May 8, 2011 ~ Day 150 Mother's Day

With the exception of a few years in early high school when motherhood didn't sound like a 'cool' enough long-term plan, I have always wanted to be a mother. As a small child I played "school", "office" and "family" with my stuffed animals and dolls ~ and while there was rarely a daddy doll attending the many tea parties in my room, there were always lots of baby rabbits and bears for me to take care of.

I didn't give much thought to what my actual day-to-day life would be like with kids. I just knew that I wanted them, at least three and maybe as many as five. I grew up in a family with five children so that number seemed attainable (before I actually had kids, hahaha).

It probably sounds irresponsible or thoughtless, but I didn't ever give much thought to whether the guys I dated in my late teens and early to mid-twenties would be good prospective fathers. I figured that there was no way to know whether or not a guy was going to be a good or devoted dad until he actually had kids; and my view was that the most important thing was to find a life partner that I really connected with... where there was a strong love and bond. Someone who also wanted kids. Together, I reasoned, we'd figure the rest out.

When I fell in love with my now-husband, I had never once watched him in a situation with small children. In fact, I don't think I ever saw him hold a baby until we were already pregnant with our first son. I literally had no idea whether or not he would be a good father.

There were many times when I would come home to our house at night and find his car keys still stuck in our front door while he was in bed sleeping, or the gas stove still burning brightly with him out in the yard gardening, when I seriously questioned if he might become the kind of father that accidentally forgot his child strapped into the safety seat of the car while he went to work.

My husband is a genius, literally, and so it isn't that he means to do things like that... it's merely that he was so busy thinking of something complex and esoteric in his mind, he didn't notice the minutia of the key or the flame.

However something really profound shifted in my husband when he learned that he was going to be a father. I watched it happen, and it took place seemingly overnight. One day he was wide-eyed and overwhelmed, like me, to learn that we were going to become parents... and the next day, he was a new man. He'd made the mental and emotional leap right away into his new role and threw himself into fatherhood with devotion and gusto. He really rose to the occasion and knocked my socks off with his excellence.

My husband is a fun, delighted, adoring dad. He works hard at his two jobs and we miss him so much when he is gone, but when he is around and able to spend time with the kids he is just about the most magnificent parent you could wish to see. He is fun, cheerful, handy, playful and loving. He's the kind of guy that will take the kids out to build a reverse osmosis water system from scratch, teach them how to plant sunflower seeds in a planter box, take them on a long bike ride and cook them a homemade dinner. He takes pride and pleasure in being a father. I would say that deep down, fatherhood is easily the most important thing to him.

All this, and he has never yet left a baby in the car. I love you, honey.

* * * * *

For me, on the other hand, parenthood really did not unfold the way I'd always expected it to.

I thought I would be a good mother, a natural mother from the get-go. I had wanted to experience pregnancy and motherhood for a long time, always hoping that I would become a mother before I turned 34 (the age when all of the "high risk" statistics seemed to go up for pregnancy).

I am so type-A though... such a planner. When we found out unexpectedly that we were pregnant, it really knocked me for a loop. I'd only just gotten my engagement ring sized by the jewelers, had only begun to look at beautiful wedding dresses and wedding catalogues for our upcoming Summer wedding.

"How am I going to wear this size four dress next Summer?" I moaned. "I'll be giving birth!"

This was actually a literal fact... in a spiritual coincidence of incredible timing, the OB told us on our first prenatal visit that our son was due to be born on July 9... the exact date we had already chosen for our Summer wedding.

It became obvious to us very quickly that we'd rather get married sooner than later. As a teacher of 7th grade students, I wanted to set a good example for my class. I didn't want them to look up at me and think to themselves, "See, I don't need a life partner to be a parent, I can have a baby on my own!" because those young girls at the age of twelve and thirteen were just beginning to enter the zone of sexual decision making. I didn't want to become their validation for becoming sexually active too young.

My body was also changing rapidly, much moreso than I had been led to believe would happen.

I'd been told that most women didn't begin to "show" in their pregnancies until they were at least 5 months along. I, on the other hand, began to gain weight rapidly. Shopping for a wedding dress became a total nightmare, as my body was already out of proportion to all of the dresses I tried on. The bust was too big and the belly too small on many outfits, thanks to my expanding hips and abdomen.

Vividly I remember bawling in a Macy's dressing room, as I tried on the tenth or twelfth dress of that store, unable to zip it up. I had always been petite - a size 2 or 4 - and now had trouble fitting correctly into a size 10.

Hormones had also begun to jump violently out of whack, and my usually calm and upbeat attitude seemed to have been hijacked by some pregnancy beast. Out of nowhere I would cry - at everything; Billboards, Hallmark cards, television shows, looking at old photographs, even just thinking about my work. I cried all of the time.

I wonder how many brides are reeling from morning-sickness as they cheerfully smile and say 'I do!' My husband, bless his heart, wept tears of joy as he made his solemn vows to me in front of our best friends/witnesses. I, with my heart full of love, had to excuse myself from the wedding brunch after the ceremony to go and throw up.

I have never had a single day as a wife that I was not also a mother, then, and there is no question about the fact that parenthood has shaped everything about our lives as a married couple. Most of our married friends went on honeymoons... we gave up our honeymoon and bought a "baby car" that would safely hold a carseat instead. It's been like that all the way through.

At our big formal reception party held many months later when I was seven months pregnant, I avoided photographers as much as I could. I never dreamed of being a huge, ungainly bride with arms the size of small tree trunks. And while I loved every second of having our friends together there to celebrate our love, it was also really humiliating for me to stand on stage so extremely pregnant in front of all of 175 people - many of whom were seeing us as man and wife for the first time, since they'd flown in from out of town or were friends of our parents.

I made an easy punchline for "knocked up" jokes.

Throughout all of the transitions we went through that year, there were two constants. First, I adored my husband and felt like the luckiest girl in the world that he loved me and had asked me to marry him two months *before* we fell pregnant.

Second, I could not WAIT to meet my baby. I was so excited! I could not wait to experience the intense love and closeness that I'd heard would happen as soon as we met face to face. I loved him already! I sang to him all day long, every day. I read bedtime stories to my huge belly. I just knew that as soon as I actually had him safely out from 'under cover', everything was going to be perfect.

Some women are born with bodies built perfectly for making babies. They can literally drop a baby out in the middle of a field while harvesting a crop, and keep on working. They get their natural shape back in weeks. They amaze the world with the incredible way in which they unite motherhood with the rest of their persona.

As it turned out - and much to my dismay - I was not one of those women.

Our arduous labor lasted for nearly three full days. I endured sixty hours of incredible, outrageous pain engulfing my body every three to five minutes. I honestly didn't know a human body could DO that. I'd never heard of that kind of labor before... where your body is trying intensely to push a baby out but the cervix simply won't open. Somewhere around hour forty with no sleep and no breaks from contractions, I lost my mind and everything became a blur.

By the time I met my sweet son, he had been stuck in the birth canal for days. His head was long and cone-shaped, with a large red blood blister at its top (hematoma). He looked like a small red alien.

He cried. (My darling I adore you but it's true.) He cried all of the time, day and night. He cried until I thought his little wails would rupture a hole right in my heart. He cried whether I walked with him, held him, rocked him, or sang to him. He was a very sensitive baby.

I cried. I cried all of the time, thanks to feelings of exhaustion, overwhelm, and frustration.

I looked at my husband with his perfect thin body and easy, gentle way with our baby and felt truly jealous. My hormones were off the wall. I felt shocked that my own body and emotions had gone through nearly ten months of intense change and yet he seemed just the same, just as wonderful as ever - but now WITH a baby. I'd temporarily lost all sense of rationality and resented my husband for his seeming perfection.

I remember writing in my journal, a few weeks after my son was born, that I felt like a train had ripped right into our lives and my body, like I'd been struck down and didn't know how to pull myself back up and keep going. The problem wasn't the baby. I LOVEDLOVEDLOVED the baby. The problem was me. Somewhere along the way, I'd lost myself.

Becoming a mother changed me more than anything else ever has, or ever will.

It humbled me, rather vigorously. It took me from feeling like a hotshot on top of the world (my husband and I, a power couple, traveling and loving and sleeping in late... with outstanding career success and happiness) down to the very lowest part of myself where I had to look at all that was dark and ugly in me.

I, the Ivy League-type graduate, watched in wonder in the restroom of stores like Babies R'Us as girls ten years younger than me changed their babies's diapers with ease and laughter, making the whole incredible process of stroller-in and stroller-out and fumbling in the diaper bag for wipes and baggies and toys look so easy... while I bounced my howling son on my hip and held back my own tears.

I had always been an A+ student before. To my surprise, I entered motherhood at a solid D+ level, and slowly slowly slowly began to work my way toward passing.

Yesterday in this blog I wrote about having the courage to keep going, even when times are hard. "Giving up is the chicken way out," as my mother says. I'm glad to say that I never once tried to give up on myself as a mother, despite how obviously unfit I was in the beginning for my new role.

Years later a close friend would say to me about motherhood, "This ain't a job for punks!" I loved her for sharing that bit of spunk and wisdom, and for sharing that she too struggled with what it means to be a great mother.

Nearly six years have now passed since the day I kissed my son's precious small face for the first time, and to this very moment I am still working as hard as I can to get up to par as a mom. I haven't yet managed to live up to my expectations for myself, but I have improved a lot and I am very proud of that fact.

With three children now, ages nearly-6, nearly-4 and nearly-2, I've had a lot more practice and experience. I've read a lot more parenting books. I've learned great mothering skills and philosophies by watching many of my close friends (the 'natural mothers') in action. We've gone to see the play therapist and are working hard on modifying our own parenting strategies. Our kids are by and large thriving.

The hard work is paying off.

If someone were to ask me today, on my sixth official celebration of Mother's Day, what motherhood has meant to me - I would say that it's pretty simple. Nothing I ever did in my entire life before having children will ever matter as much as the mere existence of these three kids. I have never loved ~ and will never love ~ any human being more than I love them. I would do anything for them, sacrifice anything for them, become anything for them.

They are the flesh of my flesh, the blood of my blood. They change and shape me every day, just as much as I change and shape them. They are the teachers who have come into my life, like small angelic guides, to challenge my assumptions about the world and shake me into a new and deeper comprehension. They are my connectors to the life force. They are three distinct, vivid, incredible beings with endless potential.

Of all the mistakes I have made in my life, of all of the wrong turns I have taken, I have never regretted for a single moment becoming a mother. I know I never will.

On this Mother's Day then, when my adorable rapscallions woke me up with a homemade breakfast omelette and bacon (sweetly cooked by their daddy) and covered me with cards and kisses, I am a different woman than I was seven years ago... more patient, more grounded, more real... definitely more compassionate. (More gray hairs, more wrinkles, still sleep-deprived.)

I am honestly a better woman for having children. My darlings, I thank you with all of my heart for that enduring gift, and for all that you give to me every day. I love you each so much!

May 7, 2011 ~ Day 149 Keep Going. Fight On. Win.

Everyone has days sometimes when they are just plain worn out. Ready to give up. Time to wave the white flag and cry "UNCLE".

Today just happens to be that day for me.

I'm sure tomorrow is going to be one heck of a lot better, and here's why. When I told my mother this morning how I was feeling about all of the financial stress and new health stuff we've been dealing with as a family and uttered those same words to her ~ "I feel like I'm ready to give up," ~ she hit me bigtime in the gut with a lightning bolt of truth.

"Giving up is the chicken way out."

God Bless that woman, she snapped me out of my funk in one sentence.
I love you, Mom.

If there is one thing I'm not, it's a coward. I may be more petite physically but I've got one hell of a fighting heart - big enough to take on insurance companies, big enough to take on corporations, big enough to take on medical mysteries, big enough to take on any kind of challenge or unforeseen danger.

Twelve years ago someone I loved said a lot of unkind things to me which each held a kernel of truth. "You're scared of life," he said. "You're too scared to fly in an airplane. You're too scared to live on your own. You're too scared to be happy *out* of a relationship." There was a lot more, but those were probably the biggest insults.

My response was to get in an airplane and fly to visit a friend (I flew all of the time that year, just to prove to myself that I could) -- to live alone for five years -- to commit to myself to remaining out of a serious relationship until I had gotten to know ME for who I was and not who I was in a relationship.

In short, I am not one to shrink from a challenge.

When I went through the cancer scare in my early twenties, I stopped smoking and drinking, radically altered my diet and began my lifelong quest for a spiritual center. I cut as much negativity out of my life and perspective as possible at that time, and did NOT acquiesce to ill health... and Life blessed me with a full and rapid recovery.

There has never been a mountain that I've needed to climb that I haven't geared up for, never a wild card I needed to ride for which I didn't saddle up.

So as hard as things seem to be for us right now, with unexpected steep medical expenses and plenty of tough choices to make regarding health, going back to work, being a better mother to my children and a better wife to my husband... with every bit of pressure that I feel pushing down on my shoulders, it's good that my mother reminded me -

I am a woman with a backbone of steel.

I'm not going to give up. Here's what I'm going to do instead: Create a plan for the immediate and long-term future. Go through all of the steps required to give excellent care to my kids. Get a good night's sleep. Eat a square meal and take my vitamins and antibiotics.

Then, when I have rested up and am ready to dive back into the fray - I'm going to GO HARD, FIGHT, WIN. I will do whatever it takes to get us back on track.

One foot in front of the other, I will stand and face whatever daunting challenges next come our way. There is a path forward and a way through all of this. I know it! In some way, God (or whatever you'd call the Divine force that many of us sense and believe in) wouldn't reveal these unique challenges to me if I wasn't strong enough to overcome them ~ if I wasn't meant to learn from and appreciate their unexpected blessings.

I write these 365 daily posts for my three young children. Someday, they will be old enough to read and understand what I've been talking about - in fact, they may have an even sharper understanding of my true message, having lived through most of the same family situations that my husband and I encounter as a couple.

To my grown children someday, then, I say - just as my mother said to me today... Giving up is the chicken way out. Don't give up on yourself, and don't give up on life... even when the going gets tough. Hang on, and hang in there. You never know when things are going to start turning around for you, and you'll never know just how powerful you can be (nor how beautiful miracles can feel) if you give up when the going gets tough.

Put one foot in front of the other and keep your chin up. You'll make it! Just keep on moving forward. Someday when you DO make it - you'll look back and remember that when you were very young and we faced a few tough times, your mommy and daddy persevered and our family made it too.

May 5, 2011 ~ Day 147 Mommy Super Spy

In honor of Mother's Day this coming weekend, my younger son's school hosted a special "Mother's Day" celebration where each child invited his or her mother to come into the classroom for an hour to help him or her with "work" activities and then watch the live performance of several songs.

I felt particularly excited about this opportunity, not merely because I got to spend a little quality time with my boy by himself - which almost never happens for the "middle child" of three...

...but also because as previously noted in this blog I have been unhappy with the quality of the learning my son seems to be getting at this preschool and I wanted the chance to see his teachers in action first hand.

For a short time then, I donned my secret identity: Mommy Super Spy.

When my son and I arrived at his classroom we were warmly greeted and led to a table with a placard with his name on it, where they had put out an activity for him. I would imagine they selected activities for each of the children that seemed most relevant to their particular talents, because the work the teachers had chosen for my son consisted of counting beads and working on his numbers 1-9.

Have I mentioned that he has brought home sheet with the numbers 1 - 9 (traced) almost every day for two months? In the whole time he has attended this school, my impression has been that he works primarily on tracing these numbers, painting and playing outside.

Today's lesson, then, only confirmed my impression.

Not that I'm knocking the numbers 1-9... far from it. Those are nine really essential numbers and I'm thrilled that someday he will be able to read bank statements and tally up his checkbook.

My main problem with this intense focus on the numbers 1-9 is merely this: My son knew those numbers before entering preschool nearly a year ago. He had learned how to write them by October of last year. For him, this is REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW. Every single day, review.

After he'd shown off the numbers 1-9 for me, for which I was appropriately thrilled and appreciative of his effort and hard work, we moved on to the art table. He joyfully put together a sunflower with construction paper and glue. It was a lovely sunflower, and I thanked him profusely.

At this point in the morning, my boy appeared a bit stymied. Apparently normally at this time, after working on his numbers and doing art, he was accustomed to going outside to play. "What should we do now?" he asked me.

"Why don't we check out some of those other activities on the rug?" I asked.

"I'm not allowed to do those. The other boys do those ones," he replied.

"Well, today is a special day," I reminded him. "Perhaps today your teachers will let you do those activities too."

He unrolled a work mat on the rug and began to look around. One of his teachers came by.

"What would you like to work on?" she asked.

"Sounds," he mumbled.

"What?"

"Sound box."

She was still having trouble understanding him as he whispered, so I reiterated - "He says he wants to work on his sounds."

The teacher gave him a funny look, as though to say, "You aren't ready for the sound boxes." However with me there she smiled broadly and told him, "Today is a different kind of day and you can pick any activity you'd like - so the sound boxes are over there." She gestured to the bookcase ahead.

My son scampered over to get the sound box.

"Mommy, what sounds do these ones make?" he asked.

He'd pulled out a box with the letters C-A-T and many appropriate objects to be grouped with each sound. For example, the small objects matching "C" were a small toy cat, a crayon, a candle, etc.

In less than a minute, he'd grouped all of his sounds correctly. "That was fun!" he laughed. "What should we do now?"

"Anything you'd like, buddy," I answered.

"I really like THAT ONE," he pointed to a large wooden board with 10 tubs of small number tiles, "But I never get to play with it. The other boys always play with it."

"Well today's your lucky day," I smiled. He pulled out the heavy board and showed me that came with a "map" (a diagram showing how the numbers 1 - 100 should be laid out on the bigger board). The object of the activity was for the child to organize his numbers from 1 to 100 using the tiles on the larger board, in the same sequence that they could be found on the map.

"Where are one and two?" he asked me. We pulled out the box marked 1-10 but unfortunately, we discovered right away that all of the numbers were terribly jumbled. Together we began to sort numbers into their groups of ten and he was able to place about 1 - 21 on the board by himself before our time for doing activities together was up.

"I LOVE this work!" he beamed. "I LOVE big numbers!"

When my son's head teacher rang a little bell, the children jumped up and began to chant a little rhyme about cleaning up their work.

They then sat in a circle and prepared to sing to the mothers.

Don't get me wrong here... it was adorable to watch my little guy sing songs and wave his hands around. My heart just about burst with love.

That said, it soon became obvious that while his teachers had taught my son four or five songs in Spanish, he had NO idea what he was singing about. Many of the children in his class - plus all three of his teachers - are all Latino/a - so the little ones who understood the Spanish songs were laughing, making appropriate movements, really putting character and personality into their songs.

My son made gestures and laughed every time he sang in English, but as soon as they switched into Spanish he got a very perplexed look on his face (sort of a frown with creased eyebrows) and was always listening to the kids around him and copying what they'd said during the Spanish parts.

The parent in me said, "Awww how cute, they've trained him to sing in Spanish."

The teacher in me said, "This is just like teaching him how to trace letters of the alphabet without telling him what they are or what sound they make. They're teaching my kid how to parrot back Spanish but he clearly has NO idea what he is singing."


Later, when singing "It's a small world," the teachers handed each child a handmade flag from a different country. "What are these?" one little boy asked.

"I know we didn't practice with these," the teacher said, "But let's use them today with your mommies here."

Once again, confirming my impression. It's all window dressing.

Now I'm no expert in preschool education or the Montessori method; but I *do* know based on the three years our kids were enrolled in a different Montessori school that there are different ways of implementing Montessori teaching. My elder son spent a full year working on his sounds and three letter words, but every day when I asked him what sound he had been working on, he could tell me. "We did "sssssssssssssssss" today," he would announce proudly, or "Today I worked on "lllllllllllllllllllllll".

In retrospect, I understand better now just what a great education my sons were getting at that preschool. The older one also learned his countries, a ton of geometry and higher math skills, and got a fantastic science education revolving around the solar system, dinosaurs and plant germination.

I think it is a heinous waste of time to teach kids the surface of something while ignoring its substance. This is exactly why I had seventh grade students who could not decode new words. They'd learned to recognize certain familiar shapes to basic words like "the", "and", "of", etc. but if you presented them with something different they would freeze up and stumble badly. They had no phonetic toolbox with which to figure out new words in context.

So call me the mommy party pooper but I didn't think much of my little boy singing a song to me in Spanish that he couldn't understand at all. Later when I took him home from school I complimented his great singing and then asked him if he knew what those songs were about. "I don't know," he said. "What do they mean, mommy?" My point exactly.

If this were another kid, I might assume that his teachers *had* taught the meaning of the words and he just hadn't picked up on it. However, this boy is sharp as a tack and soaks up knowledge like a sponge. There is something strange going on for him at his new school - things were different before we moved here in February. He was getting so much out of his old school. Since coming here he seems to have stalled out.

From what I saw today during my hour as a super sleuth, this new school is everything I had suspected. Bright and airy, big focus on art, lots of playtime, loving and gentle teachers, and an emphasis on Spanish. This is not a bad thing - in fact, it may be many people's idea of a dream preschool.

$800 a month for half days is a lot of money for our family though, and this is NOT our dream for him.

That is why, last week, we visited a different preschool and put down a deposit for him to attend summer school there starting in June. It will be a much farther commute but on the way to my husband's office... and if he loves the summer school, he will continue on in the Fall. The school is about $200 a month cheaper, so for less money than we are spending right now he will get five FULL days of education instead of five half-days. My husband and I are really optimistic.

I'm grateful that I have both the professional training and time (at least for now) to stay aware of what is happening in my children's classrooms ~ to get a clear understanding of what they are gaining from their environment and what they are NOT. Being the Mommy Super Sleuth has its clear benefits, and I am fortunate in that I am professionally qualified to substitute teach in all of their schools up to the 8th grade... so I'll always have that edge until they hit high school.

Our elder son who had thrived in preschool, then floundered in his first kindergarten, is now blooming like crazy in his new classroom. He is reading EVERYTHING: books, magazine covers, billboards, directions, advertisements, store names - absolutely elated to have access now to an adult world around him which previously taunted him with its mysterious letters and sounds.

He is now also routinely earning 7 out of 7 on every math quiz and tells me that the math work is "too easy" for him and he wants to be a math genius. (My response? "Do everything your teacher asks of you anyway, even if you are bored. That is the only way you will ever be given really advanced, interesting math work in class.")

He has also made a number of friends and smiles at me nearly every day when we come to pick him up. Nearly every single day when I have asked him, "How was your day?" he has answered, "It was really good." This from the boy who used to scowl and cry every day after school, the same boy that used to insist that he was "Not smart."

From "I'm not smart!" to "I want to be a math genius!" in the course of two months? VICTORY!!!

If there is a definite meaning to today's post, it would be that it is so important for parents to stay connected to what is actually happening with their children in school... at least to get a sense of what they *aren't* getting. It would be so easy to assume that all teachers are hard-working and all schools are doing their job, but in truth, I still believe that the buck stops with us as parents to make sure that our kids don't fall through the cracks.

I'm grateful that I have this chance to make sure my kids are given the opportunities they deserve to succeed and grow. (Every child deserves those opportunities! Every child in the world!)

In closing, I realize full-well how blessed and privileged we are... to have been able to pick up and go, change communities, put down new roots, find the 'perfect' elementary school, pay for private preschools, etc. I celebrate those blessings and opportunities. We will not squander them, but rather celebrate in the many doorways that open up to children with a good education.

I'm so glad my little guy will have a chance to start fresh in a new learning environment in just one month. My fingers are crossed for a smooth and successful transition.

For now, that is all.

Happy Mother's Day, and Sayonara until the Mommy Super Spy strikes again!

May 4, 2011 ~ Day 146 Is It Time?

When my rheumatologist told me today that my blood labs he ran in January looked worse - the autoantibodies were higher - I did not flinch at all.

I did, however, weep without warning when he told me how much the new bloodwork he needed to run today would cost our family. He also let me know that his clinic is going to have to monitor me more closely from this point forward.

Together, these things will cost $$$Beaucoup Bucks$$$.

(The January labs were run months *before* I went on antibiotic treatment though, and I have total confidence that my bloodwork is going to look much better this time around because I am feeling MUCH improved!)

This man is the finest MD I have ever met in my life, though - and my husband and I both trust him implicitly. His recommendations are worthy, based on 35 years of treating and healing patients. I know so many women and men that he personally has put into permanent remission from devastating diseases that supposedly have no cure. So, it's time for me to get serious about his treatment and stop messing around with my herbs and naturopaths.

"I'm going to have to go back to work," I murmured, swiping tears away from my face with one hand. "I won't be able to stay at home with my kids."

It's sad that the cost of high quality healthcare is so vast... when most of the "best" doctors I've seen either don't take health insurance, take only PPO insurance, or are out-of-network with our family's insurance provider.

Of course, I'm one of the lucky ones... I actually *have* health insurance.

Still, there is a real line between paying to get good care and bankrupting your own family. I'm not about to do the latter... I would work two jobs in a heartbeat before putting my husband and kids in dire straits due to my own health needs.

I had a few hours to think as I made the drive home alone this afternoon, pondering my own future and where work fits into our long range plans and dreams. What do I want from work? What kind of work do I really want to do? What do I even have to GIVE to a job these days? How will my working part-time affect my three kids?

It isn't that I haven't thought about going back to work before, for different reasons. I weigh this choice all of the time, on the teeter totter of what our family needs vs. what we actually have.

Working part-time might even be good for me, in terms of self-esteem and feeling like I'm "doing" something for the world every day. Would I be a better mother if I had something professional of my own again? Would I be a better wife?

Sometimes life whispers to you to move in a certain direction, and if you resist, it punches you in the face to wake you up and get you moving. Is this one of those moments? Has the whispering been coming at me for a while, and now suddenly I'm punched in the jaw with thousands of dollars of unexpected expenses... necessitating concrete, proactive movement on the job front?

In a way, going back to work would be a relief. Work is the one thing (besides school) that I have always been good at. I excel at being professional, at working very hard and giving my best.

Motherhood on the other hand has been by far the toughest job I've ever loved, filled with many painful chronic failures over time. Working would actually be like taking a "vacation"... I could actually use the restroom without someone holding onto my leg, or eat lunch upon occasion at a restaurant with interesting adults who talk about things other than "Poopoo chicken bumbum-heads" at the table.

Four years have passed since I last held gainful employment, that is... working for an organization not related to my husband. I've gotten used to this child-centered life where everything I do from the moment I wake until the moment I sleep is typically focused on the kids in some way.

I don't even own "work clothes" any more.

Looking back on my early education, I sincerely regret that I took Geometry instead of Home Economics. Never, never in my entire life since the 10th grade have I ever needed to prove why the angles of two triangles are congruent to each other. However there have been hundreds of times though when I've wished I knew how to keep our family on a tighter budget, find a more efficient way of doing laundry, match furniture or improve my skills as a chef.

It may sound terribly old-fashioned of me but I genuinely wish they'd taught us in high school how to figure out whether we were the working mother or the stay at home mother type - and how to manage or juggle responsibilities either way.

And what about career re-entry? Now THAT would have been a valuable skill to learn. How exactly does one dive back into the workplace seamlessly after four years out? I have to wonder if I'm even still competitive, given that kind of a gap in my resume.

My friend Lauren's* mother advised her when she got married to "Always keep one foot into your career" even when taking time out to have children, so that it would be easier to go back one day. I wish I'd had this advice too.

There is no real point or closure to this blog entry, as I anticipate that it will be merely the beginning (and not the ending) of a new chapter for our family.

At least in chronicling my own inner struggle over how to balance children, home, financial needs and personal productivity, I will leave behind for my children a true-to-life record of the fact that I do not in fact find it at all "easy" to leave them and return to work.

Nor do I find it easy to watch my husband struggle valiantly, alone, to meet all of our financial and healthcare needs in a down economy.

I don't know if there exists a solution to this dilemma that will make everyone in my family happy. If we were independently wealthy this wouldn't even be a conversation for us... my husband and I, and our three children ~ we ALL want one parent to be home full time raising the kids. We all believe in having a stay-at-home mom, and I love being that mother.

Sometimes though, it isn't possible to get everything you want. What does Mick Jagger say? "You can't always get what you want... but if you try sometimes / You might find / You get what you need!"

The coming weeks and months may bring changes to our family. Optimistically, each change may turn out in the end to answer prayers we've each sent silently into the world without knowing it. I guess only time will tell.









*Name changed to protect the identity of the person in question.

May 3, 2011 ~ Day 145 Tongue Tied

Our nearly two year old daughter is feeling frustrated.

"Ah bebe wame naw ott!" she yells. "Meme nonononononno wah baboo itta!"

Judging from her body language and hand movements, I think she's telling us all off with gusto.

I don't blame her at all! Born with a tongue tie (ankyloglossia - a condition where the frenulum attaching the tongue to the mouth is short and thicker than normal, holding the tongue itself down on the base of the mouth)... this 23 month old rascal constantly attempts to rattle off elaborate sentences which are met by quizzical, stupefied looks by the adults around her.

There is no doubt about the fact that our girl is a smart cookie. When we *are* able to understand what she is talking about (perhaps 30 to 40% of the time) her sentences are often really sensible and even funny.

She asks about dinnertime, expresses food preferences, asks when her daddy will be home from work (and mentions his Bi-ki-kle!), talks about her grandmothers, tries to "read" books, and gives appropriate responses to my questions. She makes jokes about her stuffed animals, oranges, insects and most especially her big brothers - who after all, do provide her with great comic relief.

Lately though, our daughter has been talking up a storm in rushed, complicated sentences and more often than not I have to stop her, bend down to her eye level, and tell her honestly that I didn't understand. This is embarrassing for me and very frustrating for her.

"I'm so sorry honey ~ " (my typical refrain), "I know you are saying something that is very intelligent and important but I did not understand most of that. Do you think you could try again with different words, and I will pay closer attention to your lips?"

Her sentences typically sound something like, "Mwa Bwova Beega Meeko Bullluuuuuu!" and the only part of it I understand would be the first two words, "My brother..." The really touching part is that she will often laugh hysterically after saying whatever she's said, as though she knows she's said something smart or funny, and then stare at us or look crestfallen when we (her parents) just don't get it.

In many ways, our daughter's life experience so far has been much like that of a foreign exchange student living with a host family... one that really, really, really loves her!

When I was 19 years old and living in Italy with a host family of my own, I came to a point where I could understand nearly everything being said to me and around me. This felt exciting - rather than sitting mildly lost and bored at the dinner table as my Italian brothers and mother conversed rapidly about interesting things, I could finally follow along with the banter between Italian family members and laugh at all the right times in their stories. I vividly remember the first time I feebly tried to add on to one of their jokes and they looked at me with amazement and said (in Italian), "I think she is understanding us! Brava, Brava!"

So I do have some feeling for what it must be like to be our daughter, living with our own vivacious family unit in a little house and listening to all of us chatter away incessantly. Here's this little girl - intelligent and eager to learn - understanding most of what we do and say but having great difficulty in making herself understood in our language.

If she's anything like I was at 19, the poor thing may well experience moments when she just wants to throw her hands in the air and retreat to the sofa to watch TV shows (Caillou, in her case)... which, with its broad actions and gestures is much easier to relate to. There is also far less frustration involved with passive entertainment.

Yesterday evening at a birthday dinner for my sister-in-law, my mother served up a homemade cheesecake covered in berries. It isn't often that our little girl gets to enjoy a sugary treat, as we're trying to cultivate her taste for protein and vegetables before letting her dive into the world of sugar with wild abandon.

As a special treat, we gave her a dessert of berries and a very small slice of the cake, which had almost no sugar in it.

Within about 10 seconds, her plate was empty and she was back with fork in hand.

"MeMe Hungry!" "MeMe wanna MORE!!!"

"Oh, are you still hungry, honey?"

"YEAH!!!! MORE!!!!"

"Would you like more of mommy's salmon and vegetables?"

"Nope!"

"Would you like some more pasta?"

"Nope! MeMe Wann MORE COOKIE!"

The entire table erupted in laughter. "Wow, those may be the most clear words she has ever spoken!" my husband exclaimed.

"She certainly gets her point across," I laughed.

Minutes later when our attention was diverted to a funny story my sister was telling, our daughter - who had clearly decided that language was NOT working for her here - made a stealth raid. Sidling quietly up to her father seated at the table, she reached out a little hand holding a fork and literally lifted his entire slice of cheesecake off of his plate... then carried it over to her own plate at an adjoining table and began to polish it off with gusto before anyone could notice.

One or two of the assembled family saw this take place, alerting us to the theft. What could we do but laugh hysterically?

This is a little girl who WILL take what she wants from life whether it is offered or not.

So I don't worry that the lack of coherent speech is somehow affecting my daughter's self esteem at the age of nearly-two. I'm quite sure she's going to be just fine. She is a survivor - as evidenced by her crazy entrance into the world 6 weeks early - and she doesn't let much stand in her way.

That said, I'd really love to know what she thinks about in that adorably naughty little head of hers. She strikes me as the kind of kid with an awesome sense of humor and I can't wait to understand her two year old jokes. She also tries to sing very frequently and I think she'll be elated when her mouth can make the same words to the songs that she has learned from her big brothers.

If her pediatrician had caught the tongue tie when she was born, there would have been a quick fix - a tiny snip of the frenulum and she would have been fine. Unfortunately as children age it gets a little more complex since they have trouble laying still and typically need general anesthesia.

I've been holding off on the surgery for a long time, wanting to avoid the anesthesia. However I've learned through research that they are improving on this situation and I believe these days a different kind of laser surgery can be performed with local numbing. I'll have to ask one of our close family friends about it as I believe they just had a similar problem taken care of for their oldest son.

For so long I have hoped that somehow her speech would improve by itself with time... but it's now becoming evident that my girl yearns to share much more of herself with the world than she currently is able to.

After all, "Ah Mammmeee Wawa Brudda EEEUUUU Aweeeeeeeeeeee TaDa Lauga Nuchel," might just mean something brilliant and life changing. She might be doing quantum physics in that little skull of hers! More importantly, she wants us to really *know* her -- and I want her to feel known and loved for who she is and what she thinks about.

I think we're fast approaching a time when our little bird may need to have the tethers removed from her rhetorical wings so that she can soar (and speak!) at last.

May 2, 2011 ~ Day 144 Paging The Huxtables

Sometimes I yearn for family life in a sitcom television show, where the other characters notice if I do something special like clean the house - and an entire audience erupts in laughter when I make a diaper joke.

It's been a long time since I regularly watched sitcom television but I still remember the "Must See TV" NBC lineup of my childhood - The Cosby Show, Family Ties and Cheers - where each episode revolved around the small but meaningful details of friendships, relationships and dreams (both the kind that came true, and the kind that didn't).

My parents were big fans of Bill Cosby and the Cosby Show... I think my father bought every humorous book that Cosby ever authored (his favorite was "Fatherhood") and modeled his vision of what our own family unit should be like based upon the courtesy and dignity shown by the Huxtable children to their parents in that television show.

So there we were ~ an educated, solidly middle class liberal Caucasian family walking in the footsteps of an educated, affluent African American television family. I was a little bit too old to identify with Rudy Huxtable, the youngest daughter... but I always looked up to my big brothers and sister just like she looked up to her siblings, and I secretly wished that my father delivered babies for a living.

The thing that was so great about this TV family, at least from the rear view of my memory, was the way in which they loved each other so vastly and appreciated each other so warmly. Episodes might focus on honesty, fairness, health or mutual respect but the underlying theme of each one generally came across as 'How can we love each other even better than we already do?'

If my childhood home was modeled on The Cosby Show, I shudder to imagine which modern day sitcom my own nuclear family unit most resembles. Possibly The Simpsons? The Family Guy? What show in today's lineup features three emotive kids who are chronically screaming and fighting with each other, an eccentric-brilliant-adorable dad who pops in and out of the storyline when he's not busy inventing something, and a careworn mother who sometimes sits down in the middle of chaos and just laughs and laughs - so as not to cry.

The Brady Bunch we're not.

The script for tonight's episode of our real family life would probably have been titled, "Welcome Home" and revolved around the return of my husband and son from their four day adventure in Georgia.

Choice moments would have included:

• Discovery upon driving toward the airport terminal that its entire parking lot is now a construction site and so it is necessary to park at a different terminal several city blocks away and run with the stroller to meet the flight


• Running to meet the flight only to learn that it has been delayed by an hour


• Entertaining two children under the age of 4 for a loooooonnnnnggg time in an airport "Arrivals" terminal with no windows in the waiting area from which to watch the airplanes (and no gift shop!!!)


• Brief happy reunion before tired, hungry children begin to melt down


• The two year old daughter breaks into loud, zesty screams every time her daddy leaves her range of vision - as if to say, 'You can't ever leave me again!'


• Children insist upon steak tacos for take-out dinner. We order steak tacos. Children refuse to eat their steak tacos because they are "too yucky". (Parents say, "Fine - Guess what's for lunch tomorrow!?!")


• Massively tired bigger brother decides that the three Hot Wheels trucks his younger brother bought at a thrift store for $2 while he was gone are "better" than his entire 4 day trip to Georgia with Daddy. Tries to take them away by force. Begins to sob, yell and hit.


• The little sister escapes four times from her bedroom at bedtime, scampering down the hallway giggling each time. Her father scratches his head quizzically, wondering aloud, "How does she keep doing that?" and putting her back to bed. (The mother catches her older brothers opening the gate for her.)


• Bigger brother falls asleep, literally mid-scream (as soon as his head touches the pillow).


• The daddy also falls asleep, while reading to his younger children.


• The mommy realizes that her entire family has conked out and once again, she's alone washing dishes. She reaches for her journal/remote control/laptop/book and exhales

I wonder how the Cosby Show writers could have doctored up the events of our evening to make them look earnest, sincere and adorable. Could they have re-scripted the screaming tantrum scene at bedtime to have some redeeming value? Would it have provided the perfect cue for dad "Cliff" and big brother "Theo" to have a loving, man-to-man talk about 'being a role model that your little sister can look up to'?

Would Clair Huxtable (the mother) have laughed and kissed Cliff (the father) on his head when she discovered him sound asleep in the middle of two young children who were still awake and playing on the bed next to him?

What sentimental but not syrupy-sweet revelation could I have shared with the live studio audience at the close of the episode, about the more realistic joys of having a family?

Sometimes I wonder if any family out there is as truly happy and blessedly innocent as they make us believe in situation comedies. We all have our *stuff*, this I know. Every family has their own unique set of issues - most of which the rest of us never see or hear about, unless there is a sudden death or divorce and their private matters spill into the public.

Is there a real family anywhere that is just perfectly, genuinely contented? Where their real life is just exactly as loving, calm and funny as it might seem on sitcom television? Or, do most of our lives more closely resemble Reality TV shows like Survivor where the only way to make it through to the end is to vote people off your island?

Given that the only life or family I'll ever experience is the one I have, I'll probably never know the true answer to that question.

Despite how far removed our own home life may be from perfection though, it still contains so many spontaneous 'lines' and moments that no scriptwriter could ever equal. For example, the following from my three year old today:

"Mommy, I just feel so grateful to be here with you right now. I love you so much."

"Um, wow - honey. Thank you. Why are you saying that?" (Suspicious...) "Is there something you're wanting from mommy?"

"No mommy. I don't need anything. I just like it when we spend time together. I wish you would stop cleaning and play with me."

"Oh buddy. I'll be done in just a second. What would you like to play?"

"Cars! You can be the purple car and I'll be the News Truck."

"Awesome. I love it when I get to be the purple car."

"That is because you are my purple princess, mommy... and I am your prince."

He wrapped his little arms around my knees and hugged me hard. No TV writer could ever have fashioned a sweeter moment.


* * * * *


So there you have it. I don't live in a sitcom... but thanks to my small son it turns out that I'm already the heroine of a real-life fairy tale, which is pretty darn fantastic.

Perhaps we're on our way to 'happily ever after' after all.

May 1, 2011 ~ Day 143 9/11 Revisited

Tonight, President Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden is dead, killed in a Navy SEAL operation in Pakistan.

After ten years, the timing of his announcement amazes me. Just this afternoon as I was driving home with my kids from Target, a truck with rather large lettering on its rear window passed me. Its sign read: "Flight 93: Todd Beamer "Let's Roll!" Under which, in smaller lettering, glistened the words, "We will never forget you."

Immediately tears sprang to my eyes and I imagined what Todd Beamer - and all of the members of that doomed flight - had been thinking in those last moments when they knew they were about to sacrifice their lives to protect our nation's capital... or at least, to protect other innocents on the ground.

There are not many things from my 35 years that I remember as though they took place just yesterday.

As for many people though, the recollection of 9/11 stands out starkly for me. We all have a story from that day - how it affected us, who we knew (or knew of) that were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Here is mine.

On September 11, 2001 I was twenty-five years old and finishing up my teaching credential in Southern California. I'd completed my regular coursework and was on to the "student teaching" experience where I worked full time for a credentialed teacher in order to do my hands-on training and receive performance evaluations from both my University faculty advisor and the teacher herself.

The third grade teacher I worked for could not have been more different than me. A stout Latina woman in her early fifties, Maria had been teaching for nearly thirty years and was quite set in her ways. There sprung up an immediate distance between us, or should I say, she took an almost immediate disliking to me... the Ivy League type Caucasian student teacher who yearned to shake things up in her classroom and disagreed with her belief that some kids would simply never make it in school. The tension coming off of her each day when I walked in the room was palpable.

Luckily, with five years of life experience under my belt since the New York City experience, I kept my head down and my mouth shut - worked hard, showed up early, dressed conservatively, and vowed to myself that I would do whatever it took to get a good reference from her.

On the Friday before September 11th, we had experienced a lockdown on campus. An armed man escaping after robbing a local convenience store had taken refuge on our elementary school campus, hiding in one of the bathrooms. Our school was surrounded by SWAT teams and we were informed by the school bell system to lock our doors, close our blinds and take refuge on the floor at the back of the classroom making as little noise as possible until we were given the all clear.

I will never forget the look on the vice principal's face as she came to our classroom to make sure it was locked tightly - it was her job to protect the hundreds of students at the school from threats and as such, despite the known presence of an armed criminal with a loaded gun, she walked steadily from classroom to classroom, checking all of the doors to ensure the safety of the children.

That woman had whatever the female equivalent would be of 'balls of steel'. I prayed for her very hard during that hour of lockdown.

Thankfully the man fled our campus before there could be any kind of shoot-out and within a few hours, we were back to teaching as 'normally' as we could, given the excitement of the morning.

I vividly remember the way one boy, Ray*, kept asking Maria if he could go to the bathroom. "No!" she snapped, and then turning to me she confided that we might need to convert the trash can in the corner of the classroom into a porta-potty.

It was quite a learning experience.

After unwinding over the course of Saturday and Sunday I had decompressed and was ready to go back to work. On Monday I felt excited because Tuesday, September 11 was supposed to be one of the days where I led instruction for a hour on my own, and I had planned a great science lesson using eggs. My university supervisor was scheduled to attend.

Since the school started promptly at 7:00am, I awoke at 5:30... dressed, ate a quick breakfast and jumped into my truck. I headed toward the local grocery store to get three cartons of eggs. I must've been listening to a CD that morning because nothing seemed out of the ordinary and I recall that it was an insanely beautiful, sunny "Indian Summer" type of day in our town. "Maybe I'll hit the beach after work this afternoon," I remember thinking.

Bringing my eggs up to the cashier, I greeted her warmly and made small talk. "Looks like we've got great weather today!"

She stared dully at me. "Did you know that we are at war?"

"What?"

Her face softened. "We are at war. We've been attacked. A plane just hit the World Trade Center. They announced it on the radio."

"What?!!"

I had a difficult time processing what she had told me. It was about 6:15am. Rushing back to my truck, I turned on National Public Radio and listened in shock and silence.

Later I would find out that as I sat in that car, listening to the speakers describe what little they knew at that point about events taking place in New York, Todd Beamer and the other passengers of Flight 93 were realizing that their airplane had reversed somewhere over Ohio and was heading in the wrong direction.

I'm not sure at this point why I continued on to work. Maybe it was the "frozen" reaction that many people experience in the wake of trauma. I'm sure I had no idea that California could be affected at all, and my primary concern at that moment was with being there for the students in my classroom... many of whom were surely already at school and expecting me there to take care of them with Maria.

Once I'd arrived at work and encountered Maria though, I felt a little sorry that I'd come. She was wringing her hands in the doorway of the classroom, and said to me right in front of the line of children, "My God, it's Judgment Day. The Apocalypse is here." She began to sing softly. One of the third graders began to cry.

Not long after the first school bells rang, the principal came by to inform us that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. She informed us that there might be several hijacked planes heading for California and that we'd better prepare for the worst, whatever that might be - especially thanks to the military presence in our town.

Maria and I seated the children who resembled small live wires ready to explode. They were passing around stories of what they'd "heard" on the way to school, from parents, grandparents, television and radio. They pressed us with a hundred questions we didn't know how to answer. "Are we going to die?" one little girl asked excitedly. The situation seemed surreal.

Later that day, Laura Bush would ask the nation to protect its youngest members from graphic images of the towers falling - but when Maria and I made the decision to turn on our classroom television to try to get any information about what had happened to the airplanes, we had no idea that a Tower had fallen in New York... that another Tower would fall within minutes.

We watched in horror then - all of us, including our third graders - as the entire massive building crumpled into dust right before us on the screen. We saw specks jumping from the windows as the building was caving in and realized in one moment of gruesome clarity, that we were watching humans jumping out of windows to their deaths.... right before our eyes.

Maria and I turned off the television and sat in stunned silence with the children. The tears in our eyes matched the tears in theirs. "Oh sweet Jesus," Maria prayed out loud, "Protect these sweet little babies from hellfire."

"Dear God," I prayed silently but just as sincerely, "Please protect these children from being scarred for life by this terrible day and their teacher's talk of hellfire and damnation... and God, please also protect my big brother."

Both of my brothers have lived in New York City for decades - but knowing that one of them was working in Utah on September 11th - I worried only for my eldest brother, whose job at the time was in the southern end of Manhattan near Battery Park. I prayed very hard that I would see him again. I also prayed, quickly and selfishly, that I would not be killed in any kind of attack on California before I'd had the chance to find true love and have a family of my own.

At some point the elementary school administration decided to dismiss all non-essential personnel from their posts for the morning, and as a student teacher I was asked to go home. Though reluctant to leave the kids, I was eager to see my parents. "If we are to be attacked here too, I at least want to be with my Mom and Dad," I thought - and barreled over to the house I grew up in to wrap my arms around them.

By then the worst was over. Flight 93 had crashed when its passengers bravely fought to recover the flight from their hijackers and the hijackers decided to force it down where they were. Both Towers had crashed. The Pentagon was on fire. Video footage of New Yorkers, bleeding and covered with ash, running for their lives uptown was playing on every television station. Air traffic had come to a permanent halt around the country.

Watching the footage of the tragedy unfolding I had wept so much I was completely numb.

One of my three brothers lived with his wife (pre-children) just up the street from my parents' house and he came by to check on all of us. "What will we do if we are invaded?" I wondered aloud.

"None of us will ever let that happen," he replied firmly. "We are Americans and we love this country - this state - this city. If *anyone, EVER* tried to invade us by land, you can believe that my friends and I will fight down to the very last man to protect our homes and families." He said this while looking out over the surf break that he loved most in the world, the beach we grew up on.

I felt almost frightened by the look in his eyes - a dangerous, determined look I had never seen there before.

I stayed over that night with my parents, grieving... and then rejoicing when we finally heard from my eldest brother. We felt so blessed that our family had been protected and safe, yet overwhelmed with sorrow for all of the many, many families who had not.

My family is as liberal as they come and my father hated George W. Bush from the get-go - but I remember weeping as he spoke to our country that day, encouraging us to hold onto the beliefs and freedoms that set us apart from so much of the world. On that day, George W. could have been my father or my brother. I loved him just as I loved every American, I wept with he and Laura just as I wept for every single victim of that terrible day. I felt one with our nation, one with humanity.

On September 12, 2011 Le Monde, the major French newspaper, published an article by Jean-Marie Colombani which said,

"In this tragic moment, when words seem so inadequate to express the shock people feel, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as John F. Kennedy declared himself to be a Berliner in 1962 when he visited Berlin. Indeed, just as in the gravest moments of our own history, how can we not feel profound solidarity with those people, that country, the United States, to whom we are so close and to whom we owe our freedom, and therefore our solidarity?"

It seemed that the world felt one with us, as well.

During the coming weeks and years, views on September 11th (and our American reaction to it) began to diverge widely both within our nation and around the globe. Over time and throughout two ensuing wars, my own views took on many different perspectives as well.

Yet I will never forget how for a few days there following our overwhelming tragedy, Americans were so kind to one another. People were courteous when driving. Perfect strangers hugged each other in the supermarket. Former enemies wept together and buried the hatchet. Estranged lovers reunited, and married couples made babies. People took nothing for granted, we drunk in every drop of life - every little drop.

Everyone had a story to share, and EVERYONE whether rich or poor, light skinned or dark skinned, male or female, adult or child - everyone had common ground.

They say when God closes a door, he opens a window. Perhaps when the Twin Towers fell, the window that was opened was one leading directly into the purest part of our hearts.

* * * * *

Osama Bin Laden is apparently dead but I doubt that our war in Afghanistan will suddenly end or that Al Qaeda or the Taliban will hate us any less. One of the lead characters in the 1987 movie, "The Princess Bride" famously says "Never get involved in a land war in Asia!" so I've known since the seventh grade that it isn't smart to fight in that region. I wonder if we'll ever get out of there in my lifetime.

For now, I just want to sign this off today with the deepest, sincerest thanks given to our brave servicemen and women all around the world who amaze me every day with their honor and willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to protect and defend our nation and the values for which it stands.

I have a good high school friend who became a Navy SEAL out of college and I can't help but wonder deep down if he participated in the assassination of Bin Laden. Either way old friend, with all of my heart, thank you for your strength and valor.

Living in a military town, my family is very close to many Marine and Navy families and I have seen first hand how much they must all give up on a daily basis in order to safeguard our nation. Even when these brave men and women don't personally agree with orders handed down by their higher-ups, they do their job with dignity and dedication - though often they have not been compensated adequately (in my opinion) for the tremendous personal and family hardships they face.

Redeployed again and again away from their families without breaks - at times in violation of their original contract agreements - these people experience extreme stress and at times witness graphic atrocities from which most of us would never recover. They also do amazing things like building schools, rescuing hostages, liberating oppressed peoples, setting up water sanitation projects, constructing bridges and most recently giving aid and technical support to earthquake-and-tsunami-devastated Japan. They truly are heroes.

For all of this I can only say, as humbly as possible and with total respect, THANK YOU to our armed forces for your courage and huge hearts. Most of all, as a mother I thank you for following the call of your deepest convictions to make the world a safer place - not only for my three children, but for all children.










*Name changed to protect the privacy of the party in question.