Thoughts on Mother's Day

I have started writing this several times, and deleted every one.  It was always too pompous, too wordy, and too far from what I want to say.  Now, I'm going to try being simple.

Being a mother is not just about wiping noses and rumps, diapers and dishes, cooking and cleaning.  These are things that mothers may do, but that does not mean that motherhood is a form of indentured servitude with a side of vomit.  Motherhood is not playdates and soccer practices.  It is not found in an apologetic and slightly defensive mommy-blog.  It isn't some narcissistic desire to replicate.  It isn't a sign of status. It isn't being perfect, or having perfect kids.  It isn't about outdoing Julie down the street.  It doesn't matter if you work or if you don't.  It doesn't matter whether you gave birth vaginally or with a C-section, whether you did it naturally or doped up like a prize-winning racehorse.  It doesn't matter if you adopted or had IVF.  It doesn't even matter if you have kids.

Motherhood is about service.  It's about loving other people enough to want them to do better, to offer support and guidance.  It's about sincerely wanting to help others be their best selves.  It is offering comfort, wiping away tears, speaking encouragement and strength.  It is choosing to focus on others instead of on one's own interests.  Motherhood is a way of life, a set of priorities and choices and intentions, not merely an act of biology.

Many people think of motherhood as simply checking a box on the list of things one is expected to do in this life.  We ask when they're going back to work, what they're planning to do when they're free again, as if the only measure of success and value is found in the number of zeroes on our paycheck, or how many luxuries we can enjoy.  It's an understandable confusion, because how does one measure the value of building up the lives of others?  There's no metric for love and service.  When there is no measure of greatness, of usefulness, of respect, then motherhood is clearly less important, the weaker choice, isn't it?

Years ago, Gordon B. Hinckley, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, referred to women as "guardians of the hearth." The phrase immediately brings to mind a woman in armor, standing before her home, the last and final defense for those she loves against the weariness and dangers of the world.  It is not the glory of rushing headlong to battle, of earning praise and high honors so that your name is forever remembered; it is sacrifice and humility, of staying behind to make sure the line is held at all cost, ensuring that everything that actually matters is not lost.  In a battle, you do not send all of your strongest warriors to the front and leave the weakest behind; some of your strongest you hold back to protect that which is most precious.

That is what motherhood is.

Happy Mother's Day.

The light...it burns...

So today I was up by 4.  The sun wasn't up yet, but it was still bright enough to trip the toddler's circadian rhythm.  A few attempts to return her to sleep failed, and here we are.  Nobody else is awake yet, so I figured I might as well update the blog.

Excuse the screen.  This was taken at 4 am, when I finally admitted there was no going back to bed.

Taken a few days earlier at sunset, roughly 10 pm.  The sun is strong here.

The melt continues.  A few weekends ago, Rick--who has been busy sharpening his land-nav skills for an upcoming school--decided to share the joy with all of us.  For those of you not in the know, land-nav is basically hiking to several specified coordinates using a topographical map and a horribly complicated square compass with multiple indecipherable tables on it.  There's a real compass involved as well, but--fun fact--we are so far north that the compass actually finds roughly a 20 degree difference between true north and magnetic north.

Anywho, Saturday we dragged the kids out for a lesson in land-nav.  It wasn't the smartest idea.  Echo and Claudia were happy as clams in their carriers, but Jane's little legs couldn't keep up, especially since the walk was more vertical than horizontal. (Fun fact I learned: if you're walking uphill and get tired, it's actually easier to rest if you stand facing uphill and just lean forward a little bit.  That's a Ranger-trick.)  Rick showed everybody how to shoot an azimuth.  Everyone was more interested in the squirrels.  Leah refused to walk on the path and fell into hip-deep snow several times; she was surprised every time.  Bren packed snacks like a responsible adult should have.  Overall, educational for everyone.

That was a few weeks ago, and now the snow has melted in all but the highest hills and forests.  Since then we've added 5 minutes of daylight every day, and will continue to do so until the solstice.  I've put up blackout curtains, but they're not helping much, as evidenced by this morning.  The mud is mostly dried up, too, which happened more quickly than I expected given the sheer amount of snow we had.  The weather is gorgeous, with the mornings still crisp and chill, and the afternoons reaching into the sixties.  There are little explosions of dandelions everywhere.  They're pretty brilliant after the monochrome of winter.

Of course, we've had an explosion of another kind with the arrival of warmer weather. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the state bird.

They are huge, and they are everywhere.  We'd been warned, of course, but we shook it off.  People tend to cry wolf, so you learn not to take their word for it. I still remember when we first arrived and Rick brought home all of his gear, which included mosquito netting, and he just looked at me and shook his head. "I've been issued treated uniforms, but never actual netting, even in Georgia." That was when we started to believe, but decided to withhold judgment until spring.  Well, they were right.  The little mosquito bear traps, collars, and "skinning knives" they sell for tourists don't seem quite so far-fetched and touristy any more.

More and more critters are thawing out, too.  No bears yet.  (I'm not too fussed about that.)  The ravens have been replaced, oddly enough, by seagulls.  Swans, geese, and cranes use our town as a stopover on their way north to their breeding grounds, which is pretty cool.  And we have voles!  Voles are small rodents, like fat mice with short tails, and they are my spirit animal (and my Patronus, for all you Potter-heads in the know).  I don't have pictures (yet) but there are holes all over the yard, and if you're quiet sometimes you can catch one peeking out of the grass.

Dancing in the rain...around 7:30 at "night".

The kids have enjoyed being outside more.  Leah was absurdly happy about our first rainstorm and made it a point to dance in it; she has also been whittling wands out of fallen birch branches.  Aeryn is delighted that she can wear her fancy shoes again instead of just snow boots; Jane doesn't wear shoes at all, and Echo tries to bolt continuously in various stages of undressed.  Even Bren takes her books outside.  All of this is good, because now that the weather's not lethal I can throw them outside instead of listening to one more fricking-fracking episode of Octonauts or Naruto.  And I have.  And it was wonderful.

We're walking, we're walking...got to make up for winter.

Well, it's almost breakfast, so I suppose I should get started with my day or something.  With any luck there will be a nap involved.

Breaking up is hard to do...

(This post was originally written in April.  Better late than never, right?)

I spent today packing up winter.  Literally.  I matched gloves, counted hats, rolled scarves, sized puffy jackets, folded up snowpants, and stuffed everything into a plastic bag that is currently wedged on a shelf in the closet.  Snowboots are currently enjoying their last hurrah.

Breakup's underway, you see, and that means summer is on its way.  Tiny birds have thawed in the trees and are terrorizing the squirrels that have likewise materialized.  The snow continues to melt--yes, it may refreeze every night, but each day the snow-hills are smaller and the icy puddles larger.  The days are longer... 

Seriously, like ridiculously longer.  Some of you may remember my posts about the winter, when at the height of the glorious darkness, the sun rose around 11 and set by 2:30.  A lot of people complain about the darkness, and I will admit that I, native lower 48-er that I am, was prepared for a long, miserable hole of a winter.  However, initial apprehension at the shrinking days in October turned to delight by Thanksgiving.  Between the extreme cold and the dark, I finally had a legitimate reason to hibernate.  I Netflixed my way through winter, no Vitamin D necessary.

These days, though, the sun starts peeking around 5:00 am; right now, it's 10:05, and the last bit of sunset is still clinging to the horizon.  It is seriously still bright enough to read outside.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

It's only part-way through April; the days are just going to get longer and brighter until the summer solstice in June.  The days already seem incredibly long, and I promise it's not because I now have six minions stuck in the house with me.  They're affected by it, too.  During the winter, they easily slept until 9:30; I fondly remember putting them to bed at 7 and having hours upon hours to myself.  Now, even with blackout curtains, they are up by 6 and it is nearly impossible to get them to bed, much less asleep, by 10.

Don't even get me started on the toddler. 

You don't realize how much the daylight affects your schedule until it goes all wonky.  Even something as simple as dinner gets hosed up because 5 o'clock sneaks up on you.  Looking out the window, you're like, "Oh, it can't be that late, look how bright it is," and then you glance at the microwave as you're getting a snack and see 6:37 glowing in smug little blue numbers.  As a result, we may or may not have eaten a lot of sandwiches and cereal for dinner lately.

If the documentaries are to be believed, the summers here are supposed to be flipping incredible.  Plants grow like the Hulk because of the near constant light.  Animals and people alike party basically nonstop for four months to make up for the rest of the year spent running from warm place to warm place.  I figure if I stock up on Benadryl, and set alarms on my phone for meals and bedtime, I just might survive.

Goodbye, winter and real night time. I'll miss you.