A time out for Annalie and Mom on a rough day…taken February 7, 2008

Today I was at the pottery studio, painting the prize for the lucky winner of Jill’s pottery lottery. While I was there a mom came in with two young kids, a boy about 5 and a girl about 3. The kids were clearly excited, laughing and chattering as they looked over the shelves and chose a dinosaur and a truck. The mom settled them at a table and brought palettes of paint over so they could start.

From there it quickly went downhill. After he dabbed a bit of paint on his dino, the boy pushed it away and said, “I want to paint that car now.” His mom explained that no, they were only painting one thing each because she didn’t have the money to buy more than one. The boy immediately burst into tears, sobbing loudly over and over, “I WANT TO PAINT THE CAAAAAR!”

His mom wasn’t exactly the epitome of patience, but she did her best, gathering her son onto her lap and simultaneously encouraging her daughter and trying to ignore the child wailing in her ear. After a minute or two she reached her breaking point and snapped, “That’s enough, Carter!”

Not that I can entirely blame her. I was sitting at another table ten feet away and I was in no way responsible for the child emitting the noise, and it was getting on my nerves.

The mom brusquely moved Carter to his own chair and crossed the room to get a new sponge for her daughter, dropping the old one in a bowl of water on the table. The girl protested and fished her paint-covered sponge out of the bowl, squeezing it so that painty water splashed and puddled on the table. When the mom came back and saw the mess, “Lucy Rose, NO! What are you doing!? That sponge is all yucky! I thought y’all were mature enough to come paint again, but I guess I was wrong! Am I ever glad your daddy isn’t here to see how naughty you guys are being…” She went on loudly berating her daughter while she sopped up the water with a paper towel.

Meanwhile Carter had gotten up and was trying to take the car he wanted down from the shelf. As his mom leaped over to scold him for that, Lucy ran over to the door and glanced back to see if her mom was watching her. The mom raced over to grab her daughter before she could run out into the mall, and behind her back Carter…well, you get the idea. The kids were clearly not going to cooperate, mom had good and lost her cool, the situation was spiraling out of control.

I sats there painting and listening to all of this tensely, observing from the corner of my eye each time the mom walked away just in case a disaster needed to be averted. (I tend to do that when I’m out in public. If I’m ever at Target and your two-year-old gets away from you and runs wildly down my aisle, I will block his path in a non-scary way till you arrive, panting and disheveled from chasing him. You might thank me or you might give me a dirty look and stalk off yanking your kid by the wrist, but either way I figure I can’t just let him run on by me.) In my head, I was playing the ol’ I-wish-people-wouldn’t-yell-at-their-kids-in-public lecture: Your kids are being a bit difficult, lady, but come on! YOU are the grown-up here. It was Halloween yesterday, they probably went to bed late and are tired!, etc.

Suddenly—literally in the blink of an eye—I teared up and I went from self-righteous to sympathetic. I thought of the times Annalie has melted down in public, and how often I’ve lost my temper with her and said things I regretted. I thought about how sometimes a stranger smiling at me or saying a kind word has been enough to defuse a situation that was threatening to go nuclear.

And I felt compelled to pray. I asked God to give the mom patience with her kids, to help her speak to them in love and not anger. I prayed for peace to cover them and asked for wisdom to know what, if anything, I should say to them.

The freakiest thing happened next. No sooner had I finished my short prayer than everything settled down. It was almost like flipping a switch. The mom stopped snapping and the kids stopped squabbling. The mom calmly told her kids that if they were good till she was done cleaning up the table she would give them each a quarter for a gumball before they left. The kids waited by the gumball machine, studying the contents and telling each other which colors they hoped they’d get.

Now, I believe that there is real power in prayer. I truly do. Even if you’re not a religious person, you have probably read about scientific studies over the years about the link between prayer and pain, or faith and stress. Whether you believe it’s God working miracles or the meditation of prayer or the support system of fellow believers, you have to admit there is something there, right? But still, as a lifelong Christian and someone who prays daily, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a prayer answered so immediately before my eyes.

Maybe God worked in the mom’s and kids’ hearts, or maybe the prayer calmed me down and they could sense my calmness, and that calmed them down. Whatever the reason, I jumped in. I asked the mom if she needed help clearing her table since her kids were ready to go. She turned me down politely but continued to chat as she worked, saying her kids had been so well-behaved while trick-or-treating the night before she had thought they might be ready for painting pottery. I mentioned the fact that I have a 4-year-old, smiling and rolling my eyes in an I’ve-been-there fashion.

She finished up and said good-bye to me with a friendly wave. She helped her kids put their quarters into the machine (Carter got green and Lucy got pink) and herded them out the door as she asked, “Are you guys hungry? Do you wanna go get some lunch?” The pottery studio was peaceful again.

I’ll admit that as I picked up my paintbrush again I thought, It’s 1 o’clock in the afternoon and those kids haven’t eaten lunch? I’d probably be squirrelly too if I were them! I don’t think I’ll be able to stop judging others in one fell swoop; unfortunately I think it’ll take a lifetime to get rid of that habit. What I do know is that I am not the one who knows what is going on in the hearts of people I see at the mall, at church, or even in my own house.

I am very thankful that God does not judge me based solely on what others can see from the outside. I want to show others the same grace God has shown me. Maybe if I say a prayer whenever I catch myself judging someone, that grace will be easier to show.

John holding 2-month-old Annalie, July 2004

My uncle, John David Adams, passed away this morning. He was my mom’s baby brother. He was 45 years old.

His death wasn’t exactly shocking. I think we all knew it was only a matter of time. John had been in ill health for a while. He’d had asthma his whole life, and complicated that by smoking heavily. He developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as well as congestive heart failure. He was hospitalized a number of times in the past couple of years, and even talking on the phone made him gasp for breath.

John was more or less the black sheep of the family. He chose to live much of his life on the fringes of society, doing drugs and working only as much as he had to. He did manage to get clean and live a “normal” life here and there, especially when his three daughters were little, but those times were unfortunately few and fleeting. He broke the hearts of everyone who loved him again and again. It got to the point where some of my relatives couldn’t stand the heartbreak and the betrayal. They felt they had no choice but to cut John out of their lives. I can’t say I blame them.

My mom was in a different position from most of her family, since she lives in Nebraska and was usually 1,300 miles away from John. It was harder for him to impose on her, so she felt freer to help him occasionally. It was easier for her to see him on her visits to California without feeling the weight of a lifetime’s baggage. When John’s daughters moved with their mom to Las Vegas, my mom made a point of trying to visit them at least once a year. I think it’s safe to say that we probably saw his daughters more often in the last decade of his life than John did.

My mom, John, me, and 2-month-old Annalie in the infant carrier, July 2004

The sad thing is, I know John loved his daughters. Whenever we visited them, my mom would take tons of photos and send copies to John. Even during the darkest times John would be sure to let my mom know how much he appreciated the photos. When we saw him, which was rarely, he would always talk proudly about the last time he’d talked to or seen his girls, about how smart they all were and how pretty, and how glad he was that they were making better decisions than he had made at their ages. He knew he wasn’t the best father in the world; he knew he’d broken many promises. But he loved them.

My mom flew into Southern California tonight. Annalie and I are driving her up to the boondocks tomorrow so she can start taking care of the details. I’ll help her as much as I can, and my Uncle Allen is driving down from Northern California to help too. John had almost no possessions, he wanted to be cremated, and I don’t know if there will even be a memorial service—my mom’s family isn’t real big on funerals—so I don’t know what kind of details we’ll have to take care of. But I am sure there will be details; when someone dies, there always are.

I’ll remember three things about John most vividly. First, I’ll remember his smile, and his laugh. John had one of those smiles that totally lit up his face and you couldn’t help but smile back. When something struck him as funny, his laugh seemed to well up from the soles of his feet, a great bark of joy, and it was so contagious you couldn’t help but laugh too, even if you had missed the joke, even if you were annoyed at him. He was, as everyone in my mom’s family is, a fantastic laugher.

Second, I’ll remember the Halloween masks. When I was about Annalie’s age and John was 16, he came to Omaha for a visit. It was October, and we’d already bought our costumes. Mine was a Barbie costume, one of those cheap plastic ones that went on like a hospital gown with ties in the back—remember those?—and it came with a face mask complete with bright yellow hair, pink lips, and blue eyeshadow and black lashes painted above the eyeholes. I was afraid of masks back then, whether it was someone else wearing a gorilla mask or me wearing a cheap Halloween mask held on with a thin elastic cord. So I was planning to just wear pink lipstick and blue eyeshadow instead of the mask. But while John was there, he started goofing around and putting on our Halloween masks. For some reason I didn’t run from the room screaming in fear. I looked at my tall, burly Uncle John wearing the very feminine Barbie mask and thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. He even talked in a falsetto while wearing it, which made my brother and me howl with delight. There is a photo somewhere of John in the Barbie mask, my brother and me standing in front of him laughing our heads off. I was never afraid of masks after that.

Third, I’ll remember the day he taught me how to make Three-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies. We were sitting around one day a few years before Annalie was born, discussing our favorite recipes and the jobs he’d had cooking in various restaurants, and he said something about the easiest peanut butter cookie recipe ever. When he told me the ingredients with a twinkle in his eye, I looked at him for about five seconds with my mouth open before jumping up to rummage through my Aunt Julie’s fridge and pantry for the required ingredients. I had to try it for myself! So we made a batch together, and he wasn’t pulling my leg, and they were indeed the easiest cookies I’d ever made. They were very rich too. Many’s the time I’ve been craving something sweet at 8 o’clock at night and have thrown a batch of these together, smiling as I remember the time I made cookies with my Uncle John.

Three-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

• 1 c. peanut butter*
• 1 c. granulated sugar
• 1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350F. Combine the peanut butter and sugar. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Roll into 1-inch balls and place a couple of inches apart on a baking sheet. Flatten each ball by making a criss-cross pattern with the tines of a fork on the dough. (Alternately, roll each ball in granulated sugar before placing on the sheet, and use the bottom of a glass to flatten slightly.)

Bake for 8-12 minutes, till cookies are done. Cool slightly on baking sheets, then remove to a rack. Makes 12-16 cookies.

* A commercial peanut butter, like Jif or Skippy, works best. I made these once with natural peanut butter and the oil separated out and basically fried the cookies, which were rock hard.

Today I was an impatient, easily-angered mess. I’m going to blame a combination of hormones, too little sleep, reading and thinking about this post of Loralee’s, and Troy being gone. Not to mention that Annalie was being rather challenging today, growling at me or calling me stupid when she didn’t like what I said. Clearly I don’t want her to think it’s okay to talk to anyone like that, so we had several stern conversations and I ended up losing my temper during one of those chats.

I apologized to Annalie for speaking sharply to her and explained that I was having a sad, bad day. She kindly patted my arm and said, “It’s okay Mama, when I don’t feel good I have bad days too.” At least we weren’t both having a bad day.

Then bedtime came and I let Annalie stay up longer than I should have. By the time I laid down with her for prayers she was overtired and giddy, bouncing off the walls and having trouble settling down. Normally I stay in the bedroom singing lullabies or hymns till she’s asleep but tonight that clearly was keeping her awake and her antics were annoying me, so I decided to give myself a five-minute time-out in the other room. I kissed her good night and told her I’d be back to check on her soon. She wasn’t happy about that and I could hear her crying for a couple of minutes—that’s when I took the above photo, thinking a photo that showed my annoyance and frustration would be an accurate representation of my day.

But then I went into the bedroom to check on her and she was snuggled up with Brownie Bear, almost asleep. I quietly sang one more song, kissed her and told her I loved her, and was rewarded with a drowsy, “I love you too, Mama,” before she zonked completely out. I decided that that was the moment I wanted to document.

And really, despite my moodiness today wasn’t a bad day at all. We’ve developed a tradition of having a breakfast of doughnuts and lattes on Snail Mountain with Brenda and Bug while they’re here visiting, and last night after they’d gone home Annalie realized we’d missed out on doing that this time. I suggested we could do that today, just me and her. She really liked that idea.

Photo by Annalie, age 4

We had fun climbing around on some rocks we don’t normally climb on, and saw a bunch of swallowtail butterflies swooping about in addition to enjoying the scenery and our delicious doughnuts. And later this afternoon we did some alfresco painting with watercolors on the deck while the cats watched. We even strung up some twine on the deck so we could hang watercolor paintings up to dry, and watched a praying mantis who sat on the ceiling of the deck all afternoon.

It wasn’t a bad day at all when I look back on it. But I still am very happy that Troy will be home tomorrow. That alone will make it a much better day than today!