I'm Out!

I am usually not a generous survey person. A lot of kindness evaporates when a solicitor calls asking for “Mr. Ball-batch” when the Mrs. is clearly on the line. I change sidewalk lanes when I see those young people with clipboards. I know all the hidden website places to find the no thanks "x."

Yesterday was one of the exceptions. I got an email with a request for a listener survey on a podcast I’m quite fond of. Also the email sender’s name was Quinn, the same name as my first born, which should have nothing to do with it and yet it weirdly did. They both have two "n’s"! Quinn, the one in my email, promised the brief survey would take approximately 10 minutes.

I followed the link to the survey with optimism. I like this podcast and I want them to keep doing it. By about question 15 I started to fatigue. As fond as I am of the podcast, for something I only engage with about once a month I’d simply run out of things to say about it. Then came the question of “how busy I am” on a sliding scale which felt disingenuous to answer any other way but “not very to average” given that I already told them I had 10 minutes to spare. Then came the open ended question about how the podcast had caused me do something different in my life. I thought this maybe ambitious for a form. After all, I didn’t agree to the 10 minutes with the expectation of baring my soul and writing a narrative. When I tried to skip over it, I got the RED letters that I needed to complete the last question. I went back and answered “n/a.”

I made it several questions beyond the “n/a” but didn’t end up finishing the survey. (Note to survey makers: sometimes the survey completion status bar is not your friend. Note to Quinn: sorry, mate.) While a better survey person, a more loyal listener, or a person with less sensitivity about their busyness may have completed the survey, I don’t consider my abandoning the survey a character flaw. I do however think it’s interesting to understand how and when people decide, “I’m out!”

Our online selves leave conversations, which I've heard called ghosting, whenever the conversation gets hard or boring or someone’s Uncle Eddy adds something completely awkward. We leave long articles in search of the digest version or because someone posted one of those “Tasty” videos showing us everything we need to know about making Beer Mac ’n’ Cheese in 30 seconds. We get sucked into a reality TV show because for a few minutes it seems to be hitting on something genuine and then something gross turns up and we’re out.

We do have to filter things online because not every article or even “Upworthy” post merits our full attention, but the problem is when our online habits bleed into our real selves. When approximately 10 minutes of face to face conversation – without a digital interruption or other tabs open- feels like a really long time. When we prematurely say “I’m out!” when the conversation takes a wrong turn or before we’ve left any space for a deeper conversation to bloom.

I did an experiment with my middle son yesterday. I asked him on the ride home where it was just us if he wouldn’t mind putting his phone away for the whole ride. (It’s interesting how agreeable our kids are to doing this when we are willing to do the same.) In the first five minutes, we covered the lunch menu and our usual topics and then he added, “You know you are worse about your phone than I am” to which I could only say, “I know!” We then covered new conversational ground and when we finally got home some 20 minutes later, he said, “Wow! that was a long ride wasn’t it?” to which I said, “I know!”

Good conversation takes time and it takes work. It takes not giving up in the pauses or asking dumb questions to fill them. 12 years old especially do not like the dumb questions.

Later that night as I sat the boys down to a rushed dinner, I was multitasking at the desk. I was busy looking for hotels in Stockholm while my older son was trying to tell me about the recent news of the Czech Republic and their treatment of refugees. I kept on with the Stockholm search (the hotel options are many and beautiful!), but I did open another tab to BBC News to search on Czech Republic. By the time I left the hotels for the news, the conversation around the table had moved on to who had the Parmesan cheese.

Yeah. Missed it. The conversation. The irony of me being the one with the laptop open at dinner. It happens. All you can do is say “I know!” and try better next time.

Next time was later that night. I did the same experiment with my older son on a dark ride home when it was just us. (He too was happy to put his phone away for the car ride, but only after he texted his gf goodnight.) We did not talk about what he just texted or school or college (a favorite parent topic at the moment and a not-so-favorite topic of a high school senior.) Instead we talked about funny “only in Luxembourg” things that happened at his practice. I told him about the other Quinn and the survey and ABOUT the podcast I really like and how long 10 minutes is and he told me about “the rule of 8” he learned from his 7th grade math teacher to make me not feel so bad about aborting the survey and then we started to make up funny survey questions and we couldn’t stop laughing. We laughed all the way home and into the living room.

Phones down is no guarantee you will end up in a belly laugh, but doesn’t even the possibility of it make it a 10 minute exercise worth trying?

Dream gods

Ever have one of the dreams where you absolutely cannot do something really easy – like signing your name or making a garden salad- that in waking life you have either mastered or people of your age no longer find complicated? Then because you’re desperately trying to find the salad spinner with hungry guests waiting, you snoozed your way to getting up late.

I would feel so much better if I had been trying to make puffed pastry or a long putt. Salad is my game.

The problem with these silly dreams is that if you don’t take a moment to right size your beat up confidence ship and tell your mood where to get off, you’ll rush to the shower, pump the conditioner before the shampoo -again- and nick yourself shaving with one of the razors with the bumpers you spent extra money for to avoid these kinds of things. And then because you’re already late and band-aiding your cut, you won’t have time to practice your signature and prove the dream gods wrong.

You’ll then head to the kitchen, call it a cereal morning, and turn on the stove for coffee *with caution.*

Unattended, dreams that question your competence are sure bets for either a sucky or super productive, list making day. I usually follow the sucky path. If it’s raining like it was the morning after, it’s all but guaranteed. For me it reminds me that I’m underemployed, unable to speak French, and a creative who studied stupid accounting. Things that on most days, I’m at peace with. Most days I know that salad is not my only game.

I know, I know, it was only a dream! But I’m one of those people who a) puts a whole lot of stock in looking for signs and wonders and b) really, really needs good sleep.

You’ll then head to the car, because when you’re late everyone needs a ride, and drive *with caution.*

Moms that drive quietly with a carload of children buried in their phones are sure bets for sad feelings about shuttle service being your second game, until … a voice you recognize:

“Mom, did I tell you that you really remind me of Mrs. X.” Knowing this to his most favorite teacher of all time who is fully employed not just teaching but inspiring students and who you know speaks multiple languages, you ask: “Really? Why?” to which he replies in a tone you know has no other motive but to share his feelings, “Because you are both smart and kind and outgoing and I notice that sometimes you both like to be quiet.”

I know, I know, it was only a few words. But the words probably wouldn’t have been said unless quiet beat out grumble. And, if one of the people who knows you best sees your game and sees you doing it smartly and with kindness, then the dream gods have to be wrong.

An Easy Recipe

Photo courtesy of Anna Andersen

You know how sometimes your friend tells you, “I’ll send you the recipe. It’s so easy!” and then you open it up and think: liar, liar, kitchen on fire.

I’ve dished it as many times as I’ve been served it. In fact this week I had lunch with a new French friend who I’d met at a mutual friend’s birthday brunch, over one of my raspberry breakfast crumble bars. Where there are groups of women and good china out, we do like to put our best fork forward. The fruity bars were no Coq au vin, but anytime there is a food processor and two part baking process you won’t be whipping it up during a commercial break. You’ll be calendaring it for your next assignment.

In our email exchange before getting together, I forwarded the recipe with the “easy” disclaimer. I wanted to sound hopeful and competent. As we parted after a lovely lunch, she said: “Oh, and thanks for the recipe. I was going to make it but ….that was involved, no? I should send you some French cake recipes. They are very simple.”

Well, that was Tuesday. Today is Friday and I have a new outlook on easy.

This morning I was in my kitchen at 6:50am. By 7:07am, there were biscuits. Not just any biscuit but the lightest, tenderest, tastiest golden biscuits ever to grace an Ikea plate. In places where measuring precision and light touch is required (“don’t overwork the dough” may be the most open to interpretation baking instruction ever), I have a very uneven and sometimes inedible past.

But these biscuits. These biscuits were CHAMPION’S LEAGUE. My audience swooned. I briefly played the kitchen martyr. There was none left by 7:27am.

The secret? Two ingredients. That’s right – two ingredients. No butter. No pastry cutter. Definitely no Bisquick for 3,000 miles. Only a wooden spoon and two ingredients: self-rising flour and heavy cream. A recipe where anyone can be a hero.

I wouldn’t have believed it either except if you’ve ever made a recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from Serious Eats.com, you know this guy is serious about the science of good food. The recipe, the truly easy recipe, is called, “Two Ingredient Never-Fail Cream Biscuits.” It's not a new idea. Kenji even admitted: "But not everything worth making is brand new."

After I polished off the last biscuit I hid this morning, it got me to thinking about how Jesus summed up what we needed to know by telling us to do two things: love the Lord our God *with everything* and love our neighbor *as ourselves*. That these two things Never-Fail. It seems like as we get more comfortable in our own kitchens of faith or where there is an audience to impress, we often try to add in more ingredients and over complicate the recipe. But I wonder if we tried to stick to the basics, these two ingredients, would we be lighter and more tender?

One might argue that heavy cream can stand on its own. Flour, like love for your God, definitely cannot. It is an important ingredient but it can’t rise – do what it was meant to do- all by itself. It needs to be worked into the fat of relationships, the ones you choose and the ones you don’t. Then when the flour is coated in the richness of risking love, showing mercy and overthrowing self for the sake of our neighbors (here I must mention the ones we can’t find any little thing to agree about), does it finally come together into dough. It’s sticky and must be handled with care. But once the two loves are mixed in roughly the right proportions, it now has the potential to withstand the heat and produce something very, very tasty.

It’s that easy, no?

Mad-o-meter

It seems impossible your mad-o-meter can go from zenzero to wristlock in thirty seconds. In church. But they we were.

It started out flowers and fresh air. We had walked there. Everyone including the Conserve Water While Showering Zealot knew better than to suggest driving on a beautiful September morning. Conservation talk cuts both ways. I hadn’t even actively discouraged the scooter. Aside from my skinny-in-the-wrong-place jeans constricting round my legs like a permanent calf raise on dumbbell shoes, it had been a pleasant approach to the pew.

Truth be told, we don’t actually have pews. We have red chairs.

We were even on time. Granted the service starts at 11:45am but getting a teenager, middle schooler, and a child with a lot of questions to church after Daddy’s been gone for 7 days and after an evening of wine tasting is something I think God notices.

The service starts with singing, my favorite part.

Within five minutes, two of my children had left their red chairs – past me on the end - in search of water. Within seven minutes, one of the water-bound children also wanted a sip of my tea, animating to everyone sitting behind us that it was too hot. Between minutes seven and eight, there was a minor sibling altercation that always looks MAJOR to a Mother mid-hymn followed by a much too vigorous refusal to switch seats because “he wanted to see what his brother was writing.” Who’s writing while we are supposed to be singing anyway?????

At minute eight my eyes were closed in worship. At minute eight thirty, we were in wristlock and making our way to the back for a conversation. Unfortunately the offering was being passed at the exact moment of exit but these things happen seem to happen without much warning when you cede control to people who have chosen to sit in the almost front row.

It’s probably worth noting that the “everyone sitting behind us” may have included a school teacher I have a tiny problem with for sending students- mine included -out of the class for what I can only conclude is misbehavior, asking a question or breathing too deeply.

It occurred to me somewhere between the “You can never sit next to your brother in church again” edict and the rope I was now trespassing to sit in the last row of red chairs that maybe I was overreacting a tiny bit. That perhaps my big movement to the back in wristlock was more noticeable than whatever altercation preceded it. That maybe I wanted my children to behave just a little more than I wanted to worship. That maybe I cared even more with an audience, especially when the audience includes people you have a tiny problem with.

Once safely in the last row, the mad-o-meter continued to register for a bit. I even tried to make eye contact with the almost front row who was carrying on writing until I realized – all too vigorous sign language confusion a clue- that maybe it was time to let it go. That maybe I should carry on letting God meet me in my red chair and my too tight jeans and ask for a change of attitude.

I know he listens when we ask him for that. I know that because instead of bolting out the door at the end of the service which would have been to plan, I stopped to introduce myself to a family I hadn’t seen before. They were in fact new to Luxembourg and new to the church. I got to be their welcome. Me, the one with tiny attitude issues, who had just been welcomed back herself.

Am I a Good Parent?

(whew 3 months is a long time between posts!)

I don’t much follow business news anymore but my 73 year old father-in-law turned me on to the Financial Times management columnist Lucy Kellway whose no nonsense approach to office life I continue to find insightful and entertaining. Because I don’t have a paid subscription to the Financial Times, I listen to Lucy’s weekly column as a 5 minute podcast (smartly called “Listen to Lucy”) on Stitcher (next to Facebook, my most well-touched iPhone app.)

This week Lucy had an engaging column “Am I a Good Parent?” which was the message of a recent UBS online banner ad campaign, the implication of course being that good parents provide financial stability for their children. If only it were that easy. Seeing the question as the minefield that it is with no universal standards for what makes a good parent and no independent arbiter to judge, Lucy posited the question to 40 of her work colleagues over email. None of the working women responded (:<) All of the men responded “Yes” and their whys were nicely bucketed into three categories: 1) They have been involved in the process through time and sacrifice, 2) The end result, treating child as product, has turned out well. 3) My kid, treating child as customer, tells me I’m doing a good job. Lucy counters each of these responses as incomplete answers finally concluding, “It’s a labor of love. Good and bad don’t come into it.”

While I agree with her in principle, I find the conclusion somewhat unsatisfying. As parents we want to know we are doing a good job. We appreciatively hear and file away the parenting attaboys we receive. We glory in the moments when our children think us cool or better yet, right. But more than affirmation, we want hard evidence that we are doing it well at least most of the time. Yes it’s a labor of love where the traditional x’s and o’s don’t apply but the “wait for launch and see” approach seems a reckless gamble with what UBS and we know is our biggest investment.

There are some places in life, car shopping for example, where comparisons are helpful. As much as we know comparison parenting is unreliable because it’s a moving target (your peers are not my peers), sometimes we can’t help ourselves. Sometimes a peer comparison makes us feel cheerfully normal but just as often it makes us feel smug or inferior. And even when it makes us feel normal we have this lurking feeling that each child and family culture is so unique that our momentary relief of being “on benchmark” is fleeting at best. Plus, unlike a car, you can’t get under the hood of another household to see how things really look on the inside when visitors aren’t allowed.

Process or time put in seems a decent proxy for good work but that always feels like a call to arms between working and stay at home parents. I’ve lived on both sides of the divide and know there is good and bad in both camps. A parent may give impressive amounts of their time by coaching their kid and then bully them into better performance. Another parent may have fewer, less publicized hours to give but with greater intention and connection. Certainly there is a baseline of time investment in order to be an effective parent as well as healthy doses of expansive, unscripted time but the scale is different for each child. Not to mention the secondary benefit to children when they see their parent invested in and renewed by meaningful work. I stand with Lucy. We can’t agree on one process.

As children get older, the temptation to look at child as product is very compelling. We start laying claim to their physical appearance as soon as they are out of the womb and the land grab continues with each achievement they earn, particularly in areas we either had our own success or could be credited for helping them discover. It’s tempting because they are in some senses a product of us and their environment which we either carefully or haphazardly created but if they were merely a product we’d know how to recreate them to spec. Anyone with multiple children can tell you that is both impossible and hilarious. The idea of looking at child as consumer is even more problematic because we know the world won’t be so generous.

When I asked my own children the question “What makes a good parent?” the first thing one of them said was: “All parents make mistakes.” It’s always good to get that out of the way first. He then went on to say, “Kids who have good parents are respectful, obedient and operate within a set of values which may or may not be the same as their parents.” While that sounds mostly good (Judge Mom wished that he had said compassionate over obedient) and easy for kids with a predisposition towards compliance, the idea of “good parents have good kids and bad parents have bad kids” is wrought with so many problems and exceptions that it only took two minutes for my nine year old to remind us all about the story of Matilda – good kid, horrible parents.

The one thing that Lucy didn’t entertain was measuring ourselves as good parents by how purposefully we animate virtue to our children, or what David Brooks terms “eulogy virtues vs resume virtues.” During my discussion with my kids, one of them explained that he thought parents over focused on teaching life skills (resume virtues) like how to hold a fork or how to do laundry when “as humans, we can figure a lot of that stuff out on our own.” But eulogy virtues like joy, peace, patience, kindness, humility, generosity, gentleness, self-control need to be taught by people in proximity. It requires a combination of a few words, a lot of action, and dogged consistency. Who else would willingly sign up for that job?

“How To” teaching only requires that we know our subject, “How to Be” teaching demands a reflex of character that’s only there if you are actively committing to living out what doesn’t always come natural every day. It is easy to be kind when we aren’t irritated; it’s hard to show kindness in the middle of a shitstorm. It is easy to have oatmeal for breakfast; it is harder to have oatmeal at a breakfast buffet and not let the entire table know about our restraint. Our kids need to receive our gentleness when they make a horrible mess and extra doses of it when that mess embarrasses us. They need to see us activate our strengths and be vocally self-critical of our weaknesses. They need us to show them examples of how joy doesn’t erase suffering but sometimes springs from it. With intention around virtue, seeds are planted and blooms eventually spring but it's often slow and not always in the places you expected.

With this definition, the question of whether or not one is a good parent is no more measurable than any of the previous attempts but I sense it’s a better question we can answer for ourselves because we will find the answer somewhere deep in our bones. It’s an answer we aren’t obliged to share over email.

Amazing Grace

I am drawn to any article or essay about parenting like a dieter is to one square of dark chocolate. For good but mostly bad we crave benchmarking. I confess to reading the articles about the early parenting years with a mixture of relief and smug delight. When things aren’t going so well I like to remind myself that my children were rock star sleepers. In my memory I round up on how long they were breastfed.

On the other hand, I clip articles with titles like “How to Raise an Adult” and try hard to convince myself I'm not one of those parents involved in the college admissions mania. Inevitably a mini crisis will follow (my lie) like my 17 year old asking me if the laundry is done yet and by the way can I cut him a piece of bread. With that my mind wanders to me in his dorm room fixing him a cup of ramen noodles. I wonder if it's too late to become a family who camps or if a Swiss Army Knife would be a good 18th birthday present.

These moments of doubt are never fully rational. And they are often followed with a rant and then a new plan for making our dependent children more independent. We've had approximately 14 different plans on household chores none of which have been consistently applied. Twice daily teeth brushing continues to be a surprise.

At my kid’s school all Grade 2 students play the recorder. Some are into it, some understand it’s not a long term instrument. Having been deprived of any musical encouragement at home, my 2nd grader has taken this recorder business very seriously. Part of the drive is acquiring belts like in karate. Seven belts down, one to go and only a week left of school. The final belt of the year is for the piece “Amazing Grace.” It’s going to be close.

After much practice the notes are all there but the rhythm is still off. As an insider I have been primed to listen for “Amazing Grace” but without the right cadence a new listener would be hard pressed to place the song. It’s not bad, it’s just not “Amazing Grace.” Yet.

As parents we work hard and try to hit all the right notes with our kids but sometimes you can’t make out the rhythm. We know if we’ve been successful at potty training. It’s a lot harder to know if we’ve been successful in raising a well-adjusted adult. It’s the culmination of hitting most of the right notes and hundreds of releases of the rope - many of which seem undetectable at the time. It doesn’t all come together right away.

This week I got a call from my 17 year old. Not a text but a call. He had some news. After not getting a response to his week old email to an administrative office in Luxembourg regarding critical information needed to write his extended essay this summer, he decided to go in person. Initiative that wasn’t even my idea. I did however wave the flag that we would only be in Luxembourg for 4 days this summer and noted that because it takes 10 days to get clean shirts, I was less than optimistic about him finding the *one* person in Luxembourg with information about hybrid buses and emissions before Christmas.

As we parents are primed to do I took the call ready to problem solve. Problem was he wasn’t calling for help. He was calling to tell me that after four offices, three bus rides, and relying on his broken French, my almost adult had found the *one* person in Luxembourg with the information he needed. There was a meeting on the spot and a promise for a follow up email by the end of the week which arrived in his inbox as we spoke. All of a sudden the laundry and bread cutting weren’t such a big deal.

Before I could even offer him a ride home (as we parents are primed to reward successes) he told me he’d be home in 45 minutes because he had to stop by the grocery store. ??? He needed to pick up some fruit for his science experiment. I wanted to say “I could have done that for you” but instead I said, “Ok, see you later.”

The truth is we all overparent in some things and underparent in others. With kids on the cusp of launching into the world it’s going to be close. This week I’ve rounded up. I’ve been reminded that if we hit enough of the right notes eventually it’s going to sound like “Amazing Grace.” Not only to me as an insider but to anyone with ears to hear.

Whatever

When we don’t really know

When sources cannot or will not be disclosed

Whatever comes to fill in the blank

The catch all for that elusive thing we sort of believe

_ it takes

_you want

_works

A wink to corners cut, people unseen

Its flimsiness further crippled when used all by its lonesome

Whatever.

For all its accommodation, an abandoned whatever reeks of indifference

A smack down to further thinking or conversation

The socially accepted shorthand for “I don’t care past here.”

But what if rather than the last bite, whatever was the first taste

A call to scan far and wide for

Whatever is true and lovely and excellent

Not only the obvious things but the hidden things too

Past right now into what is right and just

Past the edges of good enough

A continuous decision to gorge on so much lovely your thought bubbles could be jumbotroned                                                                                                                           

Probing what moves us one step closer to our humanity and two steps closer to understanding another’s dignity

Noticing what takes our breath away and allowing it to give it back with compound interest

A flywheel of virtuous thought and practice

Whatever re-imagined

To a wide open place with commas and exclamation marks and run-on sentences…

Root Bound

You do not have to be a prisoner in your own pot

A knotty mess of rules or lawlessness

What little soil remains hard and resistant to water

With roots like tired rhetoric poking out the bottom

Last flowers put up as a flag of desperation

Once upon a time you were a healthy seedling

Shotgunning new pathways all over the place

Before you thought you knew enough about the world

Before you replaced childlike wonder with presumed grownup wisdom                                                                                                                                      

It’s no treat to have your roots broken up

To risk a transplant to a new, unfamiliar pot

Where survival cannot be guaranteed

But how then to know how big you could have grown?

How parched you really were?

The Lord's Prayer

(The Lord's Prayer, in my own words inspired by NT Wright, Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C)

God, who is not only mine, but Ours

Let us start by staying Wow!

We think a lot of things are amazing, but are they really in light of you?

Imagine everything being right.  Heaven on earth.  Peace.  Just imagine.   Because really – it is the plan.

[Long pause………………………………..]

While we wait, give us these three things we need:

The basics.  You know we need to eat and eat often.

Clean inner fuel.  Release us from the toxins that poison us and our relationships.

A secure path.  Help us stay on the path of true adventure, avoiding the dead ends that may temporarily dazzle.

And thank you because the first pause helped us to remember:

That though we will need to say this all over again tomorrow;

your amazingly right plan - for then and even now – carries on.

Third Week of Lent

I don’t like poetry much

Fragments everywhere

Needing to read between the lines

Juicy language egging you on

But wouldn’t you know it

Love presses between the lines

Demanding receipt or rejection

Like a mother searching to lock eyes with her child

No matter how independent they’ve become

A call to rest, to come home

A soundtrack that plays on

Sometimes so loud it’s a wonder

Other times so faint it’s a mystery

A back rub that continues well after you’ve fallen asleep

911 without travel time

The shade of a tree willing to uproot and follow you into the desert

Love absolves and presents

A safe deposit box sturdy enough for secrets

Big enough for piles of junk

With a special place reserved for deposits of doubt

Insured against theft or natural disaster

I don’t like poetry much

But there it goes again

Only visible for a moment

Leaving behind this bloodied deed of trust

Written in my name