Sandra Tayler

Last night I had the opportunity to drop everything and come to the aid of a desperate need. One of my friends had a 3 am medical emergency which required her and her husband to run off to the hospital. I went to her house to stay with her kids. In this case the medical emergency was quickly resolved. She and her husband were both back home by 8:30 am. I am so glad that she called me. I’m grateful for the opportunity to make a horribly frightening situation a little bit better.

I am grateful for this chance to give because I have so often been on the receiving end of such gifts. When I had my own medical mess 8 years ago, many people rearranged their lives to make mine easier. At the time I was simultaneously grateful and embarrassed at all the help I received. Over the past two years since Howard began cartooning full time we have received many gifts of money, toys, games, clothes, and good will for which I am always simultaneously grateful and embarrassed. But I keep the gratitude and shrug off the embarrassment because I know what it is like to give. I know how it feels to really want to make someone’s life a little bit better and to be actually able to do it. By graciously accepting needed help, I am giving that opportunity to someone else.

I miss having the funds to give. I see so many places where I would love to be able to help, but can’t afford to do so. However I do have hands which I can put to work. Last night and this morning there was a clear cut opportunity for me to physically step in and help someone; to look my friend in the eyes and say “Don’t worry about your kids, I’ll manage just fine.” She may think that she owes me something for my help, but I know that she doesn’t. I know I’m just trying to pay forward all the gifts and services that have been given to me. My friend has already given me the gift of trusting me to answer her frightened 3 am phone call.

Don’t be afraid to ask people to help you. We are all our best selves when we are helping each other.

Small actions can have huge consequences, just ask anyone who has ever seen an avalanche. I believe that most problems, like avalanches, have small beginnings. If problems are correctly managed while they are small, then the problems never proceed to the point where they are unstoppably crushing everything in their path. My whole parenting style is based upon this belief. I teach my kids to work now so they’ll already know how before they hit high school. I teach them to manage money now so they won’t be clueless spendthrifts when they have their own incomes. I make very clear that hitting and biting are unacceptable expressions of anger, to prevent having a violent teenager or adult.

It’s a good theory, but the reality is much more complex that what I just described. I just gave the clear cut examples. So many other parenting decisions are more murky. For each decision I try to peer into the future and figure out what the possible repercussions might be so that I can make the best possible choice. Say that Gleek doesn’t want to go to Kindergarten. Letting her stay home may allow her to have a welcome day off so that she’s ready to go back the next day, or it might teach her that school is optional and she can get out of it if she throws a big enough tantrum. If I make her go to school she might settle in and have a great day, or she might be angry and resentful all day long, causing difficulties for her teacher and classmates. Which is the right choice? I can’t tell at the moment of choosing. All I know is that the choice takes me irrevocably down one branch of the possibility tree. Tomorrow I may be faced by exactly the same choice, but I will be in a slightly different place because I’ll have yesterday’s choices behind me as a precedent.

Patterns matter more than incidents. I’ve said that myself many times as I try to come to terms with an unpleasant event. I believe it is true. A single incident of leaving Gleek with her teacher and walking away while she cries for me, does not carry as much weight as the many days when she trips off happily to school. BUT if the incident is big enough or traumatic enough, it will be remembered. This is particularly true with younger children who thrive on patterns, but remember incidents. We all create stories about our lives based on the things we remember. What if the only memory that Gleek retains about Kindergarten is being abandoned there by her mother? What will that older Gleek tell herself about her Kindergarten experiences? So incidents do matter. I can’t let incidents just stand by themselves. I have to talk them through with the child. I have to try to make sure that the conclusions which the child draws from the incident are ones that will give the child good options for the future. But even talking over incidents is a choice with possible repercussions. Kids don’t like to be talked or moralized at. They may choose to shut me out and limit my power to influence their thoughts.

Then there is the case where I am deliberately attempting to set up a pattern. Link just acquired a retainer which will help his jaw grow a little larger to fit all of his teeth into a neat row. From where I am standing, this seems the best possible choice for him. But I can’t deny the possibility that there may be a variable that I can’t see from here. Perhaps growing his jaw will misalign his teeth, creating a need for braces rather than preventing a need for them. Perhaps the mushiness of his speech won’t go away after a week. Perhaps he’ll learn bad speaking habits from constantly having the retainers in his mouth. Every day I see him put his retainers in his mouth and one or more of these thoughts flits through my head. I watch the retainer go in and realize that I am choosing to let it continue because I still believe it is best. I will probably continue to believe it is best until I’m either proved right or shown to be badly mistaken. Either way the evidence will only arrive after it is too late for me to reverse course.

Every day I make hundreds or thousands of seemingly small parenting decisions. The odds are good that at least some of those decisions will cause me problems in the future. I try to stick to firm trails and watch my step, but it will not be the steps that I’m watching carefully which will bring the grief. I can’t know if I’m doing this parenting thing right until it’s too late for me to go back and fix things. So I live with this gnawing sense of failure because I know it is impossible for me to get it all right. A day like yesterday when I stomp furiously off the path leaves me wondering if I can handle this job at all.

Then yesterday was followed by this morning, when Patches took himself to the toilet sans prompting. Somehow despite my agonizing and self doubt, my kids continue to grow and thrive. They find happiness and achievements that are completely unconnected with anything I say or do. Then I wonder if my actions carry as much weight as I fear that they do. Perhaps instead of watching all my steps carefully I need to look up from my feet, take my children’s hands, and watch the scenery as we walk together.

For a mother of four downtime is elusive. There are days where I desperately want to have just 20 minutes to myself. I check to make sure that all the kids are occupied and then I sit down to eat while reading a book or to write a blog entry. If I get to finish my meal or my entry, I walk away feeling calmer and ready to be a nice mom again. But almost invariably one of the kids needs something or gets hurt or picks a fight. Then I have to interrupt my relaxation time to be a mom. If my little bit of downtime is interrupted it doesn’t count. I have to start over to resettle into my “I am relaxing” mindset. Today is my third day in a row of too little sleep. This means my need for downtime has been greater than usual. It is worse in the afternoon and evening because those are my low ebbs of energy. Unfortunately evening is a very high maintenance time of day.

Part of me wants to lock myself into my office, turn music on loud and tune out all the noises. Unfortunately that would mean the kids would be unsupervised. They’d probably fight over something. Then there would be hitting and yelling. Or someone would need something and come pounding on my door. Or they’d just sit where they are and holler for me to come to them to solve all their problems.

On one level I understand that all of these things are simply because they are children. They are by definition immature. It is my job to be mature. I have to model good behavior and pass judgment and mete out punishment or rewards. I just get so tired. I need to go to bed tonight just about as soon as my kids do. Then I get to get up and do it all again tomorrow.

Oh and while I’m griping about things, today was cold and gray all day long. There wasn’t enough sunshine.

At least lunchtime was really nice. Howard and I spent an hour together in the kitchen talking and making plans for this coming year. I liked that part of today. And I got stuff done. Not all of it, but enough.

For the past several weeks Howard has been suffering from allergy attacks. We finally figured out that his allergies were better during the night when the furnace wasn’t running and the worst hit just after the furnace came on in the mornings. Hot air isn’t usually allergenic, so we decided to blame the dust that the furnace blows back into our house. I resolved to pay for a duct cleaning. Then I called around and found out that there are $90 duct cleanings that I can duplicate with a home vacuum cleaner and there are $750 duct cleanings which get the whole system truly clean at the expense of my budget. I decided to try vacuuming everything out myself and to clean the filter really well to see if that would make a difference for Howard.

Many of our heating vents are in the floor. I had no idea that floor vents were such magnets for detritus. In fact I am now entertaining the theory that each vent is the home of a little gnome who hoards things. I’m not sure I can explain the quantities of junk in any other way. Each gnome had very definite preferences as to hoarding material. In my boy’s room I hauled 6 handfuls of crackers out of the vent along with random small toys. The girls room contained a comparable amount of beads and sunflower seeds. The vent nearest the front door had 78 cents in change and piles of sawdust. The vent in the corner of the living room had dead ants and cheerios. The vent in the kitchen was the most eclectic. It contained random food crumbs, crayons, a pencil, bits of paper, and a mousetrap.

Having cleared the vents, I tackled the air intakes. This is when I learned why $750 might just be worth it. The dust inside those intakes could have been measured with a ruler. I vaccumed out as much as I could reach. Patches was fascinated by this whole process. He hovered beside me holding the flashlight, helping remove and replace screws, and sometimes even vaccuum. He loved it, he wanted me to go find more vents and intakes to vacuum. I felt tired and grubby, but there was still the filter to clean.

Usually when I clean the filter I take it out on the front lawn and spray it off with a high power hose nozzle. This is January, the hose is full of ice. So I took the filter up to the bathtub. I decided to use soap and hot water because I remembered that much of the dust I vacuumed was kind of sticky. It was amazing how quickly the tub water got filthy. I kept swishing and soaping and emptying water and refilling and soaking. Finally the filter was almost back to it’s original blue color. I allowed it to dry and stuck it back in.

What have I learned from all this? That I should probably clean my vents more often. Also, spraying a filter off with the hose does not get it as clean as washing in hot soapy water. I sure hope that it all makes a difference for Howard’s allergies. he has been really miserable lately.

I must have missed the bulletin which announced a huge sleepover in my room last night. Both Gleek and Patches got the bulletin though. Patches arriving in my room is fairly frequent, so that wasn’t too surprising. Gleek’s visit was prompted by a truly terrifying nightmare. I know this nightmare was terrifying because as we approached bedtime this evening she curled up in my lap and cried to me while she told me the details. She also requested with big watery eyes that I please allow her to stay up until Howard and I go to bed. Then she can just go to sleep with us and be safe. Specifically she wants Howard to snuggle her because he is the safest person. I didn’t give her request a definitive answer because there were three other things going on simultaneously to the conversation. Gleek ready to snuggle and talk is a rare and precious event. I really wanted to savor it and focus on her, but Patches was having a meltdown because he couldn’t get ketchup to come out of the bottle. After 5 minutes of distress I finally set Gleek down for a moment and blorked some onto his plate, at which point Patches set to whining because he’d already run out of hot dog and now had nothing to dip in the precious ketchup. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Then Patches dissolved into full-on crying because Mommy Laughed At Him. So Patches needed snuggles and Gleek needed snuggles. Both wanted undivided Mommy time. Moments like that are one of the hardest parts of parenting. It seems like I’m always being tugged in multiple directions by conflicting needs.

The three of us snuggled into the rocking chair and had a talk about dreams. Gleek talked about her dreams and Patches seriously discussed the dreams of his stuffed Yoshi. Apparently Yoshi has sad dreams that no one will play with him. (I think that Patches was discussing his own scary dreams, but doing it safely by displacing them onto Yoshi.) Gleeks dream featured monsters with glowing red eyes which catch people and suck out their souls. We talked about what causes dreams (no more Harry Potter for a while methinks) and what we can do to make them less scary. We dreamed up a whole arsenal of imaginary weapons that Gleek can use should those monsters dare to show up again.

After all that it was 8:30, no homework was done and no kids were in bed yet. Today was supposed to be the day of re-establishing a normal schedule. Sigh. At least Patches is in bed asleep. Kiki and Link are both quietly working on homework and Gleek is laying on a couch not sleeping until Howard gets home to snuggle her. I figure I’ll concentrate on the older two for awhile. Gleek may fall asleep on her own, thus solving the issue. One night of catering to a particularly frightening dream isn’t a problem. I do have to watch for patterns though. Hopefully she’ll have good dreams tonight and by tomorrow night the nightmare will have faded enough that it won’t be as big a problem.

Oh, and Link acquired a retainer today, so needed to talk over why he needs it and what it will and won’t do. Why do they all have emotional crises on the same day when I’m so worn out?

Yesterday I was talking with raisinfish and rattled off a whole list of things that I want to accomplish during the next year. When I wound down she said “Wow, how are you going to keep track of all that?” I might have mentioned planners or organization or something, I don’t remember. The point is that last night I was totally confident in my ability to track a gazillion goals big and small. This evening I’m staring at the dolist in my planner and seeing how many things aren’t checked off and I’m beginning to wonder. Honestly, it shouldn’t be that hard. Mostly I’m trying to reinstate some good habits which have fallen by the wayside.

I don’t know what it is about the last day of vacation. Yesterday I was lamenting that vacation hadn’t been long enough. Today I am totally ready to send all of the kids back to school. I wonder if they have really been more squabblish today or if it is an observer effect inside me because I’m gearing up to send them all back. At least I got all the Christmas stuff put away.

I think I was inspired by my mom’s impressive example. She has been clearing out decades worth of accumulated junk in her house. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see the full effect at her house because I arrived with a van full of people and stuff which filled up all the empty spaces that she created. Anyway I came home filled with a desire to clear stuff out and get rid of it. When I’m in this mood I get so ruthless that I actually have to double check myself. I was packing away our big fluffy tree skirt and part of me claimed that it takes up too much space and I should just get rid of it. We hardly ever use it anyway. Umm, well yeah. It’s a Christmas decoration. It spends 11 months of the year in a box. I would be very sad next year if I got rid of it this year because I bought it myself and love it. All of our Christmas stuff fits inside 5 boxes and one huge tree duffle. That’s a whole lot less than most people have. To appease the get-rid-of-it desire, I did pitch a couple of broken tree ornaments.

Tomorrow we embark on another 5 months of school schedule. I think these five will be better than the last five were. At the very least these five months will present new and different challenges.

Today I substituted for Kiki’s primary teacher at church. I don’t get asked to substitute in my kid’s classes very often, so I shouldn’t complain. I just depend upon having two hours of away-from-the-kids time during church and I don’t get that if I’m teaching their classes. I grumbled and griped inside my head while I prepared the lesson and during sacrament meeting. The actual experience of teaching the class was really pleasant. There was a group of about 8 girls aged 11 and 12. Because I know my audience, I framed the whole lesson as a discussion. This allowed the girls to talk and express opinions throughout the whole class time. It was fun. As an added bonus I got the 12 year old girls to talk about the Young Women’s program and the fun things they get to do. Kiki is 11 and has been apprehensive about entering the Young Women’s program. It was good for her to hear these good things about it.

After individual classes all the children ages 8-11 were gathered together for Sharing Time which is a group lesson. (The 12-year-olds departed for Young Men/Women.) My responsibility during that time is merely to participate and squelch rowdy behavior. Since I was sitting with 2 11-year-old girls and Link who ditched his class, there wasn’t all that much squelching to do. I was able to have a little contemplative time after all.

I sat there and realized that today was Patches’ last week in Nursery. He is about to become a sunbeam. He loves nursery because it is two hours of toys with brief interruptions for snack, singing, and lesson time. Sunbeams phases out the toys and snacks. It is an important transition into Primary, but it tends to be a rough transition. I’ve talked with Patches about being a Sunbeam. I act all excited about how cool being a Sunbeam is, but I’m not sure that Patches is convinced. The good news is that during sharing times Gleek will be in the same place as Patches. Gleek is a wonderful big sister when she wants to be nice. I may be able to leverage that into better behavior for both kids. I’m so machiavellian.

With the coming of January, most of my kids will be getting new Primary teachers. I don’t know who they are yet. I do know that I’m sad that Link will be leaving behind the teachers he has had this year. They’ve been wonderful for him. I hope the teachers for 2007 are as good. For most of the past year Gleek had two 19-year-old girls as teachers. Gleek loved them, but they were sometimes less than reliable. They were recently replaced by a young married couple. I wonder who Gleek’s teachers will be this next year and whether they’ll be able to handle the exuberance/determination that is Gleek. Kiki gets to keep her teachers. But in 5 months she’ll be 12, so she still has a major transition to undergo.