idelette

Life may be brimming over with experiences, but somewhere, deep inside, all of us carry a vast and fruitful loneliness wherever we go. And sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inward in prayer for five short minutes. -Etty Hillesum

From: An Interrupted Life: the Journal of a Young Jewish Woman, 1941-1943

(via A Vast and Fruitful Loneliness | Inward/Outward.)

Motherhood has taught me the beauty and power of just five minutes. I also learned that some five minutes are shorter than others.

Question: If you only had five minutes to change your world today, how would you spend it?

Last night I had, in the words of Esther Shu, one of Life’s blender moments. You know, when you get tossed in the blender and someone flips the switch to High.

We had lots of errands to run on Day Two of being back in full Mommy Mode. Drop off. Pick up. Take dog to the vet. Another drop off. Loads of laundry in-between. Pick up. Another pick up. And many other stops into the late afternoon. Check my @foursquare history. You’ll concur.

We also had our carpets cleaned yesterday. From top to bottom. Whole house.

So when we got home around 7:30pm, after the final shop at Costco for more towels and medium cheddar (the first batch of family are scheduled to arrive tonight from South Africa) I had a moment of just enjoying the white, crisp sense of clean carpets everywhere. That beautiful moment of serenity when things are so … clean.

The kids, however, were excited, because furniture was still in unusual spots and they wanted to play hide and seek. Gabrielle, my six-year-old, was particularly excited. Let’s just say that. So we have a little ritual now that when she gets highly energetic like that–especially on rainy days–I simply say to her: It’s time for jumping jacks, sweetheart. And I give her a number. Ten jumping jacks; sometimes 20 jumping jacks. It all just depends on the level of energy she needs to burn off.

Last night I challenged Gabrielle’s energy level to 40 jumping jacks.

She loves our little ritual and she eagerly did the jacks.

When accidents happen

I was still unloading the Costco car, however, so I didn’t pay too much attention to her and her exercise. Until she came up to me and said, “Mommy, I accidentally … “

“You accidentally what, Gabrielle?”

Turns out, in her words, that she burped and then accidentally … threw up. All over the fresh carpet. A lovely ketchup-coloured spot right in the living room, in front of the stairs. (Those who know my girl, also knows she throws up rather easily.)

I confess, I didn’t pass the Mommy test right then, because I did care more about the state of the carpet in that particular moment than about Gabrielle’s. I didn’t yell, but I was annoyed. I got water ready, towels, soap and started cleaning. The three little ones still wanted attention on each of their various very random but important 2-6-year-old concerns. It was a little much for me and I asked them, kindly but firmly, to give me five minutes to just be by myself. Please. I even set the timer on the oven.

It wasn’t two minutes into my moment of solitude, pouring boiling water onto the stained area, when Shay came downstairs. He had taken off his clothes and his diaper and told me he had a poopy diaper. “Come, Mommy!” he beckoned.

I wasn’t too sure what to expect walking up the stairs behind his little naked bum. I only knew it could potentially be really really bad.

So there it was: his diaper lying on the floor in his bedroom and a lovely deposit right next to it. On the carpet.

Shay proudly pointed me to “the situation” and talked me through the event.

Two big carpet moments in our home within 10 minutes of each other. Someone had set the blender on High and kneeling down, cleaning up the second mess, I finally got that it was rather funny.

Today it might even be hilarious.

Idelette’s note: I wrote this piece in the week following the earthquake in Haiti. It seems appropriate to post it as part of my reflection on Lent and Suffering.

Haiti: Making Sense of Suffering in a So-called Perfect World

I made banana bread with my 4-year-old this afternoon, while the two-year-old napped. We stood at the island in the kitchen together, creaming the butter and mixing in the sugar. I broke two eggs into the softness.

But there’s a newsfeed running through me: Two million people in Haiti homeless.

When I wake up in the morning, Haiti is there, the first word I think of. Since the tragedy struck, Haiti has become the facebook newsfeed into my life. I move around it and through it.

Friend requested accepted accepted accepted.

The newsfeed runs through me as I move the spatula, silicon against glass.

Increased risk of women and children being trafficked out of Haiti. UNICEF adviser says 15 disappearances have been documented since the tragedy. Children disappearing from hospitals.

Mix. Mix. Mix.

I take out three frozen bananas from the freezer. Defrost them. Telah asks if she could mush them. I remember being surprised that she would want to do that. Frozen bananas are kind of gross. But then, I’d forgotten she’s a four-year-old and mushing anything is fun.

Allowing Suffering to Penetrate our Home

All the while making banana bread, I’m thinking about how this moment in the kitchen is what we dream about when we think about motherhood and staying home with our children. When we think about a perfect day and some domestic bliss, somehow we’re baking muffins or banana bread. So I think about the warmth and safety of home. While my heart is aching for women, men and children not too far from us—their semblance of normal shaken to the core, I am creating “home” with my daughter. I don’t know what else to do.

Together we are baking a home with a sense of love and beauty, simplicity, abundance, the smell of banana bread and a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

After picking up the 6-year-old from school, the kids can hardly wait and eagerly climb up on their chairs to the island for a slice of fresh chocolate chip banana heaven. It’s too hot, but we can’t wait, because we have to take our dog to the vet before 4pm. It doesn’t matter. When something tastes this good …

We bundle into the car to take Emma, our Sheltie, to the vet, because her doggy skin is covered in a thick crust.

So we drive and Haiti drives with us: up 60th Ave, down 140th and left on Hyland Drive.

Kids, dog and a minivan. And Haiti.

The images I saw on the front page of the Globe and Mail sit next to me in the passenger seat.

Wearing it, Tasting it

I’m wearing a “Heart for Africa” necklace today, but I’m also wearing a collage of images links words thoughts shudders prayers tweets and status updates from the past few days on my head and in my heart. Trying to make sense of our world. Trying to make sense of my place in this world. Weighing and filtering. Mixing and stirring. I see my spirit spatula moving against my glass bowl world, trying to make sense of this mashedupness in me and around me. Mixing it all together, rhythmically, methodically.

Haiti sits on my shoulder at the vet’s office. Here we are, my seemingly picture perfect family, going through this very ordinary-extraordinary day, but in a whole new context. The earth has moved.

Haiti is no longer on a map somewhere as a bordering country of the Dominican Republic. Haiti now lives in me on me around me. Her suffering has moved into the phone call I make to a school, trying to plan where my four-year-old will be going to Kindergarten next year. Haiti orders a tall latte at Starbucks as I go through the drive-thru. Haiti walks to school with us. I push Haiti in the stroller when my two-year-old prefers to run. Haiti lives in a clear sandwich bag with crisp bills from the girls’ Christmas money: their offering to take to school, for Haiti.

And tonight, cuddling up to two soft little girl bodies in a pink pretty bedroom, I pray. I pray for their futures, I say thank you for our day. And Gabrielle prays for the people in Haiti.

And a Haitian mom prays with us:God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way … (via @100prayingwomen)

A New Reality

We take in the Anderson Cooper Sanjay Gupta 360 degree hell of a Caribbean nation and it mixes into the blood and bones of our day and when we breathe out, it’s all mushed together. Haiti and Canada. Haiti and America. Haiti. South Africa. England. Burundi. Israel. Haiti. Thailand. Winter Olympics. Human trafficking. Gabrielle’s dentist appointment on Friday. A funeral for someone from church. Haiti. A friend’s daughter’s birthday. Updates. Flyers in the mail. Haiti. Call the vet at 9pm to see if we can pick Emma up tonight. Kids finally in bed. Haiti.

Like [Haiti] a thick slice [Haiti] of [Haiti] banana bread [Haiti].

This is how I want to live: Not just with Haiti woven into the fabric of my being and of our home, but with every hurting hellhole place and every suffering child, every broken woman, every story of hurt and injustice on our planet woven right into the beautiful, grateful, sunny, comfortable, seemingly perfect days of my life.

Lest we forget.

Question: How have you made the reality of suffering on the earth part of your life?

It just came to me that I should implement a Grace reward in our home. After a day with three young children (5, 4 and 19 months), sometimes it feels like my ears are still ringing from their high-pitched efforts to let me know how the others are falling short:

“Mommy, Gabi is not letting me be the mommy!”

“Mommy, Telah splashed me with water!”

“Mommy, Gabi poured cold water on my head!”

“Mommy, Telah hit me!”

Every one of those situations is an opportunity for Grace, ie. cutting each other slack in the name of love.

We have done sticker charts for inspiring the girls to say please and thank you. Currently they each have a responsibility chart outside their door with colourful magnets rewarding specific accomplishments and behaviours each day. Offering Grace is not on that chart. Yet.

I know one of the most important gifts I would like to impart to these young ones is the ability to extend Grace. It’s one of the greatest needs, yet in such short supply, humanly speaking. We constantly fall short from others’ hopes and expectations for us. We disappoint, we mess up, we hurt.

It costs us to offer Grace. It means we are willing to lay down our own cheap desire to look great next to someone who has fallen short.

Grace, however, wipes the slate clean, knowing next time I might be the one who offends you.

I like to reward that.

There’s been a long absence, but I feel compelled to write something about my discoveries in the very humble place of motherhood.

I asked God to take me to the edge of His work; He called me into my home. This is where I am learning some humbling lessons. Mostly about laying everything down. Me first.

I find myself at another edge … standing, speaking, praying against injustice.

I am in my home, but I am going to the ends of the earth.  I am pushing against boundaries of perception, geography, time, energy, society and culture. I am on the edge with God.

And much of this I am learning from an almost five-year-old.