Of home and heart renovations

Dear Cam and Scott

It’s been almost two months since I last archived your unfolding days because life has been full and frenetic and kind of like scrambling to stay on a treadmill that’s going too fast.

We’re moving in a week. The other night we’d finished bedtime stories and we were waiting for Dad to get home and I put on a CD and we danced wild in the lounge as we have at so many bedtimes and now amidst boxes packed and labelled (sort of) and you both begged me to spin you ‘til we were dizzy. How I’ll miss this lovely home.

Cam, you had squint surgery on your left eye on the 29^th July. Your anxiety over the operation resulted in some off-the-charts whining and tantrum-throwing. But closer to crunch time you showed courage and calm way beyond your years and we were so very proud of you. Your eye is healing beautifully and already we’re seeing a difference and I think you might be, too. Time will tell if and how much this will improve your vision. The other day I asked you how your eye was feeling. You beamed and said, ‘Very good! It’s just a bit achy and scratchy and itchy and stinging but it’s fine!’ Oh, that Jesus would guard your irrepressible optimism as you navigate this crazy life. You are still fascinated by metals (‘Can you cut through copper with an angle grinder?’) and fabrics (‘Mom is this nylon or polyester?’) and army rescue helicopters and offshore lifeboats and box cars and you help me carry groceries in from the car and you get the tomato sauce and mustard out the fridge at suppertime. (Thanks, my brave shining star.) Yesterday at breakfast I could see you weren’t yourself. I asked, ‘Is something making you anxious?’ You replied, ‘Yes. I’m feeling anxious about moving to the new house because I think the lounge won’t look the same.’ Your remarkable ability to articulate your emotions helps us so much to parent you.

Scott, you are potty-trained! Woo hoo! (Insert: our ceremonial celebratory hand ritual: high 5 – low 5 – baby 5 – fist pump – claw!) For sure, life is not without its lavatorial accidents. But the other night we forgot your nappy at bedtime and you slept all night in undies, dry as a desert. And it’s freakin’ fantastic for me to leave the house with only a handbag. You had your first (successful) swimming lesson this week (after an abortive attempt in January). You were so super excited that you put on your costume an hour and a half early. After five minutes in the pool with Coach Bradley you yelled, ‘I swimming like a fish!’ I love the way you say ‘Incredible!’ and the way you hurtle down the passage with absolute purpose. I just adore your snuggles and the way you stroke my cheeks and tell me you love me with ‘even my whole heart!’ and your emphatic declarations of, ‘I – am Mommy’s – LAMB!’ On the way home from school yesterday, Cam reached through the headrest to feel my hair. He said, ‘Your hair looks so silky. It looks like satin.’ You said, ‘No Cammy. She’s not silky. She’s beautiful.’

My boys, you’re growing so fast. And Dad and I have been aware lately that we wouldn’t be doing you any favours by making you out to be holier than you are. So we’re not shying away from showing you your selfish hearts when one of you smacks the other on the head with a plastic axe or when the I-had-it-first battles rage. We never want you to be deluded into thinking that you don’t desperately need the redemption of Christ.

Our new house is being renovated (thanks to Uncle Kean and Aunty Kim – who are selling it to us – big yay!) and if ever I thought that perhaps I should have pursued a career in the construction industry this experience has shown me that that would most certainly have been an epic fail. I strongly – strongly – dislike hardware stores and, if I’m honest, the people who work in them. I suspect this has more to do with me than it has to do with them because aisles and aisles of small metal objects from which I have to select something that will prevent sewerage from coming through a basin drain makes me go into a cold sweat and quite often I end up crying.

An unexpected pleasure has been the catharsis of painting things clean and wheeling away barrow loads of building rubble and miscellaneous garden junk ranging from curious to dangerous. And spending time with Grampa who has done all sorts of snag-listing and fixing and hammering and polite suggesting and life-saving.

The house isn’t quite finished yet, which seriously messes with the straight lines in my head. I’d really like it to be flawless the day we move in so that I never have to go into another hardware store. Ever again. And because I don’t want unfinished projects. I want perfection. But God has been reminding me gently that all four of us are unfinished projects and so actually, why shouldn’t our home reflect that? He’s been whispering about journeys and gratitude and it-is-what-it-is and privilege and first-world problems and letting go.

Still, I do want this move to be wonderful for you both, because chances are (and this is no prediction or guarantee – just a projection of strong probability) the next time you move will be to varsity or your own flat or a home with your bride. Dad and I have always prayed that our home would be safe and simple. Warm and welcoming. Clean and neat (mostly). Beautiful, and always open to you, your friends and any that God chooses to bring. A refuge where you will be free to rest and wrestle as God calls out the men you are to be. A place of peace where Christ is King. We fervently and expectantly pray those things for this next home, too.  

Here are some pics of the last couple of months. (Some of them are sideways and upside down - will try and fix. I blame my new S4. So random. They're all the right way around on my laptop...?)

Love you so, so much, my bears.

Mom

Xx

 Prezzies from Portland

 Our not-yet new kitchen

 Cam and Annabelle

 Botanical gardens with the van Reenens, Simpsons, Earls and Eberleins

 Box construction

 Cake

 Waiting for your op

 Tintin

 Going into theatre

 Visits from Teacher Karen

 Home-schooling

 Nakedness

 Nanna

 Willowgrange

 Lachlan and Analia's SA wedding

 Malanspruit

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

A letter to Scott about why community is crucial

Dear Scott

From time to time we take you to the barber. We love your crazy blonde curls but if we leave them for a couple months you resemble the wild toddler of Borneo.

So today you endured the taming of the locks. It happened like this.

We park outside the barbershop and you say, ‘I still don’t like it!’ I’m calm-on-the-outside and even-keel, coaxing and cajoling. They see us coming –the two girls who work there – and I know they’re mentally preparing. Inside the shop you start screaming. It takes two of them to get me-with-you-clinging into the chair. They put one of those gross shower-curtain hairdresser-cloak thingies over me – a black one – and you – funky jungle theme – but you claw it off and claw at them. I grip you like it’s the days before anaesthetic and they’re about to hack off one of your limbs. You are scarcely breathing from hysteria but you manage to scream unnervingly and unremittingly. And loudly. One of them – the slightly more hardcore one – fires up the clippers [insert sound effect: chain saw] and attacks the luscious flaxen thickets. The other one tries to distract you with her blue bling manicure. The scrum collapses several times and we have to regroup. Eventually it’s a flailing loose maul except there are no gum guards though there probably should be.

When the whistle blows there’s less hair. More snot. I clean you up though we’ll both be itchy until we’ve showered and changed.

And you look gorgeous. Cherub-like. Tiny handsome little man with the smart new haircut. You promptly cheer up. Because the ladies always give you a lollipop when we’re done and we go to the Wimpy for chips – standard Reyburn haircut treat.

But they’ve run out of lollipops. They are mortified! Apologetic! You are nonchalant in a sort of I’ll-be-the-bigger-person way. You forgive and forgo the sucker without frenzy. Possibly you’re just suffering from post-tantrum exhaustion. (You later describe the haircut ordeal to Cammy with animated head gestures: ‘Lady shooting me!’)

I’m getting you back into the car with some groceries when the hardcore one runs out with a cherry fizz pop. She went and bought it for you. She says she hopes you don’t hate her. I give her a hardcore hug.

So this all made me think.

I’ve been given the amazing opportunity to do a course through Regent University on spiritual formation, under the gracious teaching of Dr Corne Bekker. He talks a lot about community and the essential, inevitable role it plays in making us more like Jesus.

It’s like, if I hadn’t taken you to the barber, we would have passed a peaceful Wednesday morning in the playroom. You would have been angelic and engaging and curious and busy and full of kisses. You wouldn’t have had cause to unleash your indignation when your security was threatened. But we can’t live in the playroom. We live in a community. With hair clippers.

Dr Bekker points out that whenever I say ‘Yes’ to any community – church, family, friends, marriage – God will send people my way to reveal things about me. Communities make me bump into all sorts of folks but mostly I just bump into myself. I don’t know the dark depths of my character or my intuitive reactions until I’m backed into a corner or challenged or annoyed or envious.

And the key to being transformed as I live and move through the big and small Venn-diagram communities that make up the patterns of my life is humility.

Which means, as Dr Bekker puts it, that the posture of my heart should be so kind, so honouring, that every handshake or hug or casual ‘Hi’ should say, ‘You’re more important.’

So my bear, the privilege of living in community is that all sorts of people show up to give us a short-back-‘n-sides and almost always it’s when we really don’t want it. And almost always it shows us how much we need Jesus. And almost always it’s a sparkling opportunity to choose a response that will show the world a bit of Jesus. It’s how they will know we are his.

I love you with my whole heart, soft sweet brave child of mine. I’m unspeakably grateful for the privilege of living in community with you. You’re a game changer, my Scott-Scott.

Sleep tight now,

Mom

xx

For Cam: A gross poem about snot

I wrote this today for Cam. He thinks it’s cool so I’m hoping it works on him. You’re welcome to use it if you have a small person in your house already plotting a career in mine engineering…

The story of Jeremy Jot and his green slimy snot

This is the story of Jeremy Jot:

A small sweet boy who ate his snot.

It wasn’t his fault, he told his Mum,

The fault was his fingers, though seldom his thumb.

He found that those fingers, so nimble, so quick,

Would creep up a nostril – and then have a lick!

‘Gross!’ shrieked his mother. ‘That’s horrid!’ she cried.

‘You keep eating snot! Now you must decide!’

‘Decide?’ asked Jerry, ‘Decide about what?’

‘Decide between ice-cream and pizza, and snot!’

Jerry turned pale. What was he to choose?

Which one of those delicacies could he lose?

He slunk out the house and climbed up a tree

Where he sulked and ate snot, with no one to see.

Just before supper Dad gave Mom a wink.

Then he loudly announced, ‘We’ll have pizza, I think!’

Pizza appeared! Dad was magic that way.

There was chicken and pineapple – ham – hooray!

But on Jeremy’s plate? Not one cheesy slice.

Just: ‘Sauce with your snot, or maybe some spice?’

Jerry frowned at his family. This wasn’t fair.

Snot sounded lousy, with pizza to share.

‘Um.’ He said softly and thought for a while.

‘I’m giving up snot,’ he declared with a smile.

‘It’s filthy, not filling, and doesn’t smell good

(Though right up the nose, it definitely should.)

From now on I’m keeping my ten fingers clean –

No slime, no snot, no grime, no green!’

He kept his word, did Jeremy Jot;

He never again went digging for snot.

Instead he ate sausages, yoghurt, beetroot,

Raisins and porridge, carrots and fruit.

And just now and then, just for a treat,

Dad would bring pizza and ice-cream to eat.

So when your fingers creep close to your nose –

Stop! And choose what Jeremy chose!

Cam and Scott teach Mom her ABCs

A is for Accountability

I’m driving to fetch Cam. Scott Backseat-Driver Reyburn is strapped into his toddler seat behind me. There’s a traffic circle and another car and I’m not great with following distance and I brake a little hard. Silence. Then soft rebuke: ‘Careful Mom.’

B is for Balance

Cam wants me to play hiking-hiking. This involves imaginary trails and untold dangers and snacks and river crossings on the lawn. I tell him I’ve got varsity assignments to mark. I’ll be around but I won't be able to play much today. He goes all fists and fury and says, ‘You never hardly ever often play with us anymore!’ So we have a conversation about the wooden spoon. He gets polite again. I play hiking-hiking. The marking grows insidiously on the dining room table. Somehow it gets done.

And I’m astonished again by the hefty weight carried by time and focus and non-measurable results and intangible achievements and immediately unconstructive though eternally fruitful activities involving small growing people, on life’s heaped-heavy swaying-precariously scales of balance.

C is for Comfort

I’m in church at the back with Scott who doesn’t want to go to Sunday School and is cavorting wildly. I start crying during the worship because a close friend is really sick. I pull myself sort-of together because I don’t want to be that woman who weeps during worship. My eyes are sort-of dry and Scott climbs into my lap and cups my face in his chubby hands and says with all his soft heart, ‘You feeling calmer now, Mom?’