Christin Taylor: Words on the Side

Currently, I’m running a workshop, and one of the members in my workshop wrote this gem this last week. I couldn’t help but ask Susan if I could post it on my blog, since she touches on the theme of Motherhood in such a fresh, poignant, and funny way.

I know you’ll enjoy her piece as much as I did! Here’s to giving ourselves permission some days to just lay on the floor!

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We are in our sixth day of house arrest. Between Maya being sick last weekend, and a snowstorm packing a big frigid punch we have hardly left the house for the last week. Outside in the yard doesn’t count.

At first I tried to keep a stiff upper lip about the fact that the entire little world we’ve made for ourselves closed on account of weather. We tried to make the best of being shut in, and actually had a lot of fun in the beginning. We built snowmen, had dance parties, played board games, dove deep into the dress up box, went sledding, and played indoor soccer in the living room. We made muffins, blanket forts and homemade watercolors, and read a bazillion books. Given our dwindling supply of groceries and art supplies, we’ve hung in there pretty well. But today was grim.

Did I mention that both of my girls have been waking up at 5:00am lately? This is not inherently problematic for me, since I am a morning person. It just makes for an insanely long day. To be finished with breakfast, morning nursing, outfit selection and tooth brushing before the sun comes up is a tiny bit crushing to the spirit.

This morning they both woke up at exactly the same time, which makes the logistics of everything more complicated. They were both cranky, needy, and tired.

I’m lucky to have a husband who makes sure that on most days, I get to take a shower by myself. I have friends who don’t get to do this, and I try to have gratitude for that. But today it ended there (the gratitude, that is). As I stood in the steamy bathroom brushing my teeth, I turned on NPR to mask the sounds of my children screaming downstairs.

I tried not to take too long choosing my socks. I took a deep cleansing breath as I slowly headed into the kitchen, and found both girls immediately whining to be picked up. I knew that feeding them breakfast might help, but getting either of them to release enough of my body parts to throw some food on the table seemed an insurmountable challenge.

I scraped them off of me long enough to pour one cup of decaf for myself (I rationalized this by thinking of it as though we were in crash landing mode – obviously I need to secure my own oxygen mask before helping my kids with theirs).

I find it interesting that so many of the parenting books suggest that whining is one of the biggest and most grating behaviors young kids exhibit. I am certainly no fan of whining, but I think shouting totally trumps whining when it comes to irritating kid behavior.

At this particular point in time, Maya and Zoe are both at peak stages of independence. They each want to do everything for themselves, and they each respond to adult intervention with furious backlash. They shout. They literally bark at me. Zoe wanted to get the bread out of the refrigerator. She saw me start walking towards the refrigerator and came unglued. She screamed and shouted with this horrible blaming how-could-you-do-this-to-me-Mommy voice.

After I let her get the bread I noticed that Maya had climbed up on a very precarious stool to access the oatmeal and was in clear and present danger. I shifted my attention, and when I rescued Maya she shouted at me too. Awful spiteful shouting that I’d ruined her breakfast and she didn’t want to eat anymore.

Meanwhile, Zoe had pulled three pieces of bread from the bag and had shoved them all in her mouth. Of course seeing that, Maya decided immediately that she’d rather have toast and melted down because all of the remaining bread had Zoe bite marks in it.

I somehow managed to create two plates of edible food and bring them to the table. Zoe shouted at me for being late with her blueberries and for not picking her up the entire time this was all going on. When she wasn’t doing that she was climbing up to the island and turning on the little prep sink to flood the kitchen. I got in big trouble with Maya for bringing her the purple cup of water she requested (because apparently she’d changed her mind and I was supposed to know that).

We survived breakfast, and the rest of the day brought some brighter spots. Still, we got off on the wrong foot and we never fully recovered. Sometimes when I’m tired and run down, I spend the little forty five minute afternoon nap break I usually get reading blogs written by other mothers who seem to have this creative parenting thing down. I read about amazing science experiments they do with things around the house, or beautiful art projects they make or outdoor adventures they have with their kids. I marvel at their ability to stay present with their children and look at days like this as opportunities. I envy their ability to rise above the dissonance and find grace. All of that and they write about it too. I’m amazed. 


At the end of all of this I cannot find the creative mood. All I can find today is a sink full of dishes, several dozen mismatched puzzle pieces, crayons all over the floor, and playdough stuck to the bottom of Zoe’s shoes.

I wanted to be that mom who found inspiration in the snow, who found a way to find joy in our unexpected togetherness. I wanted to be an inspiration to my kids and spend the day doing wacky, silly, unpredictable things, making fun winter memories together. Instead, I laid on the living room rug and let them take my socks off so that they could measure my feet with the little plastic strips they tore off of a Netflix envelope, grateful for the chance to be still.

Susan Hemingson grew up in northern California and writing is one of the things she’s always wanted to pursue but never has. She’s been a student affairs administrator, a human resources generalist, and most recently, an elementary school teacher. Now she is a stay at home mother starting to think that the time for writing has come. She lives in Bellingham, WA with her husband, Chris, and two daughters, Maya (3 1/2), and Zoe (1 1/2).

Recently, I’ve been breathing a huge sigh of relief that we are no longer in the Threes with Noelle. Remember that year? It was atrocious, really for so many reasons, but not the least of which because of her behavior.

One particularly terrible prototypical day was when she woke up at 5:45 in the morning with a tantrum. The day started with her kicking me in the throat and continued right down hill from there.

And I know you know that we are not the only ones. Recently, at a MOPs meeting, we had the “Super-Nanny of Whatcom County” come and speak to us. As she was going over the various behavioral issues we face with our preschoolers, she stopped and said, “Now 3-year-old girls, they are a creature all their own.”

And I felt a tinge of validation. I felt even more validation when a few weeks ago, an old friend Facebooked me late one night. The chat started like this:

Her: “Do you feel like the threes are worse than the twos? I feel like my daughter is a monster.”

Me: “Um – YES!! Sometimes I had to walk away from her, I was so mad. Seething, in fact.”

Her: “I feel like I’m mourning the loss of my sweet girl.”

And then later when some friends came over for dinner, I was reminded of what a crazy season three is for little girls. Their daughter had a total meltdown over having to leave – kicking, hitting, screeching, the whole nine yards. I could tell the mom was embarrassed, but I was so NOT phased.

I wanted to reach out and pat her on the back and say, “Yep, been there, done that.”

It’s such a relief to see that we’re out of that phase. A few weeks before Noelle’s fourth birthday, I could feel the change in the tide. It was nearly imperceptible, and I can’t point to a specific thing that happened, I just remember one day watching her and realizing at a gut level, and intuitive level, that we had passed out of that ugly tantrum phase.

Perhaps it was when I said something I knew Noelle wouldn’t like, and I saw the disappointment and frustration mount behind her eyes, and she raised her hand to hit me, and then didn’t. Just like that, I saw her manage it, grab ahold of herself, and control herself.

I remember that Love and Logic was a life saver for us during those days. And it still is. Last night, I put in a CD from the class and listened as Dr. Charles Fay went over the principles and stories, I’ve become familiar with. I wanted a refresher. These things are simple, but take work to implement over and over again.

I told Dwayne the other day, “I feel the reigns loosening. It’s time to refresh and tighten things up around here!”

Dwayne smiled and looked at the floor. “The best things are always the hardest to stay on top of.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, like balancing your budget. It’s the right thing to do, but it takes effort.”

I nodded. “Yeah, it’s the same way with the kids. I get it. It’s simple, it just takes discipline.”

So, I’ve decided, (Dwayne doesn’t realize this yet) but I’ve decided to take our next two date nights to just listen to the Love and Logic CD together, refresh what we’ve already read. I know hot and steamy stuff. Nothing like talking about parenting techniques to turn up the romance!

Just now, Noelle announced to me that she wanted to try and make her own peanut butter, honey sandwich. Before I could answer, she had her stool in hand and was bouncing off to the kitchen.

As I followed her, I mulled over the logistics of this new bit of independence: putting the plates, peanut butter, bread, and honey all in one place where Noelle can reach them, then teaching her that if she is going to make her own sandwhich she needs to clean up her own mess after making it.

Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed by wonder. How do these new phases plop down into our days, marching us forward into the future, almost without warning?

I rounded the corner and spotted my girl quietly eye balling the pantry. She was up on her stool and reached gingerly for the peanut butter then the bread. I stood behind her, quietly handing her the plate, the knife, the honey, and watching as she deliberately and with concentration blobbed the peanut butter down in a lump on the bread and then heaped the honey on top.

Then she folded the bread over and “voila!” it was done. She had made a tidy little sandwich.

“I’m so impressed Noelle,” I told her as she put the sandwich on the plate and turned to get off the stool. “You just made your own sandwich.”

She nodded and hopped off the stool. “I saw Julian making his own sandwich yesterday and I was so impressed I decided I wanted to make my own!”

Yeah, and that’s about how I reacted after hearing that sentence come out of my little girl’s round face. She is big enough to use the word “impressed” correctly in a sentence. I guess she’s big enough to make her own sandwich, too!

The leaves have dropped from the trees outside our windows, affording a better view of the Puget Sound. The bay is dotted with boats and islands, and on a Fall day like today, 50 degrees and sunny, I find myself falling more and more in love with my life here in the Northwest.

When we moved to Bellingham a little over a year ago, I remember saying, when people asked us what it was like, “I can tell Bellingham is an easy place to love. I just don’t love it yet.” That’s because I was still too close to my first love ~ LA.

I mean really, no place will ever take the place of LA for Dwayne and me. It’s where we spent the first seven years of our married lives. We found ourselves in that city. It was a throbbing cocoon of energy inviting us to step in and uncover all of who we were. We loved LA because it was a place of newcomers, and outsiders. It was a place to explore new ideas, discover bigger world views. It was a place to get down and shake out.

Dwayne discovered a song about a month ago called, “Down by the River” that captures perfectly the puppy love so many have for LA. And we totally get it. It goes:

Went down to the banks of the LA river
had to hop a chain link fence.
Concrete walls on the LA River,
water lapping up on the cement.

Oh how I love my new home.
Listen to the big city sound.

I didn’t think, when we left LA, that I could really enjoy living anywhere, as much as I loved living in LA.

It’s amazing how time moves us, slowly, gently.

I keep getting flooded by these moments, these Pacific Northwest moments, where I feel so happy to be in my life, living here now. I used to get these same moments on the 105 freeway driving East looking out over the LA basin, able to see the skyline of downtown, the Hollywood sign glistening, the Griffith Park observatory, and the foothills in the distance. I used to call them “California Moments” when I couldn’t believe I was living in LA.

Now I feel these little bursts of joy over my life here in the corner of the country. I felt it last week when we were headed down to Portland, and I saw the gorgeous fall colors glistening under the crisp sunshine. I felt it when we were driving back and Dwayne and I looked out our windshield at the grandeur of Mt. Hood.

And then I felt it again today, in the minutia of the mundane, as I puttered around hanging Christmas lights, folding laundry, dinner simmering on the stove, and I realized that I never would have had time to do all this in LA, because I would have had the pressure of needing to work in order to help make ends meet.

A number of things changed for me when we moved to Bellingham, and many of them felt like loses. I quit working; I got pregnant; I got sick; I had a baby.

And yet today, as I hung the Christmas lights and folded the laundry, I felt deeply grateful for the grooves these changes have opened up in my life. I have time now to go to the library with my daughter, build a gingerbread house with her, take her to see “The Nutcracker.”

Being sick, forced me to face my limitations and proactively seek and engage a new level of health. And having a Nathan has delivered me into the joy of motherhood in ways I never appreciated before.

It was hard to leave LA, and I will never love another city with that same wide-eyed exuberance of being twenty-something, but “oh how I love my new home” with its breadth, and depth, and space, and stillness, it’s rainy days that call me back into myself for retreat, it’s sunny days that call me out into the lush offering of the Northwest, the snow glinting off the peek of Mount Baker, the waves of the Sound winking back the white eye of the sun, the San Juan islands hovering across the bay, the smell of fresh roasted coffee wafting from coffee houses on EVERY corner.

This weekend I read a friend’s facebook status update saying that she wouldn’t trade anything for living in LA. And I had a moment of reflection. I remember feeling exactly the same way. How strange and sweet and satisfying to suddenly realize that now I think I would trade something. I’m so glad for the seven years we had in LA. They were perfect for us then. But now, I think I would trade living in LA for my life right now, here, in the Pacific Northwest.

Here is a list of things that I really enjoy, and for which I don’t want to be judged:

- Gripping and easy to read Young Adult novels. Think The Giver, Hunger Games, Ella Enchanted, Beauty, City of Ember.

- Project Runway, and The New Girl.

- BBC Romance mini-series, such as Pride and Prejudice, North and South, Downton Abbey.

- Kettle Corn, Kettle Corn, Kettle Corn, and overpriced movie popcorn devoured in the dark of a theater with slippery, buttery fingers.

- Crocheting these little flowers.

- Showers in the evening.

- Freshly painted toenails in bright colors.

- Mod Podging Christmas ornaments.

- Fruity candy like fruit snacks or smarties (not the Canadian chocolate kind, but the pastel confection kind rolled neatly in little tiny tablets).

- Apple movie trailers. I can lose hours on this site.

- Michael Buble, and John Mayer.

- The smell of drier sheets.

- Getting Netflix in the mail (which is no longer happening since they hiked their prices – boo.).

- Listening to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” or BBC’s “Friday Night News Quiz” while doing dishes.

- The moment just after the kids go to bed when I get to sit on the couch and indulge in any or all of the things listed above.