Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

I love to write. I love word play. I love exploiting connotations. I love alliteration and synonyms. I love the rules of grammar, and I love to break them every now and then. Diagramming sentences was a blast for me in junior high. And I love to read things written by people who love to write because people who love to write are great writers. Since my second grade teacher introduced me Laura Ingalls Wilder, I have been addicted. For years, my preferred genre was fiction. Old fiction. New fiction. Historical fiction…anything BUT science fiction.

But when I became a mom, that changed. With John’s conception came a fascination with all things pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing. Thick books, glossy magazines, online articles written by experts, and discussion forums written by decidedly non-experts.

John’s birth only reinforced this obsession with facts for a couple reasons. First of all, the short and quickly digestible was all I had time for.

Secondly, I was at a complete loss as to how to make him happy, or at least how to get him to sleep. I was convinced the answer lay out there in cyberspace, or in one of my 14 magazine subscriptions, or in a voluminous parenting manual. Apparently, it didn’t, since I never ran across any article or chapter entitled “Kid Won’t Sleep? Could be Cancer”. Instead, I was reassured over and over that my newborn had colic, that vague, ubiquitous malady of babyhood. Later, when he was too old for colic, I read he was suffering the effects of teething.

 And I learned we had been blessed with a “high-need child”, who would indeed be a joy to raise. “Thank God”, I thought. "There is nothing wrong with him...just me because I'm not havin' a bit of fun." I found time and again relief and reassurance in my research and truly believed there was nothing wrong. Essays by mothers of “high-need children” extolled the joys of motherhood. These virtuous Proverbs 31 mothers basked in the grace they found in sacrificing sleep and hygiene to nurse their newborns (or even toddlers) ad nauseum. Hindsight tells me this is all total bullshit.

Now. You may be wondering what the title of this post has to do with me being too nearsighted/self-centered/naïve/just plain stupid to notice I had an infant with advanced cancer. Well, I guess I have to admit I’m a little unclear about what one has to do with the other, but I write how my mind thinks, so if my track jumping is hard to follow, I apologize. It all makes sense to me.

I read the book Mennonite in a Little Black Dress during my mom’s last few days. She slept a lot, so there was a lot of downtime, and I made lemonade out of a lemony situation and took the opportunity to read an actual book. I found it by accident, browsing e-books on iTunes. It was not what I expected. It’s a short memoir by a woman, raised in a Mennonite community, who left to pursue a secular life and later returned to live with her parents while recovering from a divorce and a car accident. The author, Rhoda Janzen, happens to be an English professor, who is an incredibly gifted writer.

Her grasp of the English language and its nuances is superb, but it is as much her willingness to be completely honest and brutally frank in describing the experience of her heartbreak and recovery from heartbreak that made the book so enjoyable for me.  The woman writes the way I aspire to write. Raw. Intense. Personal. Emotional. Academic yet humble. Bold and unapologetic. She does no whining. She places no blame. She is at the same time both proud and critical of herself.

So that’s what one has to do with the other. Congratulations if you can connect the dots. I'll now remind you that this blog is marginally proofread; if I took the time to polish everything to facilitate coherence, I would have nothing to post.

Writers who sugarcoat the realities of life do no service to their readers. People say life isn’t fair, but the fact of the matter is, it is unfair to everyone, just in different ways. So perhaps life is fair in its UNfairness? Just a thought…probably a whole ‘nother topic.

Six Years and Two Kids Later...

Today, six years ago, Matt & I celebrated the Sacrament of Matrimony with those of you who loved us enough to brave the sub-zero temperatures to join us. I wore satin pajama bottoms under my wedding dress. It was cold. I was much more comfortable kneeling in front of the altar during the ceremony than standing because the chill of the marble floor penetrated my ballet slippers and radiated right up to my knees. It was cold. At least two, and maybe all three of my bridesmaids wore long underwear. It was cold. We worried we would have to walk home after the reception for fear Matt’s diesel pickup would fail to start. (it did start) It was cold. The furnace ran all night long in our newlywed nest. It was cold.

You’re thinking, “Duh, it was January, of course it was cold. What did you think the weather would be like?” Short answer, “Cold, but not that cold.” The reason we chose January is obvious, at least if you’re a farmer. Our marriage (after over four years of dating) was contingent on me choosing a date that was not during planting or harvest season. Tax season ruled out February and March. So, January it was. I might add that Matt had only finished harvest that year about a week before we were married.

It was the season of marriage for the Clark family: Mary Ann & Greg in October, Matt & Alex on New Year’s Eve, and finally our turn January 15, 2005. Seven-thirty on a clear, crisp evening, candlelight, red roses, Canon in D, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, a wintry white organza gown for me, and secondhand dark red satin dresses for my bridesmaids. The picture in my mind’s eye is beautiful, and I hope that’s really how it was.

I love my husband. We have a good marriage, both in my opinion and as the world defines a good marriage. But here is a news flash: marriage is hard. Our vows offer a clue in advance that marriage is hard. Why else would they include “in sickness and health, for richer or for poorer”?

If we had a proverbial crystal ball, would we make decisions differently? Of course we would! We don’t know what life has in store for us, and it’s better that way. You know the song “The Dance.” It goes “I could have missed the pain, but I’da had to miss the dance.” It’s a cliché for sure, and clichés irritate me. But clichés are generally true. That’s why they’re clichés. They get repeated over and over because they’re true and that’s how they get to be clichés.

So, life is hard. Things don’t go your way. People get sick. They get better or sometimes they die. Your job goes well. Your job is crappy. You want to be your own boss. You wish you had a boss so you didn’t have so much responsibility.

The good news for Matt and me and all others God has joined is this: He gives us daily grace through the Sacrament of Marriage. Grace to deal with small pet peeves and major life crises. I suppose our marriage could survive without the help of this grace. But could it thrive and prosper? I don’t think so.

Love bears all things, bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.—I Corinthians 13:7-8

Thank you, God. I give you thanks in joy and suffering. Amen.

Happy Anniversary, Matt. Six years and two kids later, I still love you.

**We’re on a date right now. Please don’t come and steal stuff from our house. It’s locked up tight, and anything good we had, the boys have destroyed. It’s not worth the effort, plus you’d leave tracks in the snow. And we have an army of attack cats. On second thought, you can steal a cat. Or two. Just not Lucky or Monk.

Chicken with Bones

Since my mom is gone, one thing I really miss is sharing my small victories of home economics with her. I hope this blog will allow me the chance to share with someone some of the little things I would have shared with her. Tonight's supper would have been one of those small victories.

I'm nearly 30 years old. I enjoy food, yet I have rarely eaten chicken with bones in it. I am a fairly good cook, yet I had never before tonight cooked a chicken with bones in it.

I have felt for years that a dead chicken should be properly separated from his or her bones at some point well in advance of it appearing in my grocer's freezer. People are paid to perform this task at a chicken processing facility. Who am I to deny them a job?

Maybe I'm a little spoiled, but boneless, skinless chicken breasts have always been a staple of my diet. I never recall my mom cooking a whole chicken; I probably would not have eaten it if she had.

My inexperience with chicken is probably in part due to the prevalence of beef in our diet. As a life-long consumer of home-raised beef, I could write a cookbook entitled "101 Ways to Prepare Ground Beef Without Using Hamburger Helper." Or, I could host a PBS documentary explaining the differences among juicyburgers, sloppy joes, and maid rites. In the field of chicken, however, I have no such expertise. I was, until a few hours ago, a "chicken-with-bones-virgin."

Two things motivated my decision to venture into this culinary field this evening (1) two hungry boys + their hungry dad = exponentially expanding grocery bill, and (2) Jackie Church makes really good chicken noodle soup. As in, best chicken noodle soup ever. She told me how to make it. It involved baking a chicken and then boiling it into submission.

I went grocery shopping this morning. Whole chickens were on sale for $.99/lb. Is that cheap? It seemed cheap to me. I put two in my cart. (I thought I'd be wise to have a spare.)  Today was an accounting day (i.e., the boys were out of the house), so I knew I would likely have a chance to figure out how to convert this birdie from salmonella-ridden germ bucket to tasty, juicy work of poultry art.

I set it out to thaw (it was only partially frozen). Mid-afternoon, I went upstairs to face the bony birdie.

The instructions said something to the effect of "remove the bag of giblets from the bird's cavity." Guess what? Tyson didn't get that memo...my bird had NO GIBLET BAGGIE! That meant I had to pretty much manually dig out a bunch of gross stuff. Funny thing is, I didn't really think it was as gross as I would have guessed. I thought to myself, like I do so often, "if only this were the grossest thing I had to do today..."

So, anyway, long story short, I baked the birdie. It baked faster than anticipated so I didn't get the potatoes and carrots put in quick enough to have everything done at the same time. I just had to remove the veggies and cook a little longer. Not a big deal.

Conclusion: the chicken was a bit dry; the veggies were superb. Apple salad was, of course, delicious. Matt's comment was something like "it tastes as good as one could hope chicken would taste."

I have now completed the second step of "boil bird into humble submission" to make broth and get all the meat off the bones.

Overall, I'll count it as a victory and offer a prayer of Thanksgiving that we live in a world where chickens come in breast only form, individually frozen and ice-glazed.

I need another project?

I am an accidental blogger. I became addicted initially and superficially thanks to the feedback from the guestbook sign-ins on John's jounal. The guestbook entries from family, friends, and strangers lifting my family up in unceasing prayer was powerful medicine for my aching heart. But as time went on, I found joy in journaling. It was cathartic. John was not the only one who needed healing from cancer. Though I did not suffer physically from cancer, the disease affected all aspects of my life.

My relationship with my husband would never be the same. How I view myself as a mother was forever changed. My career was jolted and completely halted, before veering off in an exciting and scary new direction. The experience was so rich and painful. So beautiful and ugly all at the same time. Shattered were my pride and self-reliance. Broken emotionally and naked spiritually, I had, in the midst of my grief and regret, an opportuinty to experience the healing power of the Holy Spirit in a way most people never do. And with this came the opportunity to use a gift God gave me to share His mighty healing power. So, I e-shared the ups and downs of the experience on the web. I shared the medical stuff and the non-medical stuff. The things that made us patients, and the things that tested our patience.

Six months. Thirteen hospial visits. Eight cycles of chemotherapy. Three surgeries, at least. A few blood transfusions. Dozens of shots. Scores of blood draws. Months of nightly intravenous feedings. Two many tests to count. And then when that was over, six more months of pills (for a child too young to swallow pills), more tests, needle pokes, and a monthly pee-in-the-bag test. Then oral surgery to repair the tooth decay left behind in the wake of John's jaw tumor and chemotherapy.

John was healed. His port-a-cath was removed January 2010, eighteen months after he was diagnosed. He was a little more than two years old and about six weeks shy of welcoming a new baby brother.

My mom (John's grandmother) rejoiced with the rest of this as John reached this incredible milestone which had seemed so far away eighteen months earlier. She rejoiced even in the midst of the news that her own cancer had returned. After 15 years, the unthinkable had happened. My joy in my son's healing was dampened by my heartache of my mother's relapse. The normal I had so desperately wanted was not to be had. Cancer, it seemed, would never be out of my life.

I started a CaringBridge website for my mom to share updates with those interested, but posts were rare. Knowing from the outset that the odds of a good outcome were slim for her this time around (though she would not admit it), I found it nearly impossible to pour my heart out in the manner that had been so easy for me during John's treatment. I stopped writing on John's website too. You may have assumed that I was just not interested. You would be wrong. I just couldn't face writing how I really felt. Since I couldn't write what I truly felt, lest I actually feel what I truly felt, I wrote nothing. To write a sugar-coated, pollyanna version of the ugly truth was of no value to me.

I haven't posted anything since October 12, 2010 (or somewhere around that date). That was the day my mom died.

But, oh, how I have missed writing. There are so many things I have wanted to write over the past year but have avoided doing. I've missed a lot of opportunities to record some really rich insights, missed opportunities for feeling and healing. I would like to keep a private journal for "me only" to read. But I know I lack the motivation to write without an audience, be it a real audience or an imagined one. On the other hand, I want so desperately to keep a record of the little everyday joys of motherhood to one day share with my children. If I wait until I possess enough intrinsic motivation to wirte for "me only", it will never get done. So, for now, this is the closest I can come to pouring my heart out to myself in a journal.

My intent is for this blog to be an account of our real life. The normal parts and the not-so-normal parts. The mundane and the extraordinary. Laughter and tears, vomiting and poop. First words, first steps, first days of school. Potty training and weaning. Cooking and cleaning. Sowing and reaping. Sewing and ripping. Old dogs and baby kittens. Bottle calves and visiting goats. Maybe it's something you want to read; maybe it isn't. But it doesn't matter. It's (first) for me to write, and (second) for you to read. I intend for it to be raw and largely uncensored. That being said, the provocative and profane will be politely omitted, as will complaints about my dearly beloved, Mr. Clark. I'll allow you to assume our marriage is perfect.

Tax season is here. My kitchen re-decorating project is unfinished, as is my bathroom re-decorating project. And my parlor re-decorating project. I'm seriously lacking physical exercise, and my life is generally disorganized. The last thing I need is another project. But, I'm starting another project anyway.

We'll see how it goes.