And Justice for All

Claire is borderline obsessed with fairness. I'm going borderline insane trying to teach her the world cares little about that, but she doesn't waiver: "She got to hang out with friends for 3.5 more minutes than I did this week." "Her piece is a millimeter larger than mine." "I'm stuck washing 2 more spoons than she had to."

Second verse, same as the first. Times infinity.

She gets it from me. I need to own that. Because I need the world to be fair. It's up there in importance with oxygen and water. I need karma to stay on top of its game. I need the universe to do its thing and right the wrongs and ensure those who do good, receive good. I need the jerks to constantly get pulled over for speeding and get tickets every time. That's how it should work. Except it rarely does.

I've lived enough years to see the opposite happen, and often. The unethical ones prosper. The secretly evil ones get ahead. The worst have the best heaped upon them. I can't quite square that in my mind. In fact, I obsess over the unfairness of it all. It's the stuff that keeps me up at night.

And it's equally infuriating both ways. The kindest people seemed to be served the cruelest hand. The most humble catch all the worst breaks. The best have the worst heaped upon them.

How do you reconcile a world that operates that way? How does one live with a broken record of injustice?

I am flawed. Times infinity. I'm right in the middle of that best/worst pack. I am not unethical, but I sneak candy into movie theaters. I'm not the kindest, but I do love to occasionally serve others.  I demand patience and perfection and honesty from everyone I meet, but often fail to deliver those myself. And oddly, I think the world has been quite fair to me. Maybe too much so. Just not to those I love. Which is probably the universe's way of punishing me for all those times I peed in the pool growing up even though the sign clearly stated "There's no 'P' in our OOL, let's keep it that way."

Silliness aside, it's excruciating to watch those you love most suffer when it's not deserved. I want to rattle the universe and demand answers. I've screamed for fairness, shouted until I was hoarse, wrongly believing that if they could just hear me, they would see the goodness and understand. But there seems to be little connection between what is deserved and what is dished.

Perhaps the problem lies in my core belief that life should be what you make of it.  That if you work hard, if you are honest and live with integrity, life should be good for you. The end. Should I lower my standards? Is that a pipe dream? Is that not in fact how the world operates and I've been too busy obsessing over the fairness of all of it to notice? Do good guys truly finish last?

If so, I want no part of that. I want to live the life inside my head, the one with a utopian flare perhaps. Now don't misunderstand. I'm not talking politics or Universal Health Care or Socialism. I'm talking you get what you give. I'm talking one of the sweetest women I know battling an unrelenting, incurable disease. I'm talking the devastating house fire of the already struggling, hardworking single mother. I'm talking the infertility of the most patient friend, who would run circles around me as a mother if she were only given the chance. I'm talking the family that lost their daddy to cancer in my hometown the same month as the family halfway across the country lost their cuddly toddler to the same disease.

I don't wish those things on anyone, even the cruelest of the cruel. But certainly the kindest of the kind should get some sort of free pass, right? They shouldn't be the ones wading through the heaviest stuff while the meanies get off scot-free. I don't like living in a world where that's so.

The most telling thing is, when I watch the ones the world dumps on, the ones that can't catch a break even if it's throw by Nolan Ryan himself, they aren't lying in bed plotting revenge. They aren't wallowing in the fact they are never the windshield, always the bug. They are just playing the hand they've been dealt—rarely complaining or asking "why me?" And they are some of the happiest people I know.

I've studied them. I've tried to emulate them. But I'm not built that way. I'm the type that believes that "and justice for all" bit. So if you need me, I'll be over here planning retaliation against the guy whose piece was a millimeter larger than mine, and then yelling at Claire for doing the same.

Hypocrites, the F-word, and Me

She lifted her shirt slightly to reveal the flowery bathing suit covering her stomach. She fiddled her fingers over the slick fabric and hesitated. Her 13-year-old figure, not child, not yet woman, was causing her to question the removal of her shirt, preventing her from scampering away to join her friends in the water. I had taken a group of my daughters' friends on an overnight adventure to an amusement/water park for a few days of make-your-heart-skip excitement. For a couple of them, this newly-minted teen included, this was their first-ever amusement park experience. What should have been a moment of sheer joy, the tickle-your-stomach type typically brought on by new adventures such as this, was overshadowed by a conflicted feeling of self-loathing. It was apparent this was not the first time she'd let the perceived appearance of her body give her pause.

I looked her straight in the eye, set my chin, and hoped that the words forming in my mind would tumble out coherently—that they would pierce that doubt, firm on her face, and she would see herself as she truly was, and not through the impossible worldly lens.

"You are gorgeous. Every bit of you. Your outsides and your insides. You are beautiful. I want you to believe that."

"I wish I could," she replied. And my heart broke.

She is not my child, but my child might be her someday. A week into her teens, Cora doesn't internalize the opinions of others. Yet. The world will ensure that time will come.

Claire, a few years removed, has made remarks about her body that always turn out to be observations only, lacking in the negative connotations those statements typically carry. She, at a young ten years old, has no problem strutting around in her bathing suit, pulled taut over her round belly. That she should be concerned about the opinions of others seems laughable to her. But that blissful ignorance won't be allowed for long.

Standing there with the heat beating down on her sunscreen smeared face, my daughter's friend had already been conditioned to care. Not by her parents. I know them well. They had done everything in their power to instill confidence in her. Not by her friends; they mimicked my opinion of her beauty and were not afraid to say it out loud. Somewhere, maybe in some magazine she flipped through filled with airbrushed versions of reality, she learned she was not good enough. Maybe it was the fit and polished Stepford woman who flashed across the ads on her TV screen, beckoning her to find happiness and acceptance through perfected looks. Maybe it was the stick-thin models who walked the runway, or the straight-teethed female with a flawless figure that hung high on billboards across the city, or the crop-topped teen with chiseled abs that stared at her from the cover of every catalog delivered to her mailbox.

From a thousand places or maybe just one, the belief that her appearance dictated the opinion of others had filtered in. And the world did everything in its power to back that belief at every turn. I unknowingly did, too.

I wanted to fight it, make her see what I saw. But I WAS her. At 5'5, 105 toned pounds, I kept my shirt on at the public pool because I was terrified of the judgement I'd receive otherwise. I was 13. In my childhood bedroom, Scotch-taped to a wall, was a Polaroid of me beaming proudly up at the camera, a handful of gold swimming medals clanking in my hands. The bottom of that photo was missing. I had taken a pair of scissors to it to crop out my thighs, the powerful thighs that made those medals possible.

There's much from my childhood I don't remember, but I remember my 8th grade Home Ec. teacher making a comment about me filling my plate with a second helping of chips at our end-of-the-year potluck. The class laughed and I returned to my seat, the chip already in my mouth turning soggy as I froze in place, refusing to be seen chewing. That plate remained untouched and found its way to the trash bin. She made that comment because I was so thin. I'm sure she thought there was no harm in it. Just as my high school drama teacher must have thought when she directed a rehearsing group on stage to scoot to the side to "let the little fat one in." I was not fat. She knew that, so she felt a comment like that would roll off my back. Clearly I would hear the irony in it and laugh as the other students did—I was Barbie-thin after all. But what I heard was a repeat of that Home Economics teacher's belief.

I was fat. These important women thought I ate too much, thought I was overweight.

I know now that is nonsense, but at 13, I didn't have the mental capacity to view myself through that lens. Their words mattered, and my nonexistent self-esteem twisted them to fit that narrative. I had to choose my words carefully so they were not up for interpretation.

"Do you see these thighs?" I asked her. "They are large and they are strong and I'm so grateful for them. My boobs are saggy, but I like them. My chin doubles when I laugh and I love it. I'm lucky to have this body that lets me chase after you guys at this park. I'm not the size the world says I should be, but I am the size I say I should be. And that's all that matters. That's it. What YOU think. People will look at you through the years and judge you. Don't give them your time. Seriously, don't. Because you will find people who love every inch of you and teach you to do the same. Those are the people you should cling to."

She cautiously removed her shirt, tossed it on the lounge chair, and linked arms with Cora as she dragged her into the pool.

"My mom is always saying that stuff," Cora laughed over her shoulder. "You'll get used to it."

They left me there to think about how hypocritical my statement was.  I didn't believe the words I was pleading with her to believe. Because the very world that was warping her opinion of herself had, years ago, worn me down. I cringed in the mirror. I hated taking my shirt off at the pool. I despised the way my stomach rolled over the top of my jeans. And I lied about that daily. To my kids. To my friends. To myself.

I have been really fit. I have been really fat. I have been really strong. I have eaten healthy and gorged myself and lived on lettuce leaves and battled a vicious and relentless eating disorder. I have been all over the map and back again. How could I stand before her and tell her it would all be okay when I knew the way the society works? I knew how differently people greeted me when I was flaunting a bikini, firm abs on full display. I knew the shift in eye contact when my thighs stretched my jeans thin. I knew the correlation between the compliments on my looks and the shrinking number on the scale. I knew how my self-worth was tied to those compliments. I was a strong, independent woman who, most days, thought I was awesome. But I ate up every single word of praise, regardless of how shallow. As the pounds piled on though, the remarks shifted from, "You look incredible," to "Those shoes are incredible." They became impersonal, always about things. That told me that my worth was directly tied to my weight.

That is how we are conditioned to react. When someone loses weight, we fawn over them, beg them for their secrets. When someone gains weight, we seal our lips. I am guilty of that. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who isn't. Because we live in an age where only one body type is beautiful, regardless of the movement pleading with us to think otherwise. There's the social media shift from fat-shaming to body-acceptance—like fat is a thing we need permission to accept. We should never have to beg for our bodies to be accepted.

So I said all of those hypocritical things to her because they were the right things to say. Because maybe they'll help, maybe just for a moment. And I said those things because I couldn't tell her that for her entire life, she would be made to feel less-than because of her size and I didn't have a clue how to stop it. And I said those things out of hope that if I kept saying them, if I repeated them over and over, I'd will them to be true. If I can get her to believe them, if I can get my daughters to believe them, maybe then I will believe them.

Is there harm in that hope, in that hypocrisy? Should we keep shouting those words louder and louder until the world hears? Or will they continue to fall on deaf ears as we compliment shoes and unintentionally perpetuate the problem?

Unpacking

The paper was faded with creased edges from its years at the bottom of a box full of stale memories. The family drawn on that dusty picture was intact in crayon form only, having crumbled years before its inception—unbeknownst to the innocent tow-headed 3-year-old artist who penned it. The picture was nothing extraordinary; the typical waxy etchings of a toddler with a penchant for scribbles. A daddy, a mommy, and a small child with spider fingers longer than her torso. They all shared similar features: a lopsided oval for a head and some disproportionately long stick arms that joined together in an attempt to connect the disconnected. In a small corner on the back, my mom's perfect penmanship noted I was the hand behind the masterpiece.

It was my family, or at least the desired family of my childhood self. I never knew that family; even the idea of it is laughable.

I stood shoulder to shoulder with my mom and my kid sister this past weekend as we sorted through 30 plus years of memories, stashed away in cardboard, sealed, often with reason, beneath crunchy packing tape. We laughed over faulty junior high wardrobe choices, oohed and ahhed over tiny baby shoes,  and squealed like the children who wore said outfits when we were outnumbered by burrowing mice and wicked spiders.

My entire life, from birth to present day, unraveled on a cold, plastic card table. I thumbed over a tiny bundle of my silky blonde locks, remnants of my first hair cut (and second and third and, okay Mom, it's now clear you need an intervention) and smiled at newspaper clippings announcing my perfect attendance. I sneakily tossed warning letters sent from overbearing high school English teachers about how my choice of friends was preventing me from living up to my full potential, laughing at the realization that said letter could no longer land me grounded on a Friday night.

Unpacking those letters, reliving my childhood, that was heavy. Almost every last memory involved my family, and that family looked nothing like that folded drawing begged it to be.

My father abandoned his family. He abandoned me. In his death, I chose to ignore that and only remember the very best parts of him. This weekend screamed at me to remember the whole him. Because I am him. I am the very best of him on occasion, but I realized as I poured over letters and gobbled up journal entries, I am mostly the very worst. And that's okay.

The last conversation I had with my father was the weekend of Cora's baby shower. My sisters and my step mom were busy trying (and failing) to mimic Michelle Kwan's moves out on the ice rink, while my father hung back with the daughter whose stomach was preventing her from even seeing her toes, much less attempting a toe pick. In between his promises to buy his first grandbaby a pony, or five, we had the most honest conversation of our tumultuous relationship. I am grateful everyday for the words he said that day.

"I'm going to do it differently this time."

He was talking about righting wrongs by being present in Cora's life. I knew he meant it. His words were not the hollow promises I had grown to expect. I sensed remorse and sorrow. And I forgave him then. For all of it. Even though he never asked for my forgiveness.

That lesson then was an important one. He was a flawed man. He was selfish and narcissistic. He was a terrible father who could not align his deep love for his family with his actions. Yet I loved him with a fierceness that could not be faked, and I would have gone on loving him, even if he had never changed a thing. It's that natural, honest, innocent love that, try as you might, you can't turn off.

And so, during that last conversation, when he recognized a life full of parenting missteps and vowed not to repeat them on the bouncing baby growing strong as she stretched my belly wide, I believed him.

As humans, we are a mess of very good and very rough. We are constantly fumbling and course correcting and failing endlessly. We glimpse beauty and toughness and kindness and dishonesty all at once, every time we glance in the mirror; we are a mix of amazing and imperfect crammed into one.

I am all the worst of my father. Some days. I am also all the best of him. But when I am his bad bits that have morphed and become my bad bits, I just have to shake myself and remember, "I'm going to do it differently this time."

There is beauty in forgiveness. There is freedom in recognizing that a person is imperfect.

As I parent my two bright-eyed babies, daughters who have crayon scribbled beliefs of what their perfect family looks like, I owe so much of how I raise them to my father. He taught me to be okay with seeing the very worst in someone, in myself, and loving them anyway. He taught me, in a very honest way, how not to parent.

In 30 years, when my daughters unpack their boxes full of memories, the hope is they will not be unpacking years of baggage, too. But if they do, I hope they know that for as many messes as we make, as many messes as we are, second chances exist.

Since my father is not here for his second chance, I honor him by doing it differently this time.

Losing My Religion

I grew up in Mormon churches. I played hide and seek in forbidden chapels, curling up under pews and relishing in the comfortable air of all of it. I sucked on dirty nursery toys, screamed "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" with all the gusto my little 3-year-old body could muster, and shined my green shield CTR ring like a super hero. I had my first "birds and bees" talk while spinning in circles in the comfortable rocker only found in the Mother's Lounge, surrounded by my fellow Merry Miss class, now wide-eyed and speechless, unsure of how to make the shocking things we were learning mesh with the immature Blazer boys we were secretly in love with.

It was within those walls I learned to pray, learned to serve others, learned to dance. Those chapels, those familiar meeting houses with square-cubbied rooms and stale smelling kitchens, felt like home to me. So when my parents forced us to permanently pack up the only life we'd ever known and U-haul it across the country from sunny Arizona to a po-dunk Idaho town, I found so much solace in the sameness of the chapel, the solidness of the church there. The carpet looked the same. The structure, the lessons, the hymn books, the feel of the hard pew against my back was the same as I settled nervously into it and stared out into the unknown. I didn't know a soul, yet I felt I had a built-in community; I was in a sea of strangers, but I didn't feel alone.

That is what the LDS religion does well. They rally. They serve. They reach out. And growing up on the inside of that, there was so much comfort in all of those things. And then one day I walked into a chapel and felt unwelcome. And not just unwelcome, I felt I had entered into hostile territory. But let me back up.

In a Sunday School lesson during my teenage years, our teacher brought in a bunch of wallet-sized pictures of various temples spanning the globe and asked us to pick one. Where would we be married one day? Would we go the traditional route and choose Salt Lake City? Would we go with something familiar like Boise? Or would we go with aesthetics like I did, choosing the San Diego temple as the only place worthy of my wedding vows? I kept that card in my scriptures for months and then transferred it to my bathroom mirror; a constant reminder of what I was striving for, the only acceptable location for my "Happily Ever After."

And then I met Mark. He was handsome -- all broad shoulders and quick smiles. He was good and valiant and all of the things I'd heard mention of through the years, spoken by various suits behind the pulpit.

You must marry a worthy young man. Check.
He must love his mother. Check.
He must adore you. Check.
He must be a hard worker. Check.
He must love kids and be kind to others and be driven and be humble and make you laugh. Check and check.
He must be able to take you to the temple. Hmmm.

He wasn't LDS and after many a late night talk, I knew he would never be. I had to decide if all that he was, all of the very best of him, was enough for me to overlook the one thing I thought most important in finding a spouse. And it was.

I never even hesitated.

I loved him completely and he made so much sense in my life. He made me happy, and he made my world come into focus. A life without him was unacceptable. It was not a path I was willing to go down. And I knew everyone else would see that, too. I knew all of my past Young Women's leaders and my very best church friends, well, certainly they would see what I saw. And they would love me and support me and invite me to sit beside them, with a shiny new ring on my finger but without a husband seated in the pew beside me. Surely they would support my decision.

They did not. As soon as we spoke our "I do's," my world shifted. For years I had been questioning the core of the Mormon religion. The more I studied, the more my testimony began unraveling. When I brought up those questions, I was told to pray harder to the very God I was uncertain of. So very slowly I began to back away from Mormon theology and cling to the Mormon people, the Mormon culture.

I still showed up every Sunday because my religion was so deeply embedded in my identity, I didn't know how to be me without it. It was all I knew. And that seemed to be enough. I didn't relish in the teachings, but rather the community. Until that very community turned on me, and I was left broken and confused.

My non-temple marriage put on display the cracks in my testimony's once firm foundation. Overnight I went from simply being Amber, to being a member that needed fixing. My marriage was discussed in Ward Counsel on Sundays, people began to befriend my husband solely for the purpose of converting him. I was counseled on how to go about convincing my husband to be baptized, given methods to "change his heart."

I furiously pushed back. Mark was not a broken man in need of fixing. His life, our life, was not lacking because he was not a member of the church. I was not misguided because I made a choice not in line with the cut and dry teachings of  "the gospel." I was a smart girl who made a smart choice. I knew marrying Mark was the best decision I'd ever made, and to have not only that decision but my husband as a person repeatedly questioned made me angry. I screamed that I did not want to change him, but my words fell on deaf ears. I blinked and I became an outsider.

I saw the church through fresh eyes, and my heart was broken. The church of my childhood dissolved into a foggy memory. That church, the very church that claimed to be so accepting, so welcoming, so determined to bring truth and righteousness to the world, was anything but. I had repeatedly been told that the members might not be perfect, the people might not be perfect, but the gospel was. I had long since turned my back on that gospel, believing the church to be as untrue as members believed it to be true -- so the people, the members were all I had left.

When I became a project to them, friends and acquaintances alike, when people started treating me with kid gloves, when my non-temple marriage and non-member husband became the most important things about me, that was when I had reached my limit. There was nothing left for me within the walls of the very church that had raised me. So I walked away.

I have never regretted that choice, but I do miss that sense of community. I miss being an insider. I miss the rallying and the service and the safety net. It is difficult to recreate those large-scale things without a large-scale following. I miss the memories. I miss the familiarity, but I do not miss the church.

I do not miss the guilt. I do not miss the structured life. I do not miss the condescending and entitled views of so many. I do not miss being viewed as unworthy. I do not miss feeling judged. I do not miss many of the teachings I believe to be backward and narrow. I do not miss the agony I felt growing up believing I was never good enough, never pure enough. I do not miss my religion.

I know the LDS church is many great and wonderful things. I know it is filled with many great and wonderful people. I know it is strictly followed and revered by many great and wonderful believers. There is good there. But those great and wonderful things never made my life great and wonderful. They made my life a struggle; they made my life hard. They did not fill me with joy, but rather anguish. I do not wish that life on anyone.

But if all those great and wonderful things make your life just that, I will support your choice. I will not question your reasons because they are not my reasons. I will not question your happiness because it is not my happiness. But I would plead with you to, in return, respect my choice. Please know that this religion-free life I lead is a full one. It is an amazing one. It is a happy one. And isn't that what we are all striving for?

And I would also beg you to see people like me as just that. People. When someone walks into a meetinghouse, Mormon, Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise, they have consciously chosen to be there. Please just love them. Do not place conditions on that acceptance, do not make them a project, do not try to change them. Just let them be present there for whatever reasons they need. Let them find the solace in those walls that I once felt. And let them do that without judgment of any kind. They might be searching for religion or they might just be searching for a community. Please do not let their reasons or their beliefs shape your behavior towards them.

Treat them with the same respect you would the sister you stood shoulder to shoulder with in the temple. Treat them with the same kindness as the brother who passes the sacrament on Sunday. Treat them as an equal, regardless of what you know or think you know about them and their journey. You cannot know their heart but you can welcome them into your community without question. That should be the ultimate goal -- Mormon and non-Mormon alike.

I Promise I Love You, But (A Letter to a Girl on Her 9th Birthday)

To My Sweet Claire,

If you rifle through the hangers in my closet, you'll find a navy blue polo I bought at the Gap a few weeks after graduating from high school. As Gap shirts go, it didn't suck up my entire $4.25/hour paycheck earned as a meager A&W carhop, but it came close. There is nothing particularly remarkable about this well-worn shirt, aside from its age; it was purchased in 1997. It was also the shirt I chose to throw over my burgeoning belly before walking out into that crisp, predawn morning on my way to the hospital to have you plucked from my stomach like clockwork.

That shirt was on my mind as Daddy drove us; him talking about precious cargo and putting bets on your hair color, and me thinking about that silly now 18-year-old polo shirt. How I, as an awkward 17-year-old with a full scholarship as my ticket out of Dodge, could not have imagined that shirt would accompany me through the labor and delivery doors, as I waddled in to give birth to you, my spunky second child.

My thoughts should probably have been on you, but they were tangled up in a shirt. That my thoughts weren't on you didn't mean I didn't love you, it just meant I was terribly nervous to go under the knife, the only way my body lets babies enter this world.

You see, I have loved you every second of every day since you burst onto our scene. But there will be times you doubt that. You will be huddled on a bed around a giggly, intertwined mess of limbs at a slumber party years from now, and someone will inevitably pull out their baby book.

You don't have one. Not for your first year and not for a single year after that. The one you flip through might make you long for a perfectly pasted trip down memory lane like your friends have, all bound and stickered and exacto'd to perfection. That you won't have one doesn't mean I didn't love you, it just means I was not a Pinterest mom and there is little hope you will be either. Like mother, like daughter. You're welcome.

Your memories will be pictures stuffed in a box, not sorted, some edges stuck together. And that is if you get lucky enough to catch me on a good day when I finally remember my Shutterfly password and order some prints. Otherwise, they will stay hidden on a thumb drive that you may have to take down to some ancient computer store and beg the bored store clerk to help you salvage, since I'm assuming thumb drives will be obsolete by then.

And those Kodak prints will prove you had some good times; you were the happiest little wild-haired thing. But I yelled at you. A lot. Screamed sometimes. That screaming didn't mean I didn't love you. It just meant I was human, and secretly cursing whatever Karma Gods gifted me with a child as stubborn as I was. You know what they say about payback.

Well, you don't. Because you're 9. But you will, sweet child. One day, when you are bouncing a small sprite of your own on your spit-up riddled knee and wondering what you ever did to deserve a child who cries as if to mock you, well, then you will know. And I will take that beautiful child off your hands when you call grandma to the rescue, but I will also be glad you know.  Wanting you to know doesn't mean I don't love you, it just means I want all the very best things in life for you, and I know that sometimes struggling is the only way to make you strong enough to receive them.

I might be mean sometimes. I might binge watch Friday Night Lights instead of playing another round of Trouble with you. I might make you eat your green beans and never buy you Ramen. Or I might buy you high-fructose-coated breakfast cereal because I'm too lazy to make you pancakes. It doesn't mean I don't love you, it simply means we are on this journey together, you and I. I've never been your mother before and I don't really know how to do it best, do it right.

But I love you. Man, how I love you. I love you for the way you still, all 9 years of you, crawl into my lap and curl your head beneath the safety of my chin. I love how playful you are and how your giggle ricochets off your bedroom door when you are reading past lights out. And then how you stay perfectly still and silent, taking in every word of anger I throw at you when I discover your book sneaking ways. I love how eager you are for adventure and how you love to destroy the kitchen with a failed audition tape for Cupcake Wars.

I love you even when you make me crazy. I love you even when you exhaust me. I love you even when I am threatening to send you to your room until your 18th birthday.

Every mistake. Every joy. Every misstep. It's you and me kid. I will love you through it all.

Promise.

Heaps of love to you my sparkly 9-year-old,

Mommy

Why I Stopped Playing with My Kids

We are tearing down the playroom bit by bit with an end goal of transforming it into a more functional art room. My babies are no longer babies (there's a confusingly simultaneous *sniff, sniff* and *hallelujah* happening as a result), so the playroom has become a ghost town as of late.

I have grandiose plans. Chew all the coolest bits of Pinterest up and spit them out, and that's only a fraction of how rad the room looks in my mind. Martha Stewart would bow to me. Truth time? It will probably look more like a 2nd grade boy designed it when I'm done. That's reality's cruel way of reminding me I don't have a crafty bone in my body. Pinterest and I never even made it through our 1st date before breaking up for that very reason. That's neither here nor there. The point is the new fancy schmancy feng shui craft room will corral their markerspaintscrapbookjunkityjunk in one place and keep it off my kitchen table forever (because if I have to pick one more crayon out of my dustpan pile after I rescue it from under the table leg, sohelpme).

So we're ridding the playroom of stuff. All stuff, but mostly toy stuff. And as I sort toys and toss them into the appropriate bin (trash, megatrash or donate), I am struck by how few of those toys I've ever laid hands on. Might have something to do with the fact that I stopped playing with my kids long ago.

True story.

Tea parties gave me hives. Mommy, you are the baby, no kitty, no baby kitty and you have to meow, wait cry, well kinda coooo and then we will give you tea but you have to wait for your tea until we dress and undress and redress every stuffed animal ever manufactured in the state of Idaho and prep them for the tea that they can't actually drink unless Claire pries open their sewed-shut mouths and drenches them with it and, wait, Mommy, you can't be sleeping because the kitty is sleeping and you are not the kitty, wait are you the kitty?

I'd take a repeated ride on a sliver-filled water slide over that nonsense.

Oh, I'd play pretend. Nothing less than Oscar worthy performances, if say, Oscars were given out to Paris Hilton and the like with equal acting chops. For years I participated in fashion shows and make-believe schools and was an obedient student/baby/neighbor/goat during school/circus/daycare/zoo time. And for years I'd want to claw my eyes out, which I never did because then I wouldn't be able to watch the minutes tick by on the clock. Five minutes. That was always my goal. If I could hit the 5 minute mark without wanting to hurl myself off a bridge, I'd pat myself on the back. Job well done mama.

Because any more than that and I'd lose it. I was already lacking in the sleep department, the ugly under eye bags were beyond the help of makeup. I was malnourished (not to be confused with undernourished), living on discarded pb&j crusts and a scoopful of cold, bottom of the barrel mac and cheese. And I was so deprived of adult interaction that I was willing to start uncomfortably long conversations with grocery store cashiers, bank tellers and ring-your-doorbell-incessantly-during-naptime solicitors just to talk to someone, anyone, over the age of 4.

What I didn't need was a nails-on-chalkboard pretend session. So I clocked in, did my time and clocked out.  My children gained nothing from it, and I hated every last second of it.

I took a step back and watched them play. Alone. They'd bounce ideas off one another without having to fight the silly reasoning of an adult, the party-crashing realist. Well sure the panda could birth an entire family of human princesses and they could all live happily underwater without the use of a breathing apparatus, where electricity totally did not fry them dead in their state-of-the-art under the sea elevator. Because when you're young and awesome, absolutely anything is possible. And your pint-size playmates have got your back every time. Because that's how kids' imaginations work. Fascinating tiny human brains at work.

But then I'd come in, all adultish, and crash the party with my logic. And my daughters would sense my magical push back and begin to defer to me. All far-fetched ideas vanished in a poof of pixie dust. Pandas birthed pandas and under the sea adventures had scuba gear and little girls steered clear of all electrical wires, underwater or otherwise.

I was a make-believe crusher.  So I stopped playing with them.

And they played on.

And they played better.

They didn't need me to be a kittybaby, they just needed my time. And since I was no longer offering that in the form of tortured tea parties, I offered it up in other ways. Completely selfish ways.

I love reading to my children. And so we read for hours. I love playing board games with them, so an afternoon of Candyland and Trouble became the norm. I love riding bikes, so we'd pile on our respective bikes and hit the trails. I was with them, so they were happy. I wasn't faking it through endless dress-up games, so I was happy.

I hate to color, so I didn't color. They did. I hate playing any form of make-believe, so I didn't play make-believe. They did. I hate playing play dough, so I didn't play play dough. They did. I hate playing in the sandbox, so I didn't play in the sand box. They spent hours building sandcastles and mud muffins. Without me.

As a parent, I think we often get caught up in the notion that to be a good parent we have to be an everything parent.  We are better parents when we occasionally leave them to their own devices (although the tornado aftermath of that statement threatens to bury its truth). We are better parents when we stop being constantly present. We are better parents when we include our children in activities we enjoy and are passionate about, but not always the other way around.

I'm not saying stop attending their choreographed performance to "Don't Stop Believing" in your living room. I am saying stop choreographing said performances (unless of course you live to choreograph, in which case, that's the point. So shuffle ball step away. Wait? That's tap, not dance. Or is tap, dance? Clearly, Julliard will not be calling anytime soon, ahem, ever). Conveying that what is important to them is important to you does not always require participation.

Leave them alone and they will play and create and invent and imagine away. Without you. And you can swoop in on your terms. I promise they will still feel loved and you will never have to sip another drop of tea. Because let's be honest, one lump or twelve, it's always a bitter cup to swallow.

The Princess and the Pee

**There are a few things you need to know to prepare you for the story below that prepares you for the post below.  1. I was young.  2. I was stupid.  Now you can proceed. **

When you are raised by an absent father and a single mother trying to make it on her own, you are often shuffled around between relatives and family friends. The result is that, on occasion, you are left to your own devices. Which is awesome if you're a wild and free 9-year-old. Not so awesome if you're the cousin of said wild and free 9-year-old.

It began as a simple water fight. And then things got real. And it got ugly. Real ugly. I sprayed water in my cousin's eye. So he dumped a cup of steaming hot water on me. It hurt and I was mad, so I did what most logical 4th graders would do. I peed in a cup and dumped it on him. That'll learn him.

Whoa, whoa. Before you get all grossed out, know I diluted it. It was only like 1/2 pee and 1/2 water. I mean I'm not a monster.

Anyway, pee ratios aside, I got in trouble. A LOT of trouble. My biggest mistake was bragging to my goody two-shoes sister, Desi, who immediately tattled on me. She was always doing the right thing that one. Well, no one seemed to care about the burn marks on my arm from the boiling water bath he gave me (Note to self: pee trumps scalding water. Every. Time). And truth be told, I felt guilty. Super guilty. It was kind of a chump move, regardless of whether he deserved it or not (cause we all know he totally did). I was sure I had emotionally scarred him for life and the "Pee Boy" label would follow him wherever he went.

He pretty much stopped talking to me for, well, forever. And then he moved away. And then we became teenagers. And then we became adults. I was certain that when we saw each other again, he'd have a wealth of potty jokes all lined up to taunt me with (Urine trouble, anyone?). And I'd be pretty deserving of it all and apologize a million more times and inquire about how that single incident shaped his childhood.

And then I saw him 20+ years later. He did not harass me about it. He did not mention it. Because he did not even remember it. Not a single memory of that day. It did not haunt him as I, for years, had believed it had. Such a seemingly important thing had all but been forgotten as life ran its course and other things, more important things, took priority in his memory vault.

People forget. People forgive. People move on, and things, once seemingly important things, no longer matter.

I spend so much time caught up in those little things. The not-gonna-matter-in-20-years things. Most of the time those things are flaws. Minor little flaws. My flaws, your flaws, the flaws of my kids.

I harass myself for my flaws, find fault in you for yours, and nearly lose my mind dealing with the flaws belonging to my 2 small trolls. So my resolution is simple this year: Ignore flaws.

Not forgive them.

Not recognize them.

Not attempt to correct them.

But ignore them. As in overlook them indefinitely.

Because at the end of 2014, I suspect all those little minor things that stress me out and tangle up my thoughts and dictate my moods will seem as insignificant as those of 2013.

There's a book someone wrote along those same lines years ago. Something about "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff," or something equally uplifting.  I'd say I'd refer to that as my motto for 2014, but that book doesn't even mention what to do when someone starts a urine fight with you, so I don't think it's a comprehensive guide at all.

So I'm choosing a nice quote from George Carlin to live my 2014 by:

Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.

Pretty much sums up my New Year's Resolution.

Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
George Carlin
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_carlin.html#h2uRqbRdzt2I6Blx.99

Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
George Carlin
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_carlin.html#h2uRqbRdzt2I6Blx.99

Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
George Carlin
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_carlin.html#h2uRqbRdzt2I6Blx.99

"Yes, I Will Stay With You"

I have to give a eulogy on Monday. That means someone is dead. And I hate that. I think death is stupid. Yes, stupid. All you lyrical geniuses can put that in your pipe and smoke it. Because stupid is all I've got tonight.

I'm emotionally drained. I've been on the phone trying to sort through the logistical nightmare of last-second travel plans on the second busiest travel weekend of the year.  I've spoken more to distant cousins in the last 4 hours than I have the last 4 years. My phone has been attached to my ear, sweaty and grime covered now. I'm not sure I've said more than annoyed hand gestured to my children in hours, shoeing them out of earshot. MapQuest has been consulted, Travelocity has been overworked and I've texted so much I feel like a 16-year-old girl with a crush. My brain hurts. My eyes hurt. Even my ears hurt. Which is fine because all that masks the fact that my heart hurts.

My grandma died last night, but oddly, and possibly insensitively, I'm not sad about that right now. I miss my father. With every inch of me. Every last memory I have of my grandma is intertwined with a memory of him. Almost 10 years later, when I think of him, that hollowness is hard to shake. It's not fair that he's not here.

He should be the one making these arrangements. That's how it works. He'd book our flights, rent our cars, meet us in Salt Lake to shuttle us to the hotel that he already booked. That's what he did. That was his role. And as I do this, make these calls, book these flights, the fact that he's not here to do it is suffocating. And I miss him. Fiercely.

And I have to get up in front of a congregation and read a eulogy about an incredible woman. A woman who endured more than most should have to. A woman who lived a hard life, but was adored by those who were fortunate enough to know her. I'm pretty sure I got my toughness from her. My stubbornness too thankyouverymuch. I have to read about her place of birth and those she left behind; where she went to school and the very things that made her life matter, relevant. I'm her granddaughter and that's what granddaughters do.

But most granddaughters don't fight back tears not meant for the funeral honoree. And I'm not sure what that says about me.

When my father was killed, I was days away from having Cora. I could not attend his funeral. When his father died 2 years later, I was days away from having Claire. I could not attend his funeral.

This funeral is saying goodbye to the final direct link to my father. This funeral is not what it seems to most and I'm trying to be sad for the right reasons. She deserves that. After all, she raised a son who, 9.5 years later, I still can't seem to get over losing.

You're Gonna Hear Me Roar

We listen to music, loud music, every morning while my daughters are rubbing sleep from their eyes and I'm helping them find arm holes and pull on wayward socks. Claire says it pumps up her day. Exactly.

On this morning's play list was Roar, the latest song by Katy Perry that will certainly sound like nails on a chalkboard momentarily once it's played on continuous rotation on every last radio station in the city. It's what Katy's best at. She sings a catchy song that I like for about half a day and everyone else in the country likes constantly for the next 6 months. But I digress. Because this post isn't about Katy. Well it is, but it isn't. It's about the fact that Katy made me think (stay with me here). Leave it to a Katy Perry song lyric to invoke deep thoughts on a Monday morning. My brain hurts already.

"I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything." That's what Katy sang to at me this morning. And those words just kept on rolling around in my head. Bouncing around. Taking up space. Making me wonder if you knew what I stand for.

Probably not. Because I'm quiet about it on purpose.

I like to appease people. I like everyone to get along. I'm not a pushover by any means, but I can almost always find common ground and diffuse a potentially confrontational or uncomfortable situation. I've always been able to argue both sides of most debates, because I have the uncanny ability to crawl into the perspective of the opposite side. What you believe might not make any sense, but I can often see what drives you to believe that way. What causes you to say what you do. What's at the core of what makes you tick. And I can respect that or not, but I've found a way to pander to it.

I want you to like me. Trust me when I say the people who say they don't care what others think are the ones who care the most. We care. It might not shape what I do or how I dress or what I believe, but who doesn't want people to think they are awesome. So in an effort to keep people happy and to avoid ruffling feathers and to steer clear of conversations on politics/religion/cats, I've kept the core of what I believe to myself.

There are those of you who know me, all of me, and like me in spite of it. But you are few in numbers. I'm vocal and opinionated on certain topics publicly, but lean towards the politically correct option of bottling unpopular opinions. Not today. Katy's driven me to speak. I want you to know what I stand for. What I truly believe.

You can love it. You hate it it. You can be indifferent about it. You can choose never to speak to me again because of it. It won't matter. I'm not trying to start arguments or debates. It's not open for discussion. This is who I am and what I believe:

I'm not religious. I'm spiritual. I believe in God (I think) and I believe in being kind and that's it. I was raised Mormon, and believe wholeheartedly that there is a wealth of amazingness and goodness in that religion. But there are also things taught/preached/supported in the LDS religion that I am vehemently against and I cannot stand for. I am not Mormon. I will never be again. Ever. I do not believe in organized religion.

I believe that love is what matters. Who you love should not. I believe that heterosexual couples long ago made a mockery of the sanctity of marriage that so many are fighting to preserve. The divorce rate and Kim Kardashian proves that. But I also believe that marriage is amazing and everyone and anyone should have the opportunity to experience it. Marriage is what you want it to be. I wanted to take my husband's last name and I wanted to marry a man and I wanted to settle down and make a life together. Marriage is cultural and spiritual and universal. It is a public way of screaming from the rooftops, "I love this person and only this person and I've chosen them." What you do with that marriage after those papers are signed is up to you. Marriage is what you make of it, but I believe you have the right to marry whomever you choose. And I certainly don't think anyone should look down on you or judge you or hate you because of it. Do you love them? Are you willing to work everyday and fight everyday through thick and thin and ugly for your marriage? If you answered yes to both, then you deserve to be husband and wife, or wife and wife, or husband and husband.

In an ironic statement following that last pro same-sex marriage rant, I also love chivalry. I like that my husband is strong and a provider for our family and fiercely protective and opens doors for me and knows how to change a tire and build a fire. I love to be taken care of like that. And you might not, and you might think that's a totally anti-feminist point of view and that it makes me seem weak and dependent. But I don't care. This post isn't about you.

I think politics are stupid. I don't subscribe to a party because I think that somewhere through the years, they've all lost their way. Absolute power corrupts absolutely or something like that and now it's all my dog is bigger than your dog. I feel very disenchanted by every political speech. I think there are so few politicians that actually have my best interest at heart; so few who actually speak truths. I think government sticks their nose where it shouldn't be. We've essentially stripped the American people of the need or desire to fend for or even think for themselves. We are enablers breeding enablers. The end result is sheer catastrophe. I think the entire government needs to be overhauled. We need to start from scratch. I feel helpless because of the direction our country is going some days, but other days I'm content to live in my happy little bubble unaffected by all of it. Pathetic, but otherwise the anxiety can be crippling.

I believe in the death penalty. I didn't used to buy into that eye for an eye thing. Then I had kids. You hurt one hair on their heads and I will end you.

I don't think someone should have the right to tell us what we can and cannot do with or to our bodies unless we are harming someone else. Like go smoke all the pot you want and get fall-off-your-bar-stool drunk, but get behind a wheel and put someone else's life in jeopardy and I think you should pay for it. Big time.

That thought process lends itself to my thoughts on abortion, which won't be popular. If a woman is raped, she should absolutely, no questions asked be allowed to end that pregnancy. Period. And I don't think anyone has a right to judge her. She's been through enough. Now if a woman chooses to make stupid choices that result in pregnancy, that's a different matter. Your choices have resulted in the creation of a life and because of it, some of your choices should be taken away. This is where it gets tricky though because I've carried beautiful healthy babies full-term inside me and felt them kick and felt them alive before their 1st breath. Changes your perspective on everything. I don't like abortion. Hate it in fact, but I think before we allow a woman to get an abortion they should have to sit through a video that shows a baby's life cycle in the womb and then another video about the amazing world of adoption. Then and only then, once they are fully educated about their choices, I think 1st trimester abortions should be allowed because the baby cannot survive outside the womb. (Do you hate me yet?) Never 2nd or 3rd trimester abortions. Ever. See what I said about not popular. I'm not out to make friends today.

Speaking of friends. I have some. Not many close ones and that's on purpose. It's not that I don't think this world is full of amazing people. I just don't have the time or energy or resources to be true friends with many of them. And if I divide those resources on a hundred acquaintances, I'm left spent and without the ability to be a true friend to my true friends. Got it? I have also learned that there are so few genuine people in this life. I'm guilty of that. I'm pretty sure I'm not who you think I am. I'm quite selfish and wildly inappropriate. We all put on shows. It's the human way. No judgement here. But taking the time to get to the guts of who a person truly is usually takes time (a lot of time), and then 9 times out of 10 they aren't who they seem to be and it's all been a waste. The reverse is also true and you waste time digging down to the heart of who I am only to discover I'm not the Amber you thought I was or you wanted or needed me to be. I don't think that limits my happiness or prevents me from getting to know awesome people, I think it allows me to cherish the friends I do have and grow and develop the friendships that are important to me. I am a loyal, solid friend because of that.

So there you have it. All of the convictions and beliefs and opinions I share make me happy. And if they ever stop making me happy, I'd stop believing them. They might not make you happy. They might even make you sad or angry or dumbfounded. All of the jumbled convictions above might make you hate me. But I don't care. That's who I am and you can take it or leave it. It was just important to me that you know where I stand.

If you don't like it, you can take that up with Katy Perry.

The Most Beautiful Day in the World

I was having a "woe is me" day earlier today. Like a full on feel sorry for myself pity party. I woke up to the sound of Claire yelling for breakfast at 6:45; typical day for us around here. And while I stumbled out of bed with anticipation, hoping this day would prove to be extra special, typical is all it aspired to be. No sleeping in. No cards. No breakfast in bed. No gifts. No hot date night or dinner at my favorite restaurant. I cleaned my own house, got the girls breakfast and began breaking up sister fights before I could even begin barking orders for our morning routine.

And that probably would have been just fine, until I logged onto Facebook. You see I know so many cool mothers who are surrounded by so much love this Mom's Day. Post after Facebook post showed gorgeous flower arrangements, delicious looking breakfast in bed, cute/funny/sentimental cards and pretty stellar gifts. Everything I felt my Mother's Day was lacking. And then I stumbled on a post that stopped me in my tracks and put me in my place.

A friend of mine had struggled with infertility for years. She sat childless year after year and watched her friends celebrate Mother's Day. She wanted, more than anything in this world, to be numbered among them. She miraculously became pregnant and few days ago, gave birth to beautiful tiny twin girls, born 10 weeks premature. Because they are so small, they are struggling. They are strong like their mama, and so I'm certain they will grow and thrive and become spunky little babies. But for now a mess of wires and tubes and machines mask their little bodies, as they get comfortable in the NICU, their home for the foreseeable future.

She posted about her first Mother's Day as she hovered close to her preemies, and ended her post with these words:

"It is the most beautiful day in the world.

It is my first mother's day."

I often forget, as I did this morning, that motherhood is a gift, not a right. I have watched more friends struggle with infertility than I'd care to admit. Miscarriages, stillborn babies, horrible pregnancies, premature labor, failed IUI and IVF procedures. Heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak. 

I am a lucky one. I not only have two beautiful daughters, but they are two healthy beautiful daughters. And I get to be their mom. Everyday I get to cuddle them. Everyday I get to sing them to sleep. Everyday I get to shape them and teach them and guide them. They are mine to love. Every. Day. 

I often lie in bed at night, frustrated with how my day played out. I yelled too much, hugged too little. I felt unappreciated, invisible. I accomplished nothing, or accomplished great things at the expense of others. I replay the mistakes made and feel guilty for my choices. I screw up. I fail. And then I get up the next day and repeat it all over again. And sometimes I really think I need a mushy card and gift certificate to a spa day to let me know, despite my shortcomings, I'm doing okay. And okay might not be best, but it's the best I can do.

There are women out there that would give anything to be me on my worst parenting day. They would trade anything to have a muddy, Popsicle-covered child scream "MOOOOOMMMM!" at them. They want what I take for granted constantly.  I lose myself in the daily grind and forget that no amount of  powdered sugar topped french toast or long-stemmed roses could compare to the greatest gift I have ever been given. 

My newly-minted mother friend said it perfectly. It is the most beautiful day in the world. 

Simply because I get to be a mother.