Love Exactly.

**Warning: sappy Valentine's post below**

Love, to me, morphs over the years. It begins with the fireworks. The flowers and candy and hand holding stuff. The proclamations out loud of "I love you". Later it becomes more..because words aren't always reality. The longer it lasts the more it changes and deepens.

It is about learning how to be true to yourself yet being able to belong to someone else. He knows me as I know myself and I know him better. We accept each others faults because they are so much a part of who we are as a whole. When he looks at me he sees past my expression to what I am really feeling. His eyes to mine..soul to soul. Always as if we are the only two in the world.

Laughter and tears often intermingle with us. One first then the other. Picking each other up when we stumble. Learning as we go....leaning on each other. Everything swirling around us and nothing for certain except you are for me and I am for you. Exactly love.

The Treehouse Club

Apparently I am never right. Everything I say is debated and contradicted and naysay-ed. There are a gang of girls that simply find fault in all that I do and say. three blond girls that look a lot like me. The ones I feed and clothe and hug. My Children.

Sometime when I wasn't looking they took a time out form sibling rivalry and came together to form club called Mom is wrong and we can't let her get away with it. Here is one conversation that pretty much sums up the whole motto of the club in a nutshell.

The 12 year old: "Mom, why didn't we ever have a tree house??? You know, like Arthur (the AARDVARK) and Franklin (the TURTLE)...they had awesome tree houses. I have always wanted a tree house."

The 6 year old chiming in: "OH YES! Little Bear had one too AND the Bernstein Bears actually lived inside a big tree house."

ME: "Well we don't actually have a tree big enough in our yard to put a tree house in...and umm well you guys are not fictional animals that talk."

12 year old: "Well Mother their tree houses were always out in a forest in the very biggest tree with the greenest leaves and the best berries."

ME: "So are you saying that you want ME to go out in a forest and find the best tree and build you a tree house ???"

All 3 girls: " YES if you loved us YOU would!"

The 10 year old: "BUT she won't. She never does anything we want her to do...SIGH"

ALL nodding in agreement ((..while they sat in their warm house, eating a home cooked meal, watching cartoons, wearing their Uggs )).

If I hadn't been so amused by the absurdity of the conversation I might have been a little hurt.

If You Play in the Big Leagues...

I remember playing dress up as a kid. I would put on a lacy white gown and a veil and it would be my wedding. It was either that or I would play mommy. I would have baby dolls cradled in my arms or in the plastic carriage. I would feed them and change them and love them. I was always one scenario or the other ... sometimes I would still be in my wedding gown and move on to the mommy part. It was all I ever wanted. Love. Babies. White picket fence. The Big League.

The problem is that those absolutely wonderful things come with a lot of pesky details. There are jobs and mortgages. Children that aren't plastic. That have real cries and real poop along with distinctive personalities and opinions. Responsibilities galore. Fights and dates. Crying and laughing. Good and bad but all details. They take energy and time. Sometimes the details muck up the big picture. The important parts. The only parts that matter in the end. Love. Commitment. Respect.

Sometimes those details become too much and start to make you feel like the weight of your world is set square on your shoulders. Whether you crumble under that weight depends on so many things. It depends on being able to wade through all those details to get to the life stands still moments. The moments where time seems to freeze and you remember why you wanted all this stuff in the first place. When your child reads a book to you for the first time. When your husband holds your hand a little tighter and tells you that you are his forever. The days that your child demonstrates all those qualities that you painstakingly tried to teach them. Those moments that become an imprint in your memory. A testament to being a family. Which to me simply means having someone you love as your partner and raising children to be respectful, happy people.

What I have learned in all those years since I used to dress up in that over sized white gown and play family with such ease is that it certainly isn't...easy. In fact being a family is anything but easy. It takes lots of perseverance and work. It is hard and intimidating but anything worth having is worth working hard for.

The Hidden Bully

When you hear about bullies these days it often pertains to emotional bullying. Words. Meanness through words. Texting and Face Book contribute to the popularity of this type of bullying. Well that and the fact that the girl bullies don't want to mess up their perfectly flat ironed hair or chip their manicures. One face is beautiful and the number two face is twisted up and grotesque. Hard to swallow at any age but especially at that age when you aren't at all sure of your own place in the world.

Way back when there was a different kind of bullying. The kind you read about in a novel or see in a movie. The kid towering over another that uses physical strength to cause harm. I remember a girl that used to live up the street. She was mean. She needed attention and didn't care if it was negative or positive attention. She used to get off the bus and follow me and a friend as we walked home. She constantly screamed the song "oh Mickey, your so fine..." in our ears and kicked our heels as we walked. She liked to make us cry and then she would laugh. The harder we would cry the harder she would laugh. It was what fueled her fire. Everyone knew her as the bully and she liked that. She took lunch money and lunches. She stole Halloween candy and shoved boys and girls alike. She ended up just where you would think she might. Alone. Uneducated. Jail.

The interesting thing is that the girl that is that bully today blends in well. She wears the Aeropsotle T's and sparkly eye makeup. She has a cell phone and lots of friends. She craves popularity and surrounds herself with the "ones". She knows just how to push girls down to be the one on the top. She knows what to say to make others shrink away. No need for punching or kicking. The new quiet manipulation causes less ripples and a much more efficient effect. This bully is harder to pinpoint. Harder to stop. Eventually this bully will be a lawyer or a mom or a teacher. I think I might like the old school bully more. At least those bullies are not hiding in every clique.

The Flutophone Chronicles

My 4th grader came home last week with a snazzy blue case and a big smile. When she carefully unzipped it and tenderly removed her shiny new flutophone (or recorder as they call them now) I cringed. Some memories from when I was her age involving a not so favorable incident with a flutophone swept across my mind. She was so excited that I pushed the memory away and watched her attach the instrument to her neck strap and begin to screech out a few notes. After a few minutes she stopped and took her special cleaning cloth out and wiped it down and placed it back in her case just as precisely as she had taken it out. Her happiness lasted about a week. Last weekend she started to resent the plastic screamer. She couldn't quite get the notes right and told me that the teacher pointed her out and only her and told her she was holding it wrong. She didn't come over and show her how to hold it. She didn't tell her anything good she was doing. She just sternly chastised her in front of the whole class. That vision made my old instrument incident come flooding back like an out of control tsunami.

When I was in third grade I had a teacher who was known as the mean one. She yelled. Her voice was gruff. She had no sympathy for shyness or quietness. She disliked it as a matter of fact. I cried more then once in her class and she would tell me to suck it up, act my age, stop being a baby. That only made me cry harder. By spring I was holding it together more and had made a few friends in the class. We had just started a new unit in music and everyone was all a twitter. It was the flutophone unit! It was the first day and we were all excited to get our hands on them. It was loud and chaotic. Lots of squeaking and screeching. At that time there was not a separate music teacher, the classroom teacher was the one to teach the notes and blowing technique. When she had passed out one to each student she abruptly told everyone to shut up and sit down. Everyone did but there were a few squeaks here and there that interrupted her as she began the lesson. Again she told everyone to be quiet and threatened that the next sound she heard would result in a major punishment. There was absolute and complete quiet. Not one sound. No one wanted to endure one of her punishments. As she started to talk my friend, who was sitting next to me, made a funny face at me and I tried to contain a giggle. All would have been ok IF I hadn't had the flutophone up next to my mouth. You see I stopped the sound of the giggle but the air escaped out of my mouth and traveled through the mouth piece and created a loud squeak. Everyone looked at me, jaws to the ground. I could feel the red hot traveling across my face and the tears well up in my eyes. The teacher immediately walked over to me and grabbed the instrument out of my hands she told me to get up and that I could no longer be a part of the learning today. She led me out into the hall and made me turn toward the wall and put my nose up to it. She said I was a disappointment and turned around walked into the class room and slammed the door. I stood there for what seems like hours, crying quietly and feeling like a loser as other classes passed by me staring and whispering. I honestly don't know how long I was out there and I don't remember what happened afterwards. I do know that teacher should not have been there teaching young kids. After that day I would never ever look at another instrument. It ruined it for me.

When I started to tell my mom the other day about the incident she told me I had never told her before. In all honesty I think it went into the box in my brain full of those things that you just never want to have a memory of...things you would rather forget. My parents had something about that teacher that they put in that box in their heads years ago too. At a parent teacher conference that pivotal year that teacher told my mom and dad that I would certainly never go to college. She told them I would slide by and get through but had no potential for higher education. They told me that years later at my college graduation where I graduated magna cum laude with a degree in education.

Teacher do shape us in our lives. The academics are very important but so is the positive feedback and the ability to see potential even when it might seem there isn't any.

One Foot on the Banana Peel

Some things drive make me bonkers, bananas and as mad as a hatter. Some things absolutely make me teeter on the brink of insanity. Some things like these things...

Forgetting my purse and not realizing it until I am in the checkout line at the store

Cat throw up

People who see the world in black and white and refuse to even consider gray as an option

Spongebob

Coats and backpacks strewn about

People who use guns to try and solve problems

12 year olds

Snow/ snow days/ cold temperatures

Not being able to run outside (see above ^^^)

Thong underwear

People who use religion/politics/being a crunchy mom as a reason for talking down to others

Poor grammar

My closet

Faster than a Speeding Bullet.

Last year was heavy. Lot of things were hard to swallow and even harder to understand. Things that looked real and for sure, ended up being disposable and fleeting. In other words if something seemed to good to be true it probably was... those visions of perfection make the flaws even harder to accept and almost impossible to forgive.

When bad things start happening to good people it makes you want to grab on to some sort of unreachable faith. To try and find answers to those questions of why people who live their life in nothing but honesty and goodness sometimes have to face challenges beyond the realm of the heaven bound entrance exam. Why live in the light of what is right if there is no assurance of it bringing happiness?

I have decided that I was focusing on the wrong thing. There really might be no answer as to why horrendous things happen to those that don't deserve it..as much as you want a definitive reason why things in life happen chances are you won't get one. The badness and goodness of people is totally independent of the badness and goodness that happens to them. I can't change any of that.

I can however turn the focus inward. I can realize my own contentment. What brings me joy and delight. I can find a way to change my own circumstance. To enjoy the minutes and seconds while they are here instead of worrying about when they might not be. Remembering the things that can't be bought at the store or won in the rat race. Time can't stand still, in fact it seems to be moving faster every minute. Faster than a speeding bullet.