Boys playing dolls

So on a wintery Wednesday morning my loud-shouting high-climbing rough-and-tumbling dirt-magnet boys play dolls. They’re the dolls my mom still has from when we were little. They survived us four sisters and they’ve survived our eight kids. We had supper at my folks last night and the boys asked to borrow two dolls, some blankets and a pram. One of the dolls is Coral’s Baby Angel and it’s at least three decades old and mostly the eyes still blink when they should.

This morning I bring my coffee to bed and Cam and Scott bring the dolls who must be girls, they agree, because they are wearing pink. They name them Emily and Rosie. Cam says their parents have died so we are looking after them. He says his baby is very good. She doesn’t cry much. And she lies very still when she sleeps. Scott says, ‘Catch Mom!’ and lobs his baby feet first at me and my coffee. He retrieves her and power slams her face-down on the duvet crooning gently, ‘Don’t cry, baby.’

Cam instructs Scott: ‘Don’t punch her in the stomach. She will vomit.’ Which leads to the glorious and exciting assumption that both babies have a violent stomach ailment. He’s jumping – delighted – ‘Mom can I get a bucket for the babies to puke in?’ He hurtles in with a bucket just in time because…

Scott (ecstatic): Look! Baby puking in a bucket! (puking noises)

Cam (jubilant): Mom look! Did you see my baby puking in the bucket?

Me (weirded out): Ya… Um… Cool…

Cam decides they should take the babies on a ship trip to a sand island. There isn’t space for everyone so he gallantly swims there wearing a life jacket. Scott interjects intermittently with variations of: ‘Yes Cam! Me too! Let’s go! Follow me! I fell out the boat! My turn!’ And every now and then he looks out the window for the aeroplane that (he thinks) Dad is (still) in.

I get more coffee and I watch them and call me crazy but I keep thinking of Isaiah 41:4 – ‘Who has done such mighty deeds, summoning each new generation from the beginning of time? It is I, the LORD, the First and the Last. I alone am he.’ And I pray that this generation of little men – beckoned to the stage of this century – would have the extraordinary compassion and courage to change the world.

Of miracles and madness: a day in the life of motherhood

It’s 7h15. Murray has left with Cam who has left his rice crispies on the dining room table. Scott is home with tonsillitis and me. He’s tender and compliant today because the memory is fresh of yesterday and the wooden spoon and my tears. (We went to the doctor and then the pharmacy where he was wild and I reached the zenith of my most-embarrassing-mom-moments. Despite my reproaches hissed low through gritted teeth and a surreptitious smack near the immune booster aisle he ran and skidded and played horsey-horsey on Cam and took several things off several shelves. He also knocked over a life-size cardboard cut-out of Victor Matfield selling vitamins. Mad as hell I righted Victor and of course he was still smiling which kind of made me want to punch in his cardboard face. Then Scott lay on the floor and made imaginary snow angels on the pharmacy tiles and I went red and asked the (thorough.) (slow.) pharmacist please to hurry and avoided all eye contact with onlookers. At home there was the spoon of reckoning and hugs and sobs and profuse murmurings of I sorry Mom I sorry Mom I sorry Mom.)

The heater’s burning in the playroom and I’m trying to write a post for the WordSpace but Scott is in my lap then on my laptop and he’s pushing Ctrl-Z on my thoughts. I give up and hug him and sift emails while he zooms trucks on the couch.

8h45. Scott violently refuses shoes and a jersey but I pick this battle and redouble my incursion and conquer. Warm, we head to the mall to swap the shoes I bought Murray and speak to the home loan guy at the bank and buy mushrooms for tonight’s chicken. Scott behaves beautifully.

Back home he asks for Marmite toast and his blanky and his tummy is ‘too sore’. I microwave a bean bag and drape it warm and cover him and rub his back and sing Jesus loves me and the sun floods in drowsy and he sleeps.

There are emails to answer and texts to send and faraway people to facebook. There are play dates to plan and appointments to make and money to transfer and itineraries to organise. I scan the latest posts of my favourite bloggers and feel inferior.

I leave Scott sleeping while Maria irons and sings and I drive to fetch Cam. He shares fragments of his day but he’s tired and quiet. (Yesterday when I fetched him he mistook another mom for me in front of all his friends and more moms and he was embarrassed so he lashed out. Then he walked into a pole and everything I did for the rest of the day was wrong. So today I’m careful and prayerful.)  Cam is supposed to rest when we get home but Scott wakes up so there’s pretend-pretend snoozing for like, five minutes.

Then they play move-to-the-new-house-move-to-the-new-house – but for some reason the new house is in Europe and they’re hiking there in snow jackets. Europe is upstairs and I let it go – the mess they’re making on the spare bed and the cupboards they’re unpacking because I want them to enjoy this magical loft while they have it – to live to the edge of their boundaries in this season, of this home. They want me to play with and I don’t want the chicken to burn so I do intermittent stair climbing and nose wiping and distance cooking all the while wishing I could just switch off the stove and my task-orientation and give myself over to the moment and the make-believe continent on the bed upstairs.

For accountability I’ve put Specials of the week on a chalkboard hanging on the wine rack listing three yum-fancy meals that take time and effort. Because I’m in a cook-what’s-cheap-and-easy rut and I don’t feel like fighting and forcing the boys to try exotic things, like peas. But slow-roasted lamb and masala rotis don’t come naturally to me. Fish fingers and chips. Now that comes naturally. But I’m determined to try harder because there are men in my house, grown and growing, and all the time we’ll spend around food in the decades coming will shape them more than I understand.

I take the boys’ teatime up to Europe in plastic bowls – bananas and Tennis biscuits. Then it’s time for homework. We write Cameron Benjamin Reyburn 0 1 2 3 4 5 a few times over slow and deliberate and oversized and wobbly and I’m convinced he’s the cleverest 5-year old in the known universe. Scott pretends to write his name with earnest, intentional strokes of coloured koki and he’s so kind and exuberant – clapping and exclaiming – ‘Well done, Cam!’ Cam’s memory verse this week is one of the first I ever memorised and I still say it at the dentist: Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go. I’m newly amazed at the preservation of this ancient text – words to Joshua on the brink of battles – now from the mouth of my son, so little and keen as mustard.

They ride bikes on the stoep and fight and pinch and there are more tears and more smacks and sulking. Some days it feels like all we do is yell and scold and I fail fail fail at keeping my cool. We’re desperate for wisdom to juggle obedience and holiness and grace because how we parent them is shaping their view of God and we can’t afford to drop one of these balls.

Yesterday, the boys were ‘hiking through snow’ (big theme at the moment) on top of a pile of bricks at a friend’s house. Scott fell and scraped his face. Today his lip is looking nasty so we go back to the pharmacy (a different one) for cream and peace of mind.

Coral invites us for tea and the late afternoon is cold with glorious sun and Cam is wearing his gown over his jeans and a cowboy hat. Scott doesn’t make it to the loo so we clean him up and he charges about in a pair of Craig’s Lightning McQueen undies.

How would I describe motherhood today? The exhaustion of savouring furious blessings. And in the savouring and the sacrifice, there’s peace – a ‘universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight – a rich state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Saviour opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights.’ (Cornelius Platinga)

The colour of change

Dear Cam and Scott

If I could paint this half-year, the canvas would be wild happy smudges of bright. There would be bold contrasts and barely discernible threads and shades of anything but grey and way more than fifty. There’d be a landscape of streams running new furrows down green slopes. We’d be standing on a watershed between change and the unknown. Out of breath from the climb. But the view would be worth it.

I can’t paint, so I’ll record for you here with words-on-screen for as long as there’s an internet that it’s been a while since we’ve had a year so rich with change. And I get that we’re only halfway through.

I’ve changed careers and started writing a book and said yes to some dream opportunities, like swinging with you in parks and speaking about you at conferences. Dad will be changing seasons and time zones later this month when he flies across the equator for Lachlan and Analia’s summer wedding in Oregon. We’ve changed a little how we see ourselves and the world because God has lit up for us some Word-truths. We’ve changed church communities. We changed priorities in the time that Uncle Marc was so sick. We’re in the strange exciting limbo of changing homes and praying that all the chickens hatch healthy at the deeds office though we’re trying not to count them. I’ve even changed from Blackberry to Android.

I’ve changed your undies, Scott, dozens of times, because you’re changing out of nappies. In a few weeks you’ll change from a Heavenly Baby into a Heavenly Tot. Our conversations have changed, because the wordgates have opened and you’re gushing unstoppable verbal-ness. Yesterday you and Cam were trying to climb into the car at the same time and Cam kind of bashed you. You said, ‘Easy, Lennie.’ Dad and I say that all the time. It’s what Chandler says to Joey in a Friends episode when Joey is clutching a baby chicken a little too enthusiastically. And it’s from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men which Joey probably hadn’t read and neither have you. But today it was just doubly hilarious and an exquisite example of grace – that dimension in which we confidently live into things we don’t fully understand.

Cam, a couple of weeks ago you changed some of your core beliefs. After a visit to the Eye Institute we had a spontaneous Mom-and-Cam lunch date. You were super chuffed. I had coffee and a chicken mayo. You had chips, a bubble-gum milkshake and the slow dawning of a new world view. This is how the conversation went:

(Silence. Chewing.)

Cam: Is there really an Easter Bunny?

Me: Ummm… (Desperate thinking and praying for wisdom because we’ve vowed always to tell you the absolute truth so that you’ll know you can trust us when others might trick you but we’ve justified Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny through intricate philosophies about the importance of imagination in the texture of a happy childhood.) Do you want the truth, or do you want the fun-pretend-pretend-imaginary-game answer?

Cam: (Thinking.) I want the truth.

Me: No. There isn’t really an Easter Bunny.

Cam: But then how do we get Easter eggs in the garden on Easter morning?

Me: Well… Dad and I get up earlier than you on that Sunday…

Cam: But then where do you get the Easter eggs?

Me: We buy them at the shops.

Cam: But how could you go to the shops to get Easter eggs ‘cause then you would have had to leave me and Scott alone at home.

Me: No, no. There are times when you’re both at school and I can go to the shops alone… you know... and get the Easter eggs.

Cam: (Thinks) Oh. Ok!

(And that’s that. Cam resumes happy focus on the tomato sauce. And somewhere in my heart the door of an era closes quietly.)

And Cam, I do really believe that Jesus is changing your heart. I see how you’re growing in kindness. You didn’t want to tell me that cake sale was your favourite part of the day – as opposed to me fetching you from school – because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings. And when Aunty Kirsty whatsapp’d me to share that Ben had invited Jesus into his heart, I said to you, ‘Cam, you’ve invited Jesus into your heart, right?’ You said, ‘Yes! And I’ve invited him into yours!’

So there it is. Kaleidoscopes of change in all the colours of thanks and shot through with God’s glory.

All my love,

Mom

xx