Body

The baby is now over a year old, and I’ve been a little frustrated in my (lack of) weight loss. By the time my first baby was a year old, I had lost all the baby weight + twenty-some pounds. I was the skinniest I’d been since puberty, and as someone who’d always felt more than a smidge wider than I wanted, it was amazing. And I lost very nearly that much weight again with my second baby. Breastfeeding was like some kind of magical elixir that gave me the body I’d always imagined (not to mention the fabulous boobs!).

Third baby is different. I lost exactly the baby-related weight over the first nine months (which is to say, down to the weight I was before I got pregnant with my oldest child), and then stopped. I’m over thirty now, which probably has something to do with it, but it’s disappointing.

So the other day I started thinking—maybe I should go about being a little more on-purpose about losing weight? Like, make some kind of plan, set some goals? I know that BMI is a flawed metric, but I figured it would give me some kind of ballpark idea as to what I should be aiming for.

And here’s what it gave me.

Turns out there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my weight. Which seemed odd. So I redid the numbers for my weight this time six years ago, when I had felt so amazing.

Oh.

Knowing that my weight is technically fine doesn’t change my feelings about lumpy squishiness, or my fond memories of that short-lived thigh gap. It does change how I should probably try to deal with it, though. It’s easier for me to give up bedtime snacks, or beer with dinner, or whatever, than it is for me to do something that causes me to sweat or be out of breath, to strengthen and de-squish the muscles in my middle.

And it’s even harder to unlearn that lesson summed up Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller,” to allow myself to take up space on my couch or in my clothes.

Siblings

Yesterday afternoon I was startled by the intensity of a thought that has rarely, if ever, crossed my mind. I wish Queen Mab had a sister. (I blame an onslaught of flowery pink facebook memes on sisterhood for the lapse, and possibly a song from Frozen having got stuck in my head) My childhood memories of having a sister close to my age glowed with rosy nostalgia, and I even briefly imagined generic scenes involving fashion and makeup that had never actually taken place.

All this lasted for approximately three nanoseconds. I love my sister and respect the hell out of her badassery. We could talk on the phone for hours if our children would let us, and I often miss her, since we’ve spent much of our adult lives half a country apart.

And when we lived in the same house we were frequently sick of each other, and there was a simmering rivalry that put an uncomfortable edge on the activities we had in common. We never did each other’s makeup. I’m so glad we have each other, and I’m sure we were an education to each other growing up, too, about getting along with someone who is radically different from you! But there was nothing uniquely magical about the sisterly relationship (my sister does bear a striking resemblance to Anna from Frozen, though).

Queen Mab and the Golden Boy are, as I write this, immersed in some sort of fantastical imaginary landscape deep in the overgrowth wilderness of the back of our yard. They spent hours out there yesterday and will probably do so again today. They wear each other's clothes and shoes and cover for each other while they’re sneaking fistfuls of chocolate chips out of the pantry. If they were any closer, they would be a creepy codependent cult. They’re perfectly capable of making their own magic.

Eulogy

I am ashamed to admit that, for someone who prides herself on having all the best words, I haven’t been able to put them together to give a proper tribute to my Gamaw. I’m like a little kid at the grocery store who’s been separated from her mother. “What’s your mommy’s name, kid?” “Mommy.” “And what does she look like?” “She looks like a Mommy.”

What kind of a person was your Gamaw?

She was a Gamaw-person.

My sister and I looking at Highlights with our Gamaw

It seemed so self-evident that it didn’t occur to me that I should maybe be a little more specific until I was flailing around to explain just who, exactly, I had lost. I listened closely to the eulogy at her funeral, to find the words that I needed to explain her. Hospitality. Listening. Welcoming. Commitment to her family.

She wasn’t particularly religious, though she always asked for someone to pray at mealtimes. She had her own liturgy—restocking the fridge with Pepsi, the freezer with chocolate and lemon pies, serving the grandkids biscuits with honey, then wiping the sticky blinds clean again. Sometimes sundaes—vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and crushed peanuts. She worked in her garden, read a lot of books, and painted folksy designs on the furniture she and my Gapaw sold in their shop. When I was older we—she and I, and later both of us with David—played a lot of Scrabble.

I don't know when this picture was taken--it's at their old house, so at least 20 years old. But this is what my Gapaw and Gamaw will always look like in my head, forever and ever.

Even when she was too tired for long visits with supper and games and dessert, there was always the generous listening. I knew it was safe to talk to her, because I never heard her say anything mean about anyone else, so I knew the things I said would be treated with respect too. She noticed when I had put effort into something I was wearing and told me I looked beautiful. 

Her Highness has my Gamaw's first name.

 Whenever I came to visit after I’d moved away, she would talk about me coming to see her and Gapaw as though I were doing them some tremendous favor. And I would thank her right back, because really, being there felt like she had done me a tremendous favor, too--I felt so very loved. Of course I would be there.

Queen Mab and the Tooth Fairy

Sunday afternoon, Her Highness was getting fidgety in that sort of way that she often does when she needs a nap and therefore won’t stop moving for fear she might accidentally doze off. So we sent her downstairs with strict orders to CHILL OUT AND READ A BOOK OR SOMETHING. David and the boys (who had both already had their afternoon quiet times) went for a walk to enjoy the sunshine, and I made myself some tea.

Or at least, I started to make some tea, but I was interrupted by bloodcurdling screams from downstairs. “MOMMY! MOMMY!!!!!” To be perfectly frank, Mab screams aren’t necessarily a sign of an emergency, so I walked to the top of the stairs and asked what was wrong. She was holding her mouth and crying….and then went back into the bedrooms? Very strange. I went downstairs to her.

“I lost my tooth!” she sobbed, her mouth bloody, and indeed there was no tooth. My stomach backflipped—I hate teeth, especially when there’s blood involved. So I said, “Ok, let’s go to the bathroom,” because if there was going to be blood, the bathroom tiles were the best place for it, and it gave me time to figure out something else responsible and maternal to do about the situation.

But Mab already knew what needed done (thanks to a Fancy Nancy book, I think) and started swishing with cold water. Well that was good. Then she told me she wasn’t sure where the tooth was, but it was probably around *my* bedroom door. She was much happier now.

Um….why was it around my bedroom door?

Well, we got down on our hands and looked, and I pressed her for answers about how and why her tooth was lost next to my door.

“It’s not like I did anything silly like tie my tooth to a string and tie it to the door and shut the door like some people do!” she said, laughing awkwardly.

“Oh?”

She told me that she was just chewing on a string and relaxing and the string just happened to be tied to the door and then her tooth just fell out and then she panicked and hid the string….?

I hadn’t even been aware of her having a tooth that loose. She’d mentioned it to me once, but I’d forgotten because she’s been talking about this or that tooth being loose for months, ever since her friends and cousin started losing teeth over the summer. So I hadn’t thought anything of it.

We put the little tooth in her coin jar.

Then her shiny-stuff-hoarding-dragon-of-a-little-brother got into her money. I rescued the money, but the tooth was lost. She left a note for the tooth fairy,

who understood. I suspect this happens frequently in her line of work.

I felt a little hypocritical about this part, actually—we’ve always been very clear with the kids that Santa is a fun game we play together, and I don’t think we’ve even mentioned the Easter Bunny. But I wasn’t sure what she thought about the tooth fairy.

Mab, as you can maybe tell from her nickname, has had an affinity for fairies ever since her Auntie Kate dubbed her Queen of the Fairies at 6 months old. And as much as I hate tricking my kids into thinking that a red-suited reverse-burglar left them the presents that I purchased for them myself, with things like fairies, I’ve been very non-committal about their existence or lack thereof. I hedge about the impossibility of proving non-existence, but it's probably more to do with secretly hoping fairies do exist.

So I was relieved when one of Mab’s favorite church grownups, Miss Beth, said that Mab had told her that she’d noticed the tooth fairy’s handwriting looked a lot like mine!

I haven’t said anything to her about this. It’s not that I have anything against tooth fairies—it’s that I don’t like the idea of lying to her—playing make-believe *at* her. But playing make-believe *with* her is awesome.

March 15th "sermon"

(preached on March 15^th for Lent Midweek Worship)

Our story connections: Share a story of your spiritual renewal. What is your story from unbelief to belief?

Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
John 3:1-17

So one year for Lent, I gave up church.

I have always been the kind of person who goes to church almost automatically—it’s probably why I ended up moving across the street from one! I just can’t help myself. Our family had invested almost ten years in this particular congregation, both the kids had been baptized there, and so even though none of us were happy, we kept showing up, with two little kids who were constitutionally incapable of sitting quietly with crayons and board books the way all the other kids at church did. I’m pretty sure the record Queen Mab set for the number of times she thrashed herself off the pew or out of our arms and cracked her forehead on the pew in front of us is still standing. And I disagreed with just about everything anyone said, and I resented them for saying it, and I resented their version of God, who seemed so small and petty compared to the massive, beautiful, and totally messed-up world. I decided that even if that God was real, which seemed unlikely at this point, he wasn’t worth worshiping and certainly wasn’t someone I could count on to take care of me—this God was only interested in his own glory, and everyone else could go to hell—you know, if that was what would bring him the most glory. I passed lots of angry notes to David, and after we got home I would gripe all afternoon.

And my husband kept asking me, “Well, why don’t you talk to the pastor about it?” And I would answer, “Because I would just be telling him why I thought everything they do and believe here is wrong, and that doesn’t seem helpful,” “Well, then we could find another church.” “I mean, we could….but….” And actually, we did try one Sunday, and we visited a different church, and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t. I hated church, especially my church, and God looked like nothing more than a particularly vindictive authoritarian character that some guys had invented to keep uppity over-educated women like me in our places who I wanted nothing to do with, but I couldn’t quit. I just kept dragging myself back, Sunday after Sunday, and coming home feeling worse than ever, snarly and resentful. My problem is that I am pathologically law-abiding. If I think I’m expected to do something, I can hardly stop myself from doing it. Even when I don’t believe in the reason for doing it.

One gray, chilly, damp February day—no snow even—just the worst and ugliest kind of late winter, I decided I wasn’t going back. I was going to take a few weeks off and then try the most different church I could find. I wasn’t ready to quit church altogether, but all I could pray was “I do believe. Help my unbelief.” and sometimes even that felt a little over confident. I had never gone to a church that followed the church calendar beyond maybe Christmas and Easter, so I only discovered later that it had been Ash Wednesday when I decided to quit.

I didn’t tell anyone at church that I wasn’t coming back. I just ghosted them, even our midweek Bible study attended by my favorite people at church, who tolerated and sometimes, I think, even welcomed our pointed questions. That's a thing I regret.

But that first Sunday morning, waking up and neither scrambling to get ready for a church service I didn’t want to go to nor feeling guilty for not going—just laying bed as long as we wanted (or I guess, as long as our kids let us) and having a lazy breakfast—was amazing. I felt weightless. I wasn’t constantly arguing in my head about what God was like—I didn’t even have to bother to worry about whether or not I actually thought there was a God. Something told me that, whatever the truth was, it was going to be ok.

After sleeping in for a few Sundays, we went to the Episcopal church down the street—that was the most different thing I could find to our old church. They were marking Rose Sunday, which is the halfway point in Lent, so everything was “rose,” and by rose I mean magenta—the paraments were magenta, the vestments were magenta—Mab’s eyes were huge!—she and the priests matched. It was the most flamboyant Welcome To Our Annual Contemplation of the Sin and Brokenness of the World that I’ve ever seen.

So there, in the middle of all this high-level churchy stuff—they had everything but incense—which was so totally foreign to me in every way—I wasn’t arguing anymore. Maybe I was just overwhelmed by the color and pageantry. But we went back the next week, when everything was now purple, and the next. And the God they described wasn’t nearly as grouchy and vindictive as the one I had been railing against for way too long, though while I certainly liked this God better, I kind of suspected that he might just be wishful thinking on their part. But now that my brain had sort of quieted itself down and didn’t feel the need to shout “WRONG!” every few minutes (in my head, of course, not out loud!), God started whispering in my ear. Just a little, once in awhile.

Especially right before communion, and I should point out that we almost never took communion at our old church, because they only had it quarterly, on Sunday nights. They were afraid that if you didn’t believe the right things, you would end up eating and drinking judgment on yourself, so the elders always wanted to talk to visitors beforehand, just to be safe, and this was easier to arrange on Sunday nights. But Sunday nights with our children weren’t really conducive to going out to a SECOND church service, so we usually skipped. And then I’d quit believing the right things, so I quit trying. Or rather, I’d stopped feeling guilty about not trying.

But now, every Sunday the priest would welcome the congregation to the table with the same words:

This is the table, not of the Church, but of God.
It is to be made ready for those who love God
and who want to love God more.

So, come, you who have much faith and you who have little,
you who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time,
you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come, not because I invite you: it is God, and it is God’s will
that you who want God should meet God here.

Hearing this welcome every Sunday morning, I wasn’t sure if I believed in God, but I sure did want God. And it was a relief to hear that I didn’t have to have faith to be welcome. But I wouldn’t get in line, because the flip side of being the kind of person who is obsessed with fulfilling obligations and following the rules is being the kind of person who is paralyzed with terror at trying something new and breaking some secret unwritten rule that will doom me forever. I even signed out a book from the little book cart in their fellowship room that was something like, “How to be a convincing Episcopalian” and I memorized the section with the little diagrams about how to take communion.

But I was still terrified that I didn’t really belong, and that it wasn’t for me, and it was easier to just observe from our back corner, instead of gathering up the kids and herding them down the aisle and through the line—because of course no way were we going to leave three year old Mab in the pew by herself! I wasn’t convinced that this thing that might not even really be for me was worth risking the scene of me doing it wrong or a child breaking free and crashing the beautiful altar with all the candles and that super fancy purple tablecloth.

The Maundy Thursday service, though, was a potluck, because Last Supper, held in the fellowship room instead of the sanctuary. Everyone filled plates and sat around big round tables with ordinary, slightly stained white tablecloths, and all the kids, including Her Highness, vanished pretty early on to go play. We were with some friends from grad school, and there was good food, and great conversation, and then a service while we were still at the tables. Though by the time we got to communion, the Golden Boy, who was about the Caeterpie’s age, had gotten squirmy and kind of squawky, so I was pacing around the edge of the room with him in the carrier. It felt like a good place to watch without being conspicuous about not getting in line.

And as people were lining up, I saw, at the front of the line, Queen Mab. Of course I started to panic, like ya do when you suddenly see your kid doing the thing that you’re afraid to do yourself. She must have been watching the priests’ kids she had been tagging along with, and she put out her hand with total faith that this was hers and she belonged there and she took that little gluten-free wafer—

so I got in line too.

Community and etymology

So first off, here is a good song for Advent, when we look towards a promise and a world that seems too good to ever come true.

I didn’t make it to the midweek Advent service this week, because Sleepy (Grouchy) Children. But I did have a wonderful conversation with Pastor Elaina over coffee about building community, which is a way we can see, dimly and imperfectly, a bit of that promised world. Specifically, we talked about eating together.

Remember the story “Stone Soup”? Where everyone was afraid they didn’t have enough, and so they hid and hoarded it, until finally they were persuaded to share, and suddenly there was abundance. In the church newsletter, Pastor Elaina wrote about this contrast between our fear of scarcity and the abundance of God, in which 2+2 doesn’t equal 4, but 100. And when we each bring our little bit and pool them all together, suddenly there’s more than enough. Like loaves and fishes.

In many cultures, the role of the host of a feast is deeply significant--remember the panic at the wedding of Cana, when they ran out of wine? It’s a matter of honor to be able to provide for your guests, and the guests in turn are expected render honor to the host (hence Sir Gawain’s infamous quandary in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). Our modern English words “lady” and “lord” are derived from Old English “hlaf”--loaf. Lord comes from “hlāford,” which in turn came “hlāf-weard”--bread-keeper. Lady comes from “hlæfdīge”--bread-kneader. Basically, the most prominent members of the community were those who provided food for the others and hosted the feasts.

So what happens when we all feed each other, at a potluck or pitch-in? When we each bring a little something, and lay everything out on long tables--casseroles and chicken wings and salads and the bag of chips we grabbed on the way because we didn’t have the energy to cook--the feast multiplies, and so does the honor we owe to each other.

Later in the day after that coffee conversation, I came across this post--it’s mostly about current political events, but I was struck by the repeated phrase “the kindness of cooks”--this conviction that there is something inherently generous in the act of cooking for someone else, and that this is reflected in the character of those who make a habit of it, that they are the kind of people who won’t support hatred or discrimination. Obviously this isn’t necessarily true, but it tells us something about the power of feeding our neighbors with the best we can provide for them.

There’s a reason that Jesus told so many parables about parties and feasts to describe the Kingdom--wedding feasts, celebrations of finding lost sheep and lost sons. Eating together, feeding each other, sounds like a good place to start when it comes to (re)building communities in a time when we’re fractured and broken.

Afraid of hope

Tomorrow begins the second week of Advent, the season when we wait, peering into the darkness for the quiet, secretive entrance of the light. During the midweek Advent service on Wednesday, the Gospel reading was Luke 1:5-20, about Zechariah’s encounter with Gabriel while he was offering incense in the Temple. Instead of a sermon, we took time to reflect on the story with the help of some questions in the bulletin.

The first question was “What do you think Zechariah was afraid of?” The congregation’s discussion afterwards focused on Zechariah’s very understandable terror when Gabriel first appeared (if it were me, I would have been afraid I had been caught inadvertently offering the incense wrong or something), but my mind immediately went to the next part of the story.

It seemed to me that fear was also the reason that Zechariah doubted the angel--fear of getting his hopes up. Because he and Elizabeth had experienced decades of disappointment already--hoping for a baby, then being crushed. Over and over, with every randomly nauseous morning or late cycle, until they just couldn’t take it one more time. And now that they were old, perhaps it was almost a relief to have put it behind them and know for sure that that particular door had really and truly been locked and sealed shut, and they never had to think about it again. And then God took him by the hand and led him back to that bricked-over door and said, "No really, I'm going to open it." No wonder he didn't welcome the promise. To be disappointed one more time would have destroyed him.

That’s Advent, though. Sitting here in the dark, where we’ve been squinting into the blackness so long, imagining that we see the first glow of dawn when it’s really only in our own eyes, that we can no longer believe that light will actually ever come. Zechariah and Elizabeth were living under an oppressive foreign government, waiting for God to fulfill the promise to free them and restore the true king to the throne, but all they had was a puppet king. Just when we start to hope that maybe love and community and honest efforts to listen to our neighbors really might be more powerful than fear and violence and willful ignorance, we’re crushed to discover that disgust and ignorance are winning out again. We were promised that Jesus would return and bring in the kingdom of God and restore everything that has been broken or lost, but it’s been a couple millennia now.

The darkness is so heavy it can leave you speechless sometimes, because you can’t bring yourself to repeat those promises of hope that have been made to look like lies so many times before. I sometimes think that the silence imposed on Zechariah was a gift, because he couldn’t try to argue about it or make up justifications or excuses. He just had to sit there in the dark and listen.