Not everyone is cut out for this Mom gig!

My sincerest apologies for being incommunicado for Lo, these five months. Please accept my Happy:

New Year

Valentine’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day

Easter

May Day

… greetings, and my really good excuse:

I got drafted… for motherhood. As a child of the ‘60s, I know about the draft!

Yes, as I was making plans for my friend’s daughter’s baby shower, for a former trainee’s wedding, and for my 45th high school reunion, I got my draft notice, with a 1-A classification for Honorary Mom. In my wildest dreams, I NEVER imagined this would/could/should happen to me, and certainly not after my child-bearing years. 

((You’ve heard the politically-incorrect contention that “As long as there are exams, there will be prayer in schools”. Well, as long as 60+year-olds find themselves called to become first-time parents, there will be prayer everywhere!))

The Kincaids have a 21-year-old in the house. 

When I mentioned this to a 40-something girlfriend, she responded, “A 21-year-old? Really? Wow, at least I had 21 years to learn how incompetent I am! You got thrown in the deep end!” 

That’s exactly how I feel, and not that Abby*** has ever pointed that out to me, I am daily convinced that motherhood really needs to be approached … slowly …from the shallow end.

Shortly after she got installed in our guest room, I was chatting with my mom on the phone, catching her up on the latest household developments. As the daughter who never gave her grandkids, I’ve never had this topic to discuss with Mom before. Given this opportunity, I was amazed at how smart Mom was, even about 21-year-olds. (I don’t remember her being that smart when I was 21.) Without having yet met Abby***, Mom played devil’s advocate, asking wise, delving, pragmatic questions about this “new thing” we’re doing.  Thankfully, she’s still in my corner.

I have several moms in my social circle, some of 20-somethings, all much younger than myself. When the conversation turns to Abby***, they seem to rise high above me, as if on a cloud, seated in an easy lotus position, ringed by an other-worldly light. 

               They have wisdom to bestow. 

              They have experiences to share. 

              I should take notes.

As I raise my novice questions, I see their eyes glaze over as they do the math, and - in their heart of hearts - thank God that they were allotted the full 9 months and 21 years. Others escape the conversation altogether (I can tell by the smirk on their faces), thinking only about how they’re going to turn their departing 21-year-old’s room into a craft room. 

No, motherhood is way too intimidating, way too demanding.

I can’t do this,  … but I can’t kick her out either. 

I KNOW, I’ll become her life coach! That will be much easier.

 - We’ll talk about living on her own, and time- and space- management.

- I’ll counsel her about giving 100% to her job, even on the bad days.

- I’ll ready her for her driving test by letting her drive the car when we run errands.

- She says she wants to get a car, so we’ll set up a budget.

- She’s already good on the computer, so pushing the right buttons on the clothes and dish washers should be easy.

- Our freezer is too small for a lot of frozen dinners, so I’ll involve her in meal prep so she can get some recipes in her repertoire. 
- She doesn’t need to learn to like coffee, but we can stay up to the wee hours talking about movies, God, careers, and self-image over mugs of hot chocolate.

- I’ll point out opportunities to her, and encourage her to pursue her dreams, to take risks, not to let other people throw wet blankets on her hopes, and to be brave.

- I’ll cheer her successes.

Oh, yes, life-coaching will be much easier than mothering!

Maybe I'll interview hubby for my June blog… get his perspective on being a first-time dad. He's pretty brave.

Happy Mother’s Day greetings to all you courageous souls, no matter how deep or shallow, honorary or undeserved, easy or intimidating, your motherhood is. I tip my green beret to you.

***name has been changed to protect the not-yet-criminally-insane 

Whose story?

“You take an object from your pocket and put it down in front of you and you start. You begin to tell a story.”

Here is where the family memoir by Edmund deWaal entitled The Hare with Amber Eyes begins to teach, what the New Yorker magazine calls, “the most enchanting history lesson imaginable.”

The back-cover summary of the book reads:

                                          Edmund deWaal is a world-famous ceramicist.

 Having spent 30 years making beautiful pots - which are then sold, collected, and handed on - 

he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. 

When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, 

he wanted to know who had touched and held them 

[among others, the holders included Marcel Proust, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Edouard Manet], 

and how the collection had managed to survive. 

And so begins this extraordinary moving memoir and detective story as deWaal discovers both the story 

of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. 

A 19th-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, 

the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothschilds. 

Yet at the end of World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, 

this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire.

What a compelling account of this portion of his family history, as it traces the whereabouts of the netsuke, from their early acquisition as part of his great-great-great-grandfather’s diverse art collection in Paris, through their journey to Vienna as a wedding present to the author’s great-uncle, through their safe escape from under the Aryan gaze of Nazi occupiers, to England, then Tokyo, and finally to London, to a vitrine in the author’s flat where his own children get to handle them freely.

This post is not an ad for Ancestry.Com. It’s an encouragement to develop a wonder and honor of history, YOUR history. I am not a historian, but hubby is, and although his interest is more academic, I am captivated by the people interacting with the people. ((There is an account of the great-great-great-grandfather paying more than the asking price for a painting of a bundle of asparagus by Manet. Days later, a package arrives, a painting of a single asparagus stalk, with a note from Manet that read, “This one must have fallen out of the bundle.”)) 

All histories include villains, and heroes, and “a missing 17 minutes” of testimony or remembrance. No to worry. They are all part of the overall history, where people came from, and how they are who they are today... who YOU are today.

In deWaal’s memoir, the yellow armchair reappears decades after it sat in the parlor of his ancestor’s Nazi-invaded home in Vienna; the netsuke, transported to safety in her apron, are found in the protection of a faithful, now elderly, housemaid; original Russian documents are found generations later, sandwiched between old issues of Architectural Digest in Uncle Iggie’s Tokyo apartment - all details befitting the most intriguing of detective stories.

How many incidents in your life have you looked back on and thought, “Wow! So that’s how I got here” or “So that’s why Grandma used to do that” or “So that’s who Opa was talking about”? It can be off-putting, not always a pleasant surprise, sometimes one of those “HOW EVER DID I MISS THAT?”-moments. 

However, we can be comforted that not one moment of this life we are living is a surprise to God. The Creator of Everything is not taken off-guard by any detail, by any misstep, by any poor choice, by any over-priced purchase, by any mean word that we DELIBERATELY decided to make or utter. What surprises me is that He can - and often does - turn my mistakes around for good. WHY?         I meant what I said, and I meant it to hurt! But what our soul's enemy, or our most selfish human nature meant for evil, He can use for good... and will mercifully, miraculously do so to that end. 

          It’s humbling and exciting and encouraging... and bigger than our view of this fleeting life.

How appropriate that it's time to hang up a new wall calendar.. again!

How time flies! 

How life flies!

But nothing is lost, nothing is wasted, nothing is useless providing we trust that the BIGGER plan, the Divine Plan, includes us, has our best interest in mind, and will ultimately lift up the Name Above All Names and His purposes, even if we’re not privy to all the details along the way.

Go ahead, unveil 2015. We’re not getting any younger and there’s history to live.