While Mom's Away...

Recently my Man and I left town on our annual retreat. Each year in May we travel just a few hours away where Darrin attends a pastor's conference and where I spend time alone in a hotel room reading and watching TV and going to local bookstores. Darrin enjoys being the one in the pew hearing teaching instead of doing the speaking and I enjoy being the one doing the reading instead of the one instructing others to do so. 

While we were gone, I sent an email to my Boy just to stay in touch and maybe to fan his competitive streak into to a bit of a flame. It's what moms do...hip moms, those on the cutting edge of technology and all those other things that the young people are all atwitter about these days. The email looked something like this... {links did not appear in the actual email ;-)

Email #1

Dearest Son Whom I Love,

After nearly one month of lackluster reading, {and of being terribly distracted by cookbooks with all of their shiny pictures...like this one and this one} I'd like to report that I've finally finished my 20th book of 2013. I am therefore half way to my goal of 49 books this year. I am, I suspect, also making excellent strides at my more important goal which is BEATING YOU in this year's reading race. I am not, however beating Kate who should really let me stay ahead of her since I did teach her how to read in the first place...come to think of it, I taught you to read too way back in the dark ages of our acquaintance ...So how 'bout it? Do you think you can see your way to letting your dear mom win? {you'd better not...I'm not gonna let you win...I'm gonna go down fighting...if I go down at all that is!}

All my love,
Your Mom
Reader Extraordinaire

Email #2...the addendum...

I typed the previous email with 1 finger and made a mistake or two...my goal is actually 40 books, more accurately making 20 the halfway point :-) Please pardon my math and do not go looking for a new math teacher...ok really, who are we kidding, I'm not exactly your math teacher, but I did hook you up with the cool computer program that is teaching you math and you are doing very well. Also, I forgot to include the name of the book I finished the twentieth one... Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me... (the one that I read part of out loud in the car when we were all traveling the other day and everyone got tickled). It was really fun and a bit sad and I loved the way it ended. I laughed out loud so many times while I was reading it. It might be a book you would like .

That is all!
Your Mom
Who Never Was a Math Whiz

If you have any experience with teenaged boys, you already know that I received no response from my taunting. My Boy will answer me back by reading 41 books and making sure to finish the last page of book #41 at three minutes until midnight on the last day of our reading contest. 

That's just the way he works.

While we were away, I also emailed a link to Cole and Meg asking them to read this article and tell me 5 things they learned from it. Everyone making an attempt to keep up with social media, technology, and entertainment and live a real-live life at the same time should read it too. The kids enjoyed the article and did a fine job summarizing it in five points via text message! 

Kids these days! {I love 'em!}

“If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. 

Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.” 

— Sherman Alexie

Too Much Crime for a Four-Year-Old? Our Family's Dilemma...

When I was a fresh new mother, I was highly discriminating when it came to television and my precious little boy and girl. The options available for their little eyes were limited to Veggie Tales, Rescue Heroes, and Buzz Lightyear. Only begrudgingly did we eventually allow GI Joe and the ill-fated Hannah Montana as Cole and Meg grew older.

Then, Kate and Molly entered the picture and the years passed and now in our home we've a wide age range of TV viewers. There are the expected squabbles over what to watch when you have a sports-obsessed 14 year-old boy seated on the same couch as a girly fashion-conscious 8 year-old girl.

We have found a few shows that appeal to our entire family. Many of our favorites are reruns of shows my Man and I enjoyed as kids. We love it when we find The Cosby Show as we troll the channels. Everyone agrees, everyone watches, everyone laughs.

My own favorite shows have almost always involved some sort of mystery. I grew up on Remington Steele, Murder, She Wrote, and Matlock. My kids are taking after my interest in mystery and crime shows and I love watching with them.

One snowy winter Friday over the Christmas break we came upon a marathon of one of my favorite all time shows, Monk. The kids and I spent hour after hour on the couch that day just soaking up the mystery and the mayhem and the murder.

Murder? Um yea. I made the little girls hide their eyes when the dead bodies appeared on the screen...so I can still be in the running for Mother of the Year...right?

It turns out that every Friday there is a Monk marathon.  Molly has learned all the words to the show's theme song, and it is a battle to keep attentions focused on history and science when everybody would rather be seated in front of the TV on what is lovingly referred to these days as Monk Day.



Truth: Molly and Kate have been watching another crime drama for the past year.

NCIS, the #1 show in the nation, or so the advertisers say, is the show that gathers our gang on a weekly basis. Tuesday evenings find us all on the couch tuning in to see what Gibbs and Abby and Tony and Ziva and McGee and Ducky have in store for our viewing pleasure.

We insist that they turn their heads when, the expected corpse is seen in close up. The same holds true in the autopsy scenes. We do have standards...but oh how they have changed since Cole and Meg were four years old! I'd like to think that our priorities have changed a bit. Instead of thinking that our standards have fallen, could it be that we are willing to give a bit on TV choices for the sake of an hour together on the couch? Perhaps trading appropriate content for affectionate cuddles?

Is the trade off worth it? Most of the time I think so, however there are times I wonder.

There are comments scattered throughout our every days that tend more to crime than to coloring. Molly speaks often of the "talking room" where Gibbs, the head of the NCIS team talks to the "bad guys". One day her feet came running to tell me of her latest discovery, "MOM!! I KNOW what the talking room is called now...it's the INTERROGATION ROOM." Just what every four-year-old needs to know right?

There was the day that Molly, seeing a sheriff's vehicle parked along a busy street in our neighborhood said, "I wonder if they're going to bring out a dead body soon."

{Oh how I hope she is not discussing these topics with her Sunday School teachers!}

Another time, Molly from her perch on the potty of the Christian book store, noticed the knots in the wood of the bathroom door. "Look at those bullet holes Mom!"

I really began to get concerned that my girl was going to be thinking that there were killers around every corner. But then, Megan was looking for Molly around the house recently and finally found her lying on her bed, eyes closed but obviously not sleeping. When asked why Molly didn't answer Meg's calls for her, Molly answered, "I am supposed to be dead in this scene." I determined that she obviously understood that the shows were pretend (ignoring the earlier stated evidence to the contrary).

So, conscience relatively clear, we continue to watch our family show, full of dead bodies, killers, crooks, and cops (in which right almost always wins and where lying never pays, and where loyalty to one's team is lauded...) and we spend time on the couch building case files memories and a tying a common thread on which to hang in years to come. One day, perhaps, my kids may find themselves telling their little ones when to cover their eyes while they watch reruns of NCIS...who knows?

 By the age of six the average child will have completed the basic American education.... From television, the child will have learned how to pick a lock, commit a fairly elaborate bank holdup, prevent wetness all day long, get the laundry twice as white, and kill people with a variety of sophisticated armaments.   ~John F. Kennedy

With Her Heart in Our Hands...

I've always joked that a lovely way to spend Mother's Day 

would be to wake up to a delicious breakfast in bed...

...followed by remaining in that very same bed while listening to one's husband 

get the children ready for church... 

 ...followed by waving good bye to the whole gang from that very same bed ...

...as they all scoot off to church without me. 

Just for one Sunday. 

Just one. 

Alternatively, perhaps we should petition the powers-that-be to see if, in fact, Mother's Day wouldn't be much better celebrated on a bright and shiny spring SATURDAY when little ones don't need to be dressed up in their pretties with their hair all tied up in bows and their pants all ironed and shirts all neat and tidy.

Be it on a Saturday or a Sunday, Mother's Day needs to be a special day that reminds us all to celebrate our Mothers...all of them.

The ones who birthed us, 

who bathed us, 

who disciplined, 

who fed, 

who bandaged, 

who cheered, 

who rocked, 

held, 

nudged, 

encouraged, 

and then set us off on our way 

with their hearts in our hands. 

We who, only now, understand 

what it's like to have one's heart in the hands 

of another 

...or in my case at the mercy of four anothers!

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Love, 

The Wright Gang

Imperfect Strides

I run these days with ear buds in my ears that are different sizes...the ear buds that is, I think my ears themselves are nearly the same size. My running clothes are fairly utilitarian but are not at all immune to wardrobe malfunctions...not of the flashing type but more of the creeping and sagging variety. My left running shoe squeaks with every step but it doesn't bother me because of the mismatched earbuds pumping all matter of noise into my head. There is no flat route in my running repertoire and the road home is always uphill.

Even with these less-than-perfect running circumstances, all working together in unison sometimes, it's still worth it. Once I'm out there, less than 50 yards into a run, I no longer notice that one earbud is fitting more snuggly in my ear than the other or that a piece of my clothing is either riding up or falling down. I'm just so terribly thrilled to be putting one foot in front of the other whether it be on the treadmill, or as now, out in the awakening spring with the dogwood flowers falling on my head as I pass under them.

There is something about taking time to push this body of mine down the street a little faster or further than the last time. It's something else too to see my girls watching as I approach the house cheering me on and learning from me as I learn the importance of taking care of the body I've been given. Still more there's this boy who holds my heart and who is working hard to be the best runner he can be and I kind of feel like I need to hold up the standard he's setting with his steady devotion and increasingly faster times.

I keep running because I want to keep eating sorbet and because it's birthday season here and that means ice cream cake is on the menu in a heavy rotation. I keep running because of how I feel after I've come home sweat-soaked and red-faced. I keep running because my clothes savvy daughters seem to enjoy calling my attention to how things were...before.

"Oh Mom!" says Kate, "I just saw a picture of you from a long time ago when you were...when...you looked really REALLY different than you do now. And Mom, you look lots better now."

Um...thanks? At least "thanks" from the "now me" and on behalf of the really REALLY different old me... "Kate, you didn't love me any less then."

I feel so much better now that I am a little healthier. I have no significant numbers to boast of on the scales and mores the better because it just can't be about those numbers. Those numbers used to rule my outlook for each and every day. It simply has to be about taking care of this body that God has given me, this body that I've taken for granted for far too long.

I recently read a book {shocking, I know} called Every Body Matters: Strengthening Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul by Gary Thomas in which he poses a question that sinks deeply into my heart...

What if exercise and discipline in eating isn't as much about physical health as about honoring the God who made us?

What if?  What if in the joy and excitement of feeling better and fitting into different clothes, my little audience of four thinks that it's all about how one looks? If that's the case, I've missed an opportunity to help them honor  God in the bodies that they have been given.

What if, however, I'm able to communicate to them at the beginnings of their journeys in those precious bodies that those bodies are indeed precious and that taking care of them is an important work of stewardship, NOT so they can be the skinniest one in the room, NOT so they can run the furthest or the fastest, and NOT so they can look down on others who may be struggling with their fitness like their very own mother has for the better part of her adulthood, but instead so they can be fit for His service, what ever that may be.

What if I remember that too, on those many many many mornings when putting on my squeaky shoes and my smelly shirt and my really cool socks {I really love my running socks...they actually match!} and leaving the house is the LAST thing I want to do, when a nice cup of coffee and a good book and a bagel sound like a much kinder and gentler way of greeting the day, and when my Boy saying, "Hey Mom, you runnin' tomorrow?" makes me groan out loud.

What if I remember, instead of rolling over, that I need to "Therefore honor God with {my} body" and just do the work because right about the time I've forgotten about my mismatched earphones and my poorly-tied shoestrings...that work becomes worship! Worship aimed directly at the God who made me.

"And when he redeemed us, he didn't just redeem our souls; he redeemed our bodies and claims them for his use as well. Therefore honor God with your bodies." ~Gary Thomas

A Little Bit Better

Sometimes life is like having to share your Dilly Bar with your baby sister...

...and sometimes

 ...it's a little

...bit

...better!

Weekend Wishing

Wishing you a weekend full of...

...cuddles on the couch,

...laughter in your heart,

...affection that cannot be contained,

...and a great big helping of contentment.

Happy Weekend!

Bread and Wine... and Jellybeans!?

There are some books that are simply "plow books" as my friend Winnie liked to say. Winnie and I both liked to read and talk books when we worked together in the double digit floors of a North Carolina bank, she 40 years my senior and a true professional mentor. Every now and again she'd describe her current read as a plow book, one that either in part or in whole caused the reader to have to trudge through each page by sheer force of will like a determined farmer laboring to turn hard clay into softly tilled soil.

Often there is a happy return for all of the effort, but not always and one never really knows for certain until the book is finished if the plowing was worth it.

It is another kind of book altogether whose pages seem to turn with too much speed and too much pleasure...kind of like eating Starburst jellybeans which aren't around very often and taste so good and go down so fast that before you realize what you are doing, you've come to the bottom of the bag...or so I'm told.

The thing about two-fisting Starburst jellybeans until your bag has run out is that there is no small bit of sadness involved - not, as you might expect, a sadness about the result of all of the calories and sugar you've ingested*, but instead, the sadness of facing the reality that there will be no more jellybeans left to look forward to enjoying tomorrow, in fact there may not, unless you aren't opposed to robbing Easter baskets, be any more shiny, colorful, special-tasting jellybeans until next Easter (which is rather late on next year's calendar...I've checked).

I've just finished reading a book that made me feel like I was eating Starburst jellybeans.

Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table With Recipes by Shauna Niequist is a book of essays about food and eating, about sitting around the table with those you love, about faith and belonging and about so very much more. Between most chapters there are recipes-delightful, different, and defining recipes. I've made almost half a dozen of them so far and they've all been keepers. 

The recipe for Gaia Cookies, the author's take on cookies from the Gaia Cafe in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has caused my gang and possibly Meg's piano teacher to do a happy dance or two.

And Cole and I nearly had to arm wrestle for dibs on the left over Mango Chicken Curry at lunchtime the other day until I remembered that he is taller and stronger than I and that I am older and more likely to sustain lasting injury that will prevent me from making any more Mango Chicken Curry in the near future and that just wouldn't be prudent!!

 {Mango Chicken Curry prep chef}

It was not an accident that I finished, with a sigh, this written-just-for-me book curled up on the crumb-dusted floor in front of the oven waiting for bread to finish baking. I've not been without this book in the kitchen since it came in the mail just a little over a week ago. I'm not sure whether reading the words makes me want to be in the kitchen, slicing and stirring OR if  it was being in the kitchen with thoughts of feeding my family that caused me to want to read more and more of Bread and Wine.

And so tonight, I ate the last jellybean, turned the last page, arrived all too quickly to the end and I'm a bit melancholy - not because I won't get to read it for the first time ever again, all shiny and new, though there is that, but because there are no new pages waiting on my eager eyes tomorrow, my book mark no longer necessary, I've come to the bottom of the bag.

There are however, a few recipes still awaiting my best efforts...watermelon feta salad anyone? Blueberry crisp?

See ya around the table!

*A note about calories from Starburst jellybeans: the calories from Starburst jellybeans do not count if eaten during the week of Easter. Neither do they count if eaten the week after Easter but ONLY if eaten out of a plastic egg. 

From the author:

My prayer is that you'll read these pages first curled up on your couch or in bed or in the bathtub, and then after that you'll bring it to the kitchen with you, turning corners of pages, breaking the spine, spilling red wine on it and splashing vinegar across the pages, that it will become battered and stained as you cook and chop and play, music loud and kitchen messy.

And more than anything, I hope that when you put this book down, you'll gather the people  you love around your table to eat and drink, to tell stories, to be heard and fed and nourished on every level.

"They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I believe that's absolutely true. Not that the way to land a guy is by baking him cookies, although it never hurts. But that if you can satiate a person's hunger, you can get a glimpse of their heart. There's an intimacy in it, in the meeting of needs and the filling of one's stomach, that is, necessarily, tied to the heart." ~Shauna Niequist

100 Easy Lessons

To teach a child to read is a heady thing. I began teaching children to read nearly 10 years ago when Cole and Meg were late into their 3rd and 4th years of life. Why I thought teaching a three year old and a four year old to read was a good idea is beyond me now, a decade later, but I'd snagged the teaching book for a mere $4 at a discount bookstore and I was raring to go.

I do know that there was something deep inside of me that wanted to prove something to the world, that even though I was staying home with my children and that the most important part of my day was keeping them fed and safe, there was still something else I could contribute to their preschool existence.  I suspect that I wanted to, on a much less noble level, be able to brag that I'd taught two very young children a vital life skill and notch a belt on behalf of homeschoolers everywhere.

Motive aside, instruction began curled up on a green-striped couch and continued sporadically, very sporadically, until we quit altogether when our family moved 10 hours north. The reading book was packed up and ignored until the Wright Academy officially opened a year later with students who were a grand four and five years old.

{Cole, 5 with Rescue Hero backpack; Megan, 4 with Dora the Explorer backpack}

Reading lessons were the focus of that school year with each student finishing Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and moving on to read actual books. You can rightly imagine that this green teacher was patting herself pridefully on the back. {Green as in new and fresh and also green from morning sickness...Kate was on the way.} Yes there had been some stressful lessons in those 100, not all had been as easy as advertised but with relatively few tears and no visible twitches or mental scarring we, the three of us, had survived teaching and learning to read. All of us pros...or so I thought.

Then, just four extremely short years later, I began to try to teach Kate to read. Kate had no interest. None at all. No big deal, I've got tons of time. So I quit trying to teach her and she was free to concentrate on her fashion and her baby dolls for a few more months. When Kindergarden officially began in the fall, Kate was not one centimeter more ready to tackle learning to read than she had been earlier. I, however, was beyond the no big deal frame of mind, and insisted that we get down to business.

After months and months of tears, stress, bribery, begging, loss of flip-flop and lip gloss access, Kate decided she might like to be able to read. Do not think that any of the above actions convinced her. She took all of the discomforts of life that I threw at her in stride and waited until she was nearly six years old to take things seriously. Then, on her own terms, she learned. Toward the end of her "100 tear-filled and ulcer-inducing Easy Lessons" the light of success began to shine brightly at the end of the tunnel...here's video evidence...

I'm thrilled to report that three years later Kate is an avid reader who is currently enjoying mysteries and is consuming them at an impressive rate. 

I was just about recovered from teaching Kate to read when a small voice following me through the house said, "Mommy, can you teach me my ABCs?" 

"Sure," I said, and not turning around I began to sing the old tune, "ABCDEFG..."

"No, Mommy. In here." I turned to see in her raised hands the battered and bruised "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". 

And so we began and have, just as in my maiden voyage with this book, been proceeding with stops and starts and stops and starts. 

I'm not in a rush this time for there is absolutely nothing to prove, there never really was. 

There is only the joy of a lesson well taught and a lesson well learned.

I'm taking these lessons as slow as Molly will let me...

 ...because its my last time through these "100 Easy Lessons."

It's been my favorite book and my most dispised book and my most loved book all through these years, 

...and I'm not looking forward to retiring it.

"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."

— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables