulging in youth on a daily basis. I play hopscotch. I build forts. I watch cartoons. And I even eat raw cookie dough without worrying about the eggs.
But without a doubt, my favorite part about slipping back into childhood is rediscovering the magic of nature with my kids. And in between writing these columns and being CMO (Chief Mommy Officer) of our household, I do all I can to close the door to my disastrous kitchen and over-flowing laundry room and head into the backyard because simply put, there ain’t nothin’ better than playing outside. The look of my son’s face when he catches a toad or my daughter checking on her fairy house every day? Just priceless.
We don’t have a huge yard, but we’re lucky enough to have our own little chunk of new-growth woods in the back. There are just enough maples to tap in the spring and even a few old gnarly apple trees to produce wormy fruits in the fall. Between those is a killer stand of wild cherry trees and enough poison ivy to make me itch just thinking about it. So it’s not much, but we love our woods.
However, it’s not the wooded area that is making me so excited this summer. It’s the yard, and the side yard that is mostly a dirt pile, to be exact. It’s there in that weedy pile of dirt that I am fulfilling one of my own childhood dreams and, as usual, dragging my kids along the way.
It’s called a sunflower house, and the easiest way to explain it is to tell you how to make your own. In a circle of about six or eight feet in diameter, you plant a ring of mammoth sunflowers. As the sunflowers grow, they create the walls of the “house.” When they are fully grown, you can sort of guide them to grow together at the top, creating the roof of your sunflower house. And then you go inside your digs, completely constructed of what is possibly the happiest flower known to man.
Tell me that doesn’t sound super cool…
I’ve been dreaming of doing this for a few years now, every year missing the chance to plant the seeds or waiting too long to decide where to put my sunflower house. But this year I decided to do it, and arming my older children with trowels and myself with a shovel in one hand and a baby in the other, we set out to plant our ring of seeds.
I soon found out that it’s not very practical to think that young children have the patience, the strength, or the tools to dig twelve little holes in our clay and rock filled Ohio soil. So they drifted away and found colorful rocks in the gravel and squirted each other with the hose while I, donating one arm to the baby, dug the holes with the other hand (which in case you were wondering, is not very easy to do.)
But if this thing grows and I can actually sit inside a room made entirely of flowers with my children and look at those pretty rocks, it will be worth every drop of sweat.
Now as the days warm and the rains fall, I find myself taking precious care of a new total of fifteen children – twelve little seedlings and three little kiddos to watch in amazement as they grow.
But without a doubt, my favorite part about slipping back into childhood is rediscovering the magic of nature with my kids. And in between writing these columns and being CMO (Chief Mommy Officer) of our household, I do all I can to close the door to my disastrous kitchen and over-flowing laundry room and head into the backyard because simply put, there ain’t nothin’ better than playing outside. The look of my son’s face when he catches a toad or my daughter checking on her fairy house every day? Just priceless.
We don’t have a huge yard, but we’re lucky enough to have our own little chunk of new-growth woods in the back. There are just enough maples to tap in the spring and even a few old gnarly apple trees to produce wormy fruits in the fall. Between those is a killer stand of wild cherry trees and enough poison ivy to make me itch just thinking about it. So it’s not much, but we love our woods.
However, it’s not the wooded area that is making me so excited this summer. It’s the yard, and the side yard that is mostly a dirt pile, to be exact. It’s there in that weedy pile of dirt that I am fulfilling one of my own childhood dreams and, as usual, dragging my kids along the way.
It’s called a sunflower house, and the easiest way to explain it is to tell you how to make your own. In a circle of about six or eight feet in diameter, you plant a ring of mammoth sunflowers. As the sunflowers grow, they create the walls of the “house.” When they are fully grown, you can sort of guide them to grow together at the top, creating the roof of your sunflower house. And then you go inside your digs, completely constructed of what is possibly the happiest flower known to man.
Tell me that doesn’t sound super cool…
I’ve been dreaming of doing this for a few years now, every year missing the chance to plant the seeds or waiting too long to decide where to put my sunflower house. But this year I decided to do it, and arming my older children with trowels and myself with a shovel in one hand and a baby in the other, we set out to plant our ring of seeds.
I soon found out that it’s not very practical to think that young children have the patience, the strength, or the tools to dig twelve little holes in our clay and rock filled Ohio soil. So they drifted away and found colorful rocks in the gravel and squirted each other with the hose while I, donating one arm to the baby, dug the holes with the other hand (which in case you were wondering, is not very easy to do.)
But if this thing grows and I can actually sit inside a room made entirely of flowers with my children and look at those pretty rocks, it will be worth every drop of sweat.
Now as the days warm and the rains fall, I find myself taking precious care of a new total of fifteen children – twelve little seedlings and three little kiddos to watch in amazement as they grow.
Update: I also started some in pots. The toad have been killing them, one by one...
A few words on the invention of Mother’s Day
Note: Apparently some people found this offensive. If you are offended reading this, I'm truly sorry. And I'm also jealous that you don't have to endure what some of us do on Mother's Day. -klkmc
As far as holidays go, I’d venture to say that most were created by a man. On Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a man. Easter commemorates the rising of Jesus, again, a man. The Fourth of July is an observation of a new government that was mostly, you guessed it, men. And even Father’s Day, the day when we all treat dad like royalty? Yep, pretty sure that some guy made up that one, too.
But if there were ever a holiday that was most certainly created by a man, it’d be Mother’s Day.
Now, if you are a man and you are reading this, you are probably thinking to yourself, “oh yes, we men love our mothers and our wives, and we certainly want to celebrate the wonderful things they do for us and all that they mean to us, and of course we created the holiday as a day of honor.”
And if you’re a woman reading this, you’re probably thinking, “gee, she’s on to something! No woman in her right mind would create a holiday that would require so much work, stress, sweat, and overcooked scrambled eggs.”
Let me explain this to all of the men out there. As far as mothers go, most of us have mothers of our own. Not only our own mothers, but some of us even have mother-in-laws. And grandmothers. And for us lucky ones, multiple grandmothers. And somewhere in our wedding vows when we were all too emotional to pay attention, we somehow promised that we would bear children, love our husbands, and take care of all holiday celebrations until death do us part.
So come the second Sunday in May, we are required by that vow to manage celebrating and honoring all of our mothers, on a day when most of us could use a break and a little honoring ourselves.
Still confused as to why most mothers think Mother’s Day should be wiped off our calendars and out of our card shop shelves? Still don’t understand how no woman in her right mind would create such a complicated and distressing holiday? I may best be able to convey it in anecdote. Here is a characteristic Mother’s Day for a mother such as myself…
6:30 AM. Get woken up by the baby.
7:30 AM. Told to go back to sleep because the kids (ages 4 and 6 with mediocre culinary skills matched only by their father) are going to make breakfast in bed (ie. Scrambled eggs with bits of shell and toast with two pounds of butter.) Open homemade cards.
8:00 AM. Start the day by wrapping the gifts for all of the mothers in my life, bribing the kids with gum so that they’ll sign the card nicely (instead of writing POOP), and start preparing the Mother’s Day dinner that somehow I got conned into hosting at my house.
9:00 AM. Bribe the kids with more gum to help me clean the house. Have to wash the dishes from my breakfast in bed. Call all of the grandmothers, give holiday wishes, and hope that I put their cards in the mail early enough.
1:00 PM. Host a dinner party for one set of parents to celebrate that mother and the wonderful things she does and is.
3:30 PM. Drive an hour to visit my other mother, and celebrate her.
7:30 PM. Arrive home, feed kids bed-time snacks, give baths, read books, sing lullabies, put to bed.
8:30 PM. Clean kitchen from 1:00 PM dinner party.
10:00 PM. Lay on the couch, re-read precious homemade cards, begin to dread Father’s Day, and fall fast asleep.
Happy Mother’s Day, girls!
Visit and contact Karrie at www.KarrieMcAllister.com.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Quote of the CENTURY
Says Ellen at dinner, "Moms drink a lot of coffee because, you know, they need it to stay alive."
No doubt!!!!!!!!!!
No doubt!!!!!!!!!!
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Not even a little tickle
When we put our oldest daughter Ellen into the grass for the first time, she was about seven months old. The instant her bird legs hit the ground, she started crying and was only consoled by picking her up. Put her in the grass = cry. Pick her up = stop. It was an amusing on/off game we played at her expense.
Just yesterday I put Annie, nearly six months, in the grass for the first time. It was a warm enough day and there was plenty of uplifting sunshine, so I gave it a shot.
Not even a whimper. She played with curiosity and wonder, feeling the blades between her fingers. If this is any indication of days to come, I predict she'll be the kind of girl who doesn't mind a little mud on her shoes. Just like her mom.
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