Tools

one of my sisters called today and her first words were, "i have news!" to which i immediately responded emphatically, "you're pregnant?!"... "yes, how'd you know?!!!" i'm not sure how, but i always know. i'm ecstatic for her and i know that she's going to be the most fantastic mom of SIX ever. yes, this is child numero seis, her oldest will turn 8 in June!

she went on to say she should have called me first since she got mediocre at best replies from everyone else she told so far. not that they're not happy for her but that they all had an air of "don't you know what causes that?" or "uh, where are you going to put them all?" sort of attitudes.

i'm extremely analytical and can process out exactly why i think she's going to do a fantastic job with 6, 8 or 15 kids, where ever they end up, based on what i call the simple principle of 'tool acquisition'. i shared with her a bit and gave her a little of my perspective, for fun, i thought i'd share it with you as well.

parenthood can most easily be described as a job. plain and simple, it is work, constant work, to be a parent. like any job there are tools required. if i walk into my stepdad's wood shop i see all sorts of tools for wood working and carpentry. saws, sanders, screwdrivers, hammers, wrenches and a whole other assortment of tools with really specific purposes for which i don't know the names or meanings since it is not my area of expertise. if you asked my stepdad if he had all those tools from the beginning he'd of course say no. it takes years and years to acquire all the tools he has. he started out tinkering and doing what he could with what he had and as he committed himself to it he acquired more tools so he could do it better, more efficiently and in the end get much more exceptional results from his work. mind you, wood working isn't even his job, but "just a hobby".

an even clearer example would be a mechanic. walk into any auto-mechanic's shop and you'll see a million job specific tools hanging and laying everywhere. i can speak from experience when i say hardly any of those are necessary to change oil in a car, or a tire, or a head light. but if you want to do anything beyond the 'idiot's guide' you're going to have to man up and get some real tools, and educate yourself on how to use them. you can't learn any of it in a day, and in general you can't possibly afford to buy every tool for the first day of class.

as a parent you take on a new job. let's just say everyone starts out with a hammer, most basic of all tools. we all start out loving our kids and if love is a hammer, it's extremely useful and can be used for quite a few do-it-yourself projects when it comes to kids. beyond that you'll need a screwdriver (after all every parent has moments where they feel like they have a few loose screws!) the screwdriver is your logic. between Love and Logic, your Hammer and Screwdriver, you're equipped with the 2 most basic parenting tools, although they are basic they are also completely essential. if you're going to tackle the harder problems, deal with tantrums, illness, attitudes and injuries, you're going to need more than just a hammer and a screwdriver though. after all, you're not just building a bird house, you're trying to raise an individual which will reach adulthood with a firm set of their own tools which will hopefully be honesty, intelligence, compassion, integrity, honor and perseverance to name a few. essentially a tool box with at least a hammer, screwdriver (philips and flat head) few wrenches of their own, maybe some allen wrenches and depending on their experience and interest some awls or carving tools.

so as you continue to parent these kids, finding harder challenges and more complicated tasks, like my stepdad in his acquisition of wood working tools, you're going to have to find better and more specific tools for the job. you cant just pound love into your kids with your hammer everyday and hope to teach them every thing. at a certain point you're going to want to do the work more easily, efficiently and of course, with much better results. depending on whatever metaphor works for you, you're going to end up with a whole tool shed full of the specific tools it requires to raise your particular kids. you may even have a few different sorts. after all, i have one ultra defiant child, and one more emotionally needy and compliant one. they are absolutely not the same job!

if you'd asked me when i was 20 if i was equipped to do the job i have now, of course i'd have wished i was but would have had to admit that i wasn't even close. i had to go through difficult relationships, working through childhood wound-issues, finding out about infertility, dealing with a struggle deciding to adopt, then working toward becoming a foster parent. if you'd asked back then if i'd be able to sit through a visit with a bio-parent who's lost their child due to extremely poor choices and look at them without judgement, of course i'd have said no.(although even then i'd have known to keep my mouth shut at least). going through some of the hardest parts of life was what it took for me to acquire the tools to deal with my emotions, my losses and my miraculous gains. i'm not sure i ever could have imagined that it would turn out this way, that my particular parenting job would be like this. for me it's as if i set out to be a mechanic and ended up building rocket ships. this is far beyond what i could have hoped for myself and to all those who say "it takes a special person to do what you do" i say no, no one starts out with everything they need for the job, sometimes you have to go out and find it.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Memories

So the other day I was going through old pictures and I come across this one of the house I grew up in outside of Lincoln Nebraska. It was an old farm house on 13 acres of land, with another 13 or so open to ours from our neighbor. Around 3 acres was separated from the rest by a 100 year old tree line to the North and West, this was our immediate yard, meaning it was the part we had to mow and we played/ran around in. We had a pool, volleyball court, vegetable garden, expansive herb garden, picnic table and a really sweet club house, needless to say, we had a lot of space.

But most of you know I now live in Orange County California, which pretty much means everyone's homes are crowded and no one really has a yard. Certainly no one has huge tree lines or 3 acres of grass in their yard. Maybe the have a pool that takes up what small 'yard' they might have, or maybe just a gazebo. Where we are we have no yard, we just have a green strip which is really just a 2 1/2 foot wide glorified flower bed that goes around our house.

So I decide to show this photo to my kids thinking that they'll maybe find it interesting, maybe just think it looks weird, who knows, since they've grown up only in Southern California and probably haven't seen anything quite like it. I couldn't have underestimated their reaction more.

I show them the photo and say, "Look guys, this is the house I lived in when I was a little girl."

They both got really wide eyed and said almost in unison, "YOU LIVED IN THE PARK?! COOL!!!" It was really hysterical to have them think that because of all the space and trees it must be a park.

I talked to them about what it was like to live there. About having a pool, horses and other animals, a big tire swing and a hammock, lots of dogs and so many kids. They were so excited and kept going on and on about me living at the park and how neat that was. It was like I was their version of "Julie of the Wolves" growing up in this wild park. The excitement on their faces was astounding and I guess I just didn't want to ruin it for them; so I didn't tell them the truth. The truth that there are places in the world where boys and girls get to have huge trees to climb, swings, horses, swimming pools, least of all grass to run around on right in their own back yard. So I just laughed and said, "Yes, I guess I did live in the park."

As I went to a picnic today and I told this story to a friend, I looked around and realized that it looked strikingly like my yard in the photo, a tree line all the way around, with lots of grass and a picnic table off to the side. No wonder my kids think I lived at the park, that park alone easily could have had the tot-lot traded for my house in Photoshop and no one probably could tell the difference!

Of all the people I talk to that are California natives or at least "big city" natives, it never ceases to amaze me at how bizarre my life experiences must seem to them. I came from such a different world, living bare feet in fields of grass, riding bareback on horses, helping animals give birth, mowing a baseball field into our pasture during the summer so the neighbors can come over and we can all play ball. I was growing up in a country culture but with a big enough city near by that I didn't come out of it with a red neck. I can see as an adult how much those experiences and that environment played a role in who I would become and what I would value as an adult. That time, place and that way of life are still very much a part of me. My silliness, carefree attitude, love for the outdoors and of course, my aversion to shoes.

I look at that picture everyday now and when I think about where I am, how far away I am from home, and what I've left behind it makes me a new kind of lonely. Lonely not just for the simplicity I suppose, the "who cares when you got your last tetanus booster..." attitude but most of all just the "go forth and laugh out loud all the way" kind of fun where you make every moment count, and it sure does add up to a lot.

I look at the people around me and realize more and more that most of these people, if they knew my story, would probably agree with my kids, and it's probably true;

I did live in the park, and the park still lives in me.