Oh Happy Day: Mommy’s Office

Oh Happy Day! It’s Friday, and that means celebration in my world (like it does in yours, I’m sure). The anticipation of the weekend was already in bloom as the kids were getting ready for their “it’s a school day” routine this morning. Friday mornings have become more relaxed for me lately. I often start the day with a photo field trip of some kind — the product of which usually ends up on my design blog — followed by a frappacino breakfast before settling into my office for real work. It’s a blessing and boost to creativity to take some time looking at something new or seeing something familiar in a new way every once and a while.

Now that I’m back in my office after this morning’s jaunt, looking at the piles through the lens of having shirked them for a few minutes, I’m actually relishing this place that has become my daily familiar. It’s been a full, but good week. I’ve been blessed with confirmation on a couple of new projects. We’ve celebrated Bug’s four-year-old kindergarten graduation. I joined Little Drummer Boy on his end-of-the-year field trip. Balls were miraculously caught in tee ball games. And, hallelujah, Baby Girl was able  to take her white fuzzy dog for show and tell today. It’s good to reflect on accomplishments, big and small. And my office is a good place to do it. It’s given me the opportunity to reflect already this week.

I’m in my office. Like I am a lot. And somehow they all end up here. The kids, I mean. This place of wonder where Mommy spends her days and keeps her computers and displays art treasures has become somewhat of a magnet for curiosity. Maybe it’s just a peaceful, but less-used place for them.
Maybe it’s the place that holds me during the days when I’ve assured them I miss them every minute. So, they feel compelled to fill it with reminders of themselves. Maybe it’s the small items sitting everywhere — quirky toys and objects I’ve picked up through the years that were introduced into their lives when I began working from home. Maybe it’s because sometimes they’re not allowed to play here. They just somehow all end up here.

I came down the five steps of our enclosed breezeway to my office one evening this week while they were playing outside, like I often do. A typical night. I was putting away some straggling parts of the work day, as my habits seem to dictate. One by one, they made their way in.

They know where the colored paper lives, and they pull it out to choose their pleasure. They know the skinny marker cup and the fat marker pot and the zigzag scissors holder and the way to drag the chairs so they all have a corner of the work table. And the tape. Baby Girl loves the tape.

They explored and created while I put things away. And, in the process, I found new places for their scribbled gifts and listened to their excitement as background noise.

“This smells nice.”
“What is this?”
“Mommy DON’T look at this!”
One shared letters and spelling secrets with another, coaching out some covert message. Scribbles spilled over from the red and purple paper onto the butcher block tabletop. I’m so glad washable markers don’t wash out completely from wood. I don’t know if I could work each day without the reminders of their slippage outside the lines.

I was thinking the other day how difficult it’s been to muster writing topics — how devoid of profundity I seem to have been lately in this season of ballgame schedules and end-of-school activities. How I’ve been searching for the will to compose meaningful thoughts in the face of busy project lists.

I read the phrase “joy of life” in an article this week. It was something a writer had recognized while paying attention to an unexpected walk through a London park. Just like what I find looking around my office on an evening like Wednesday evening. Not a birthday or a holiday, just a Wednesday evening. When I listened to the secret conversations and found places for the zigzagged hearts decorated with “I love Momy” and exclamation points and fives — lots of number fives.

Three test cases for joy and profundity staring me in the face. Their brilliance so blinding that I can scarcely believe I’m so fortunate to be able to see it.

Oh Happy Day.

Milestones

Voice.

Sigh. I’ve been struggling to find it lately. I set out at the beginning of this year on a writing pursuit, seeking to find, speak, know and share my own voice in new ways. I wanted to share my voice with new resolve in this particular medium, yes, but more importantly in the broader strokes of my life. Since then, my writing has been virtually nonexistent.

This past week I’ve been celebrating my oldest son, Little Drummer Boy, turning seven years old. As many mothers can relate, the birthdays are almost always bittersweet lumps of joy where my vision is quite clouded. I see him with all the new skills and interests and jokes and signs of independence. But somehow in the very same frame of the lens, I also see that little face resting on my shoulder, the tiny hand clutching mine and all the firsts I’ve witnessed that have now turned into his beautiful habits. As I was reminded by a friend, a “happy birthday” to LDB is a “happy birthday” to me as well, for a mother always has an intimate recollection of birthdays.

With much less fanfare, I’ve also been celebrating a personal milestone — the fourth birthday of this blog, EyeJunkie, on May 6. I started it in many ways because of LDB. I was at a time in my life where I felt I needed a personal creative outlet. My readers probably know that I’m creative for a living, like most of us are. I’m just called upon to do it in a much more overt way than most. I’m a designer. LDB thinks I draw for my work, and in many ways that’s true. But I started EyeJunkie in 2008 because I wanted a creative outlet that was apart from work for hire. I needed it. I needed something that would allow me to act out those creative tendencies in a more personal way. I needed to show him. I needed to show LDB, and Bug, and now Baby Girl what I was about on the inside. That’s the crux of it.

This space has been indelibly tethered to my voice ever since. So, to leave it unattended feels like a failure in many ways, like dropping the ball, like being out of the loop with myself. Do I even want to continue it? does it matter to me? Is it a valuable contribution to my life? A worthwhile investment? Can I continue it in a meaningful way? In some ways it feels like losing ground, like losing my voice. But, I know my voice is there. Somewhere. And that need for a creative outlet apart from work is still there. Somehow.

When I launched the whole “voice” thing for 2012, I wrote this:

To be able to hear the sound of our own voices with clarity sure simplifies things. It makes choices and decisions much more obvious. It makes the worthwhile investments of our time and energy much easier to find.

Those statements still ring true in my heart. I still see the necessity of hearing my own voice. Of discerning my own core requirements for a life of blessing. Of determining my own parameters of what constitutes a life of significance. Of rigorously chasing that life with daily decisions. Of giving the gift of that life to my children.

As I’ve been processing these two milestones, I’ve recognized that I HAVE heard my voice in many areas. I HAVE made decisions and movements that reflect my own voice. I have begun to more deeply refine my work life with Small Pond Graphics so that it serves me rather than vice versa. I have begun to reclaim control of areas of my life and relationships where I felt I had surrendered my own voice. I have begun to step outside of fatigue or busy-ness or laziness to create more significant experiences for my children, to recognize and incorporate habits of joy into their lives in small things. These are all urgings I heard from my own voice. And I’m beginning to speak them each day in tangible ways.

Here’s the thing. The writing isn’t the thing. The living is the thing. The doing. The growing. The learning. The listening.

It’s all those things that make the writing something — something that enriches all that I glean from the living and doing and learning. Through this soul searching, I’ve recognized that I write to keep my heart and my voice close to the surface. I do it to clarify my voice. And I do it to recognize  the sound of my voice as I’m living. And that makes it valuable. To me.

Seven

I simply blinked, and seven years went by. I’m still amazed every day at the wonder and magic of you. Happy Birthday, Little Drummer Boy.

The Things We Do Here

Here, we walk on gravel roads and listen to the sound of our own feet crunching in search of adventure. We choose the most colorful stones to carry with us.

Here, we pick the plantings of our grandmothers and give them new prominence. We find wildflowers both delicate and steely. They journey from dusty fingers to sun-chased bottles as we honor them. Each has a smell, even if only the scent of our own attention.

Here, we hold a roly poly in our hands and wait. We wait for it to find enough comfort to unwind itself and explore the vastness of skin and palm and wrist. Its tiny feet tickle our flesh as we deliver it to the next blade of grass.

Here, we play with sticks. They are swords and staffs and wands armed for magic.

Here, we build fires to roast our hotdogs, baking our laughter into a fine buffet. We scream and blow our blackened marshmallows when they find themselves ablaze. We giggle and sigh with relief as they melt into the chocolate.

Here, we count the spots on ladybugs to discern if they are random or patterned. We wonder why some are missing their spots. Maybe they’re too old or too young.

Here, we pull the inaugural dandelion of the season — the first of many treasures released to bear more.

Here, we build things out of scrap wooden blocks — out of nothing, really. They are leftovers with windows and stories.

Here, we find Orion’s belt, gazing at the stars, and wish for parting clouds to reveal his prey. We are sure there is no twinkle as bright as this dark sky.

Here, we play our games and watch our movies as consolation prizes when outside has become too dark or too sweaty to dispatch its trophies.

Here, we hold hands, comparing sizes. We grab hold of ourselves in years gone by and in years to come. “I’m growing up,” we declare.

Here, we get back to there gingerly. We see there in different windswept light, through the lenses of simplicity sweetened with laughter and time well-spent. Here, we do nothing. And everything.

CultureSpeak: “Slut”

Cultural context: Apparently it’s the label given graduate students testifying before Congress in favor of insurance coverage of contraceptives. At least the label Rush Limbaugh gives them…

LIMBAUGH: What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.

She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.

The johns, that’s right. We would be the johns — no! We’re not the johns. Well — yeah, that’s right. Pimp’s not the right word.

OK, so, she’s not a slut. She’s round-heeled. I take it back.

You’ve probably read about these comments and been tempted to discount them as more ravings from another obviously polarizing ultra-conservative media figure. I was tempted.

I was tempted to discount them as ravings — the kind we tend to become desensitized to. The kind we assume folks view as ridiculous hyperbole, or just plain ridiculous. It’s easy to gloss past something that is so overtly aimed at fire-starting. Or something that is so obviously a misconstruing of context. Or so incredibly minimizing of larger issues.

I was tempted to discount Mr. Limbaugh’s characterizations as so blatantly prejudicial to gender and family concerns that they are surely to be viewed as ignorant by the larger audience — so outlandish that they are easily found laughable by average Americans. I could numb my brain to the obvious implications or questions those comments raise because surely they aren’t taken seriously. Questions like…

1. Is there nothing commendable about a graduate student who is willing to stand before Congress to share her beliefs?
2. In 2012 America, is there no way for “conservatives” to find a fraction of respect for that?
3. Has the process of public discourse become so mind-numbing that we must resort to the use of euphemisms and outright vulgarity to grab the next news cycle?
4. Are all women who use contraceptives promiscuous?
5. Is there no room in the conservative mindset for a woman who might responsibly use contraceptives in planning her family?
6. Is it really ok in our society for a public figure to go on live radio and call a woman he doesn’t know a “slut?”
7. Does conservative thinking really mean jumping on the bandwagon of whatever mindless banter is spouted in a fruitless attempt at humor at another person’s expense?

Surely the answers to these questions are obvious. Surely Mr. Limbaugh’s comments which raised them are indeed reasonably discounted as preposterous. After all, American companies who pledged their advertising dollars on this radio forum are now retreating. Surely any reasonable person would discount these statements.

Yes, I’ve been tempted. To discount them. But I simply can’t. Because I’m reading that Rush Limbaugh’s listener numbers are just the same, maybe higher since his offensive tirade. Why are you, America?

I’m reading no reports that Clear Channel will be denouncing his actions with a cancellation. I’m reading painfully middle-of-the-road comments from candidates vying for conservative votes — because we wouldn’t want to offend conservative America by denouncing someone who calls women sluts on syndicated radio. Where are you, America?

I’m reading disrespectful name-calling from all kinds of self-proclaimed conservative pundits — no, not name-calling of Mr. Limbaugh, but jump-on-the-bandwagon comments about Sandra Fluke. Oh so witty. Filled with nice, big words and just the right amount of conservative jargon. But still calling a woman a “slut” for stating her beliefs about birth control and the need for women’s healthcare. Who are you, America?

Yes, I’ve been tempted to roll my eyes and deem this another one of those tirades. I’ve been tempted to file them in the “consider the source” category and move on. To discount them. But, I simply can’t. Because I sometimes think conservatively. And I don’t want this man speaking for me.

Wake up, America. Be careful where you lend your ears. It just might be where you find yourself living.