Big things

Will! Stop growing so fast!

This past Saturday, you insisted on eating your breakfast like this:

No thanks, no high chair!

Exchanging breakfast conversation with Dad

And then later that same day, we did this:

Took you to get your first haircut!

I have no pictures of you crying when you got your hair cut because, guess what? You didn't cry! Which made Mommy want to! Lollipops and reassurance from Mom and Dad were all you needed.

You are big!

(And here's a picture of you and Daddy dressed alike, just for good measure!)

Cute big boys!

Dare I even wonder what's next for you, my little petey-pete?

Big things--that is for sure.

We love you, big boy!

Reserving my No

If the temperature is 50 degrees or higher, you'll find Will and me at the park down the street. Thankfully, we've started seeing some of those temps around here lately, and here's my big revelation: Everything I need to know about parenting I think I'm going to learn at the park.

First, about reserving my No.

The first thing Will does when I unstrap him from his stroller at the park is bend down and pick up sticks, several for each hand. This has been his modus operandi since his first trip to the park last spring. He does it every single time.

I think it's cute, my boy, being a boy and playing with sticks.

It didn't even cross my mind that sticks on the playground possibly weren't cute until I recently heard two mothers reprimand their children for having them: One, put that down, you'll get a splinter. And the other, simply, we don't play with sticks on the playground (as my kid scurried to pick up the stick she just discarded from her son's hand).

Since then, I've been wondering if maybe those mothers are right. Sticks can be dangerous, I get that.

But that's not even the half of it.

Will doesn't just carry the sticks around. He chews on the ends of them.

When I started taking Will to the park last year, I thought it was a fluke one day when three different parents (two were actually dads) notified me from across the Choo Choo train that my son had sticks in his mouth.

I've since learned it wasn't a fluke. I get told about the sticks in Will's mouth every time we go to the park.

My reaction has always been: Okay, thanks. I'm picking my battles.

But during our trip to the park a few days ago, I succumbed to the peer pressure and started telling Will to take the sticks out of his mouth.

And it ruined our time at the park.

I think I'm going to go back to my usual response, and here's why:

I don't have a kid who wants to play where playing is intended. I've got a real Christopher Columbus on my hands, and he isn't satisfied leaving one blade of grass in the park undiscovered. And that means he's often headed straight for the busy street or is about to get run over by a biker. It means he's going to pick up the Mellow Yellow can off the ground and try to drink from it. It means he's going to try to ride some kid's unoccupied scooter. It means he's going to run into the restroom if the door is open long enough and discover what exactly it is that's clogging the toilet.

And I'm going to tell him No every single time.

On our way home from the park one day this week, Will started saying No. He wasn't saying it in response to anything, but was just repeating a new word he'd apparently just picked up. (I wonder from who?) I  thought to myself: How many parents actually know the day their kid starting using the No word? Well, I do. February 17, 2014. 

I needed no more confirmation than that. If he learns by example, then I've got to start reserving my No. I want to raise a Yes kind of kid, not a No kind of kid.

So I've decided to draw the line at chewing on sticks. I'll let him figure that one out on his own.

If chewing on sticks (or even having sticks) is on another mother's No list, I get it and I respect it, and I'll spare her the long story about why it's not on mine, but suffice it to say, I'm not being lazy, I'm just reserving my No.

********

Lesson #2 at the park: On hovering.
Coming soon.

On our way to the park yesterday. Fingers aren't as good
as sticks, but they'll do in pinch.

Giving 'air time' to a diaper rash

Happy Valentine's Day from the Thomsens.

Farmville

The room buzzes with the sound of southern ladies, shedding coats and purses at the door and helloing and hugging like it's been ten years. They are high school friends reunited. Instead of books, they hold bloody marys; their style and beauty are no less than when they walked the halls of Rocky Mount High.

Every year, the Monday before Valentines Day, Mom's high school friends get together for lunch at the Colonial Inn restaurant in Farmville, NC. They do it at Christmas, too. A while ago, they had the idea to invite their mothers to the Valentine's lunch, and while the passage of time has gradually dwindled the number of mothers who can attend, it has also graciously ushered in a set of daughters.

On Monday, by virtue of my precious mother, I was one of those ladies lunching in Farmville.

The Colonial Inn is a beautiful, quaint house with a wrap-around porch on the outside. Inside, it's the homiest restaurant you've ever seen. Everything's an antique; you just grab a bloody mary and admire the rugs and the furniture and the collectibles hanging on the walls.

The restaurant belongs to David Whitley, the man of the hour--and not just because he's the only man there for the Valentines lunch. Whitley, as they call him, was in Mom's circle of closest friends. He stands to welcome us and say a prayer and of course mention Anne Pittman, who started the whole thing, and whom he can't talk about without crying. He looks over at Aunt Susan, Aunt Melissa, and me, and says he's especially thankful we're there. Southern know-how keeps me in my seat, but I feel like jumping up, bear hugging him, and telling him the treat is truly all mine. Just to be there, surrounded by Mom's high school friends. Hearing them speak of her, I actually feel famous. I knew she was well liked, but it just keeps getting better.

One of Mom's dearest friends, Susan Skinner, introduces me to classmates I haven't yet met: "This is Susan -- Anne's daughter." I've never been more proud to have her blood in my veins. My identity earns me warm hugs, smiling eyes, and stories.

And I live for the stories.

I hear from Timmie Battle about my Grandpa Kenneth's secret train whistle code: Twice meant "I love you." Once, "I'll be home soon." Meaningless to most, but to Mama Bette, the language of a train conductor's wife.

Whitley recalls how Mom asked him to honk his horn whenever he drove by her house so her mama would think she was popular.

And then Christie tells about one of Mom's many pranks at Meredith College:
Mom (on the phone in her best authoritative-sounding voice): "Hello, our records indicate that you have not yet completed your required jump for graduation."
Poor girl on the other end: "What required jump?"
Mom: "To graduate, you must jump off of Johnson Hall, and our records indicate that you have not yet completed that requirement."
(For the record: The story ends well. No one actually jumped off of Johnson Hall.)

When it's time for a group picture near the end of the afternoon, I almost burst when several women exclaim, "Wait! I gotta put on my satchel!"

That fits right in with Susan asking me if I used my Visine that morning, adding, "does he call you bright eyes?" A slogan Mom borrowed from the Visine commercial and liked to repeat.

When our bellies are full of chicken and shrimp salads, salmon, broccoli, stewed apples, and chocolate cake drizzled in fudge, we roll ourselves out of the great Colonial Inn. In the car ride home with Aunt Susan, Aunt Melissa, and dear friend Christie, the stories don't stop. I hear more about Chombid and poet Jonas Barr and their time in Pinetops. And of course we talk about bitta.

It is secret Anne Pittman code that I am privy to, like Mama Bette and the train whistles.

My heart, full to the brim, smiles wide remembering a woman as compassionate, thoughtful, and kind as she was hilarious and mischievous. Her classmates and their stories are proof, lip satchel and all.

*****

The whole group

Katie Skinner, Me, Melissa, Susan Skinner, Christie Barbee, David, Susan

[The pictures below are of Mom and friends at the Farmville lunches over the years. For the last several years, Dad drove Mom there, got her situated inside in her wheelchair, and then played golf until she was ready to be picked up. That's only one of the reasons my Dad is a saint, and every one of Mom's friends thinks so, too. Said Judy Morgan when I mentioned Dad coming back one year soon to say hello: "Oh, I'd just bow if he walked in that door."]

Farmville 2002

Farmville Christmas 2006

The spirits of affection

Perhaps the only thing more iconic to Valentines Day than good ole Necco Conversation Hearts is cupid himself.

What they lack in taste, their messages make up for in sentiment, and I assume that's why my dear Mom gave them to us every Valentines Day that I can remember. She liked the sentiment.

Although Drew and I invariably got a box of Conversation Hearts every year (even after we were married), the last year was particularly special. That year Mom didn't just give us a box of hearts. She gave us baggies of hand-selected hearts. Drew, Ashley, Ryan, and I each got our own bag.

That's taking the sentiment up a notch.

It struck me the other day that I still had those baggies in a drawer somewhere. I was so in love with her gesture, that I left the bags in tact and tucked them away. (Come on, there's nothing perishable in a Necco heart!)

Mom had a saying she borrowed from her Mama when she was surrounded by family or moved by a kind gesture. She'd say she was overcome with the spirits of affection.

When I look at these baggies, I can't think of a more apt way to describe the sentiment.



My bag 

Ryan's bag

 

 



Shopping for scarves

It has taken me three posts to write about my Thursdays with Mom. This one, this one, and now this one. Thank you, Lord, for all of these memories!

***************

K-Market, Wal-Market, and Belks. These were the usual places I took Mom on our Thursday evenings together--to the cosmetics section for whatever new product she'd seen advertised that week and to the hair accessories to see what new scarves had come in.

Scarves. They were her trademark. She wore one around her head every day for 16 years, the radiation treatments killing hair follicles in route to cancer cells. The hair from the crown of her head back was her own. From the crown forward, she wore a halo of hair to cover the bald and the scar and the portacath site where she'd earlier received chemo from a clinical trial. And around the halo, she'd tie a scarf (bandanas on casual days, silk to church), turning cancer's hair cut into a fashion statement like only she could. (I'll never forget her insistence on wearing silk scarves to church, even though they were a pain to tie, and the knot at the top of her head always came loose. She'd say: "Tell me if I'm ever [she'd motion a peace sign near the top of her head, signifying the bunny flaps she feared if the knot came loose]. I promised to always tell her.)

Cancer's hairdo is why we frequented the accessories sections of K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and Belks. Invariably, we always left with something: A new scarf, a tube of lip satchel, or if a holiday was near, she'd stock up on treats she wanted to give Drew, Ashley, Ryan, and me. She gave us Easter baskets and Valentines right up until the year she passed.

After shopping or nail painting, we'd pick up sandwiches to take home for dinner. By the time we got home, Dad was back, and we'd eat dinner at the table together. On some occasions, Ryan would meet us at Mom and Dad's after he finished work for the day.

"Hi, Martha," Ryan would say to Mom when he walked in the door.
"Hi, Howard," Mom would reply.

Every time they saw each other, that was their greeting. Don't ask us who Martha and Howard are. We don't know. It just fit. Some days, Mom would hardly talk at all, but if Ryan walked through the door and greeted her, she'd utter her first two words of the day: Hi, Howard.

We topped dinner off with dessert, and then I'd pack up my computer and linger as long as I could before heading home myself. I never liked saying goodbye, always knowing in the back of my mind that our Thursdays wouldn't last forever. I kissed her scarfed head and told her I loved her probably ten times before actually getting out the door. It wasn't morbid or dramatic, even though it might sound that way. It was just what we did. But I think we both knew why we did it.

Every time I pulled out of Mom and Dad's driveway on Thursday nights, I'd ask the Lord to keep both of them until next time, and I'd ask Him to cement the day in my memory and never let me forget the time I'd had. (See, I've always been worried about that.)

I guess this is that cement.

Thank you, Lord, for couch afternoons and Key West Coral, scarf-shopping evenings.

Thank you, Lord, for Thursdays.

 

 

April 2011