Thank You. Amen.

All of us who are mothers begin praying the moment a child is born. Whether it is to God (as I do), or to Allah, or to the universe, or to the unknown forces of nature, we ask blessings for our beloved one.

Let this child be healthy. Let this child be happy. Let this child be kind. Let this child be loved.

Let this child find someone with whom a life can be shared fully and joyfully. Please.

Allow me to introduce Lovely Girl #3, the answer to decades of this mother's prayers. 

Saturday morning it was Boy#3's turn to call and say the magic words--"LG#3 is here with me." Those have been the key opening phrase when each of the Boys have called to let us know they've become engaged, and in each case I believe I've screamed and cried and laughed. 

I had prayed so hard for this moment.

This Lovely Girl and Boy#3 had met during the pandemic so getting to know each other was not easy. Between social distancing and not living in the same city, their courtship was one that developed over time and space. They discovered they both loved travel and board games and cooking, and, eventually, each other. 

Husband and I met her as shut-down restrictions were easing but that meeting was in a park followed by masked ordering of ice cream eaten outside. And still, we drove away grinning from ear to ear. They were so clearly The One the other had been meant to find. 

But there was still one hurdle left. 

Our family is not for the faint of heart. We are loud and competitive, opinionated and unreasonably fond of puns. I admit that I was nervous before we made plans for an all-family Christmas last year. LG#3 is much like me in that she needs solitude to recharge. Would we be too much for her?

I shouldn't have worried. She may not be as noisy as many  all of the rest of us, but she's strong and compassionate and loving. She's smart and funny and thoughtful, and matches us toe-to-toe on competitiveness. She sees what needs to be done, and quietly does it. 

And she loves my son.

As I hugged her before she got in the car to leave, I whispered to her that I hoped she'd be back soon. I don't remember my exact phrasing, but I told her I felt like we'd been saving a place for her for so long and she had finally arrived. 

So when she and Three called Saturday to let us know they were engaged and are planning to be married in June or July next year, I screamed and cried and laughed. 

I had been praying for her since he was born. 

Thank You. Amen.

Welcome to Where You Already Belonged

 

Boy#4, Husband, and my Younger Younger Brother have incessantly whined about occasionally pointed out an injustice of life: Their presence in the world is not nearly as documented as those of their older siblings. 

They may have a point.

All of these wonderful men are the youngest in their families, and the youngest almost always is woefully underrepresented in non-group family photos. That was especially true in the days when those men were photogenically young, before smartphones let moms carry their cameras in their pockets. 

The beautiful brunette in today's picture could make the same complaint about my practices as a blogger. Back in the day, I introduced every Special Guest that visited the House on the Corner, making sure to ease them into an online presence bit by bit before they were engaged to one of the Boys. Thanks to my unforgivably lazy blogging practices these days, though, today there is no easing:

This is Lovely Girl#4!*

Four years ago last month we were on a dream vacation in Costa Rica. We had hoped that the entire family would be able to go, but Lovely Girl#2 was newly pregnant and Boy#3's teaching schedule made an October vacation impossible. So Boy#2 and Lovely Girl#2 joined Husband, Boy#4 and me in a trip that was equal parts Peace Corps Memory Tour and Rich Tourist Vacation. It was awesome.

What we didn't know was that the week before we left Four had gone on his second date with someone he already was suspecting would be special in his life. We talked about every possible topic on that 17-day trip--life, love, politics, career--but because he is inherently cautious he did not mention that the night before we left he had cooked dinner for this woman. In fact, it was months before he told us she existed.

Between Four's caution and Covid shut-downs, it was many more months before we met her in person, even more months before she visited the House on the Corner for the first time.

But, oh, she was worth the wait. 

I wish I had blogged those first visits because I don't remember the details. I remember loving her laugh, and being relieved that she was so easy to talk to. I remember finding out that, like Lovely Girls#1 and #2, she is smart and funny and dark-haired and her only sibling is a brother. I remember tearing up as I watched her and Boy#4 together, loving each other. 

Since then she has become part of the family. She was the activities director for the all-clan week we spent together last summer, and wrangled spreadsheets and schedules of activities appropriate for ages two to 68. She is the good humor, the huge smile, the hugger and spoiler of all of us. 

Four years is a long courtship, though. We gently, then not so gently, encouraged Four. "You know," we told him, "if you two broke up we'd miss you terribly."

Every phone call or visit home we speculated whether this would be the occasion for some kind of announcement. Spoiler: It never was.

Then two weeks ago, they FaceTimed us. They were on their way home from Costa Rica, where Four had finally carried out a romantic tropical proposal at the foot of the volcano near where I had lived more than four decades ago. As the Lovely Girl grinned and held up her be-ringed hand, I shrieked, then cried a little, then smiled and laughed until my face hurt. 

Husband was the one who summed up our feelings when he texted her later though.

"It's great you're becoming part of our family, realizing you really are already."

Welcome, Lovely Girl#4.  We've been waiting for you. 

*I know--she's the third Lovely Girl to join the family, but she is partnered to Boy#4 so she becomes #4.

The Fall

 

My father had been angry with me when I left the farm the last time. 

I had just extracted a promise that he would use his chair lift to get to his bedroom, his office, all the rooms that are inconveniently located on the second floor of his beloved farmhouse. The chair lift was installed after a hip injury a year ago, and in that year he had used it exactly twice--both times to move baskets of laundry to the second floor.

But aging, even for someone who is as amazing as my 96-year-old father, is inescapable. 

I had spent a few days with Dad, and saw that his navigation of the stairs was becoming shaky. I had watched him pause on every step to grope for the next. And I knew his cardiologist had told him he should be using that chair lift. 

"Dad, I'm going to ask you to do something hard. I want you to promise me that you'll use the chair lift," I said.

It really wasn't fair to do this. I knew Dad couldn't refuse direct requests from any of his five children, so we don't often present ultimatums. This was a promise, not a loose agreement that could be circumvented by "I'm sure she didn't mean ALL the time," or "She would want me to keep up my leg strength." But I pinned the promise down: The chair lift every single time up or down the stairs, with an extra lap at the wellness center to keep up the leg strength.

We had already seen the worst that can happen in a fall--fourteen years ago my mother fell just three steps down into the garage, but she suffered a traumatic head injury and died the next day. 

So Dad promised, but he wasn't happy. When I hugged him good-bye as I left for home later that day I told him how sorry I was that he didn't want to do this, but that I loved him. He sighed and hugged me tighter. 

"I love you, too," he said. "I'll get over it." 

I thought of that moment when the text came from my brother last Tuesday. Dad had fallen in the garage and they were on their way to the emergency room. A few hours later we knew he had broken six ribs in his back, near his spine. 

As I made the cross-state drive toward the hospital I was struck by how the landscape had changed in just the few weeks since I had last been there. Late August was still full summer, bright and glaring and hot. But now the sun is lower and fields and trees have taken on the bronzes and muted greens of fall. Road shoulders and ditches are riots of wild sunflowers, final splashes of color that are the annual gaudy announcement of imminent winter.

One week after his fall, Dad is doing shockingly well. His hospital status has moved to swing bed rather than acute care, and he surprised his physical therapist by acing several proficiency tests. He's in pain during transition (up and down from chairs, coughing) but otherwise comfortable. And he was delighted to have me with him, and had put his pique about the chair lift behind. 

Now we're talking about what kind of accommodations need to be made to be able for him to stay at home rather than in an assisted living setting. We want him to be happy and self-directed, but we want him to be safe as well.

We are in a different season.

Who? Me?

 

I have spelled my name out approximately eight gazillion ninety-eleven tantillion times in my life. 

That is probably a conservative estimate, especially for someone whose name is only about an eighth of an inch off the center line of middle-of-the-road, but believe me when I say that pretty much no one can reliably spell it correctly without my help. My first name is actually quite common but its spelling is one of two accepted variants, and if I'm being perfectly honest, probably the less common variant. I grew up with a surname with one tricky option, and married into a surname that I've seen misspelled at least a half dozen different ways. It's as if my name were Betty Davies (it's not). That's not what you think of when you hear the name spoken.

That's why I was just a tad surprised when I opened the email from the Hampton Inn Meridian at 11 p.m. Saturday night. 

"See you soon, Betty Davies!" it gushed. "Your reservation for Mar-11-2023 has been confirmed!" 

Hey! Good for them! They spelled my name exactly right!  But if you check your calendar you'll see that last Saturday was March 11, and at 11 p.m. I was in my nightgown multiple states away from Meridian, Mississippi. Also, the reservation was for two adults and two children and unless we've entered the multiple-universe world of Oscar-winning movies there was no way Husband and I would be multiple states away from the office with corporate tax deadline only four days in the future. Also, our children have pretty much passed the days of sharing hotel rooms with their parents. 

So Husband, who was (shockingly) working on a tax return in the next room, heard my shriek:

"Oh, no! My credit card has been hacked!" 

One of the best things about being married to a CPA is that he's dealt with a lot of Stuff when it comes to all things financial, so he checked my credit card online while I fretted and paced. No charges had shown up, so he called the card company to make sure.

"If the charge hasn't shown up, this is probably a phishing scam," the nice customer service rep reassured us. "Don't click on any links." 

Even though I had passed that exceedingly low test of tech savviness (no link clicking for me), I wasn't reassured.

So Husband put his phone on speaker and called the hotel number.

"Hampton Inn Meridian! How may I help you?' Husband explained to the nice lady who answered the phone that I had received a reservation confirmation, and gave her the confirmation number.

"Yes, we have that reservation, and it looks like...you're already checked in?"

That's when I shrieked the second time. 

"NO! I'm not checked in! That's me, and I'm in Kansas, and I'm not in a hotel in Mississippi!" 

The poor clerk was non-plussed. 

"But you used your credit card and checked in. And the room is paid for. And you're here." 

Husband made shushing gestures at me and began asking questions she couldn't answer. What was the home address of the people in the room? What was the credit card number?

Finally she told us that the credit card was a MasterCard, and the last four digits were XXXX, which isn't a card owned by any of us folks in the House on the Corner.

"Well," she speculated, "maybe there's just someone else out there named Betty Davies." 

I corrected her firmly.

"There's only one MomQueenBee, and that Bee is in Kansas in her nightgown at this very moment."

Bless her, the clerk told us she'd check into the issue and call us back.

An hour later she called back with the astounding news that there is someone else out there named Betty Davies, with the exact same tricky spelling variations of my first and last names. 

"I checked her ID," she told Husband, "and it definitely matches the credit card."

Well, I'll be darned. The next morning Husband handed me a stack of papers printed out from one of those internet people searchers. 

Not only does one Betty Davies live in the House on the Corner (me), another Betty Davies lives in New York, and another Betty Davies lives in Georgia, and another Betty Davies lives in Indiana, and another Betty Davies lives in New Jersey. The Betty Davies who lives in the House on the Corner (me) actually has two nearly-identical listings in this report. And the more-common spelling of the first name plus the correct spelling of the surname show up in Florida, Wisconsin, Virginia, Illinois, Michigan, South Carolina, and three places in New York.

While I was deeply relieved that my credit card was secure, at least for the moment, there was the slightest twinge of disappointment at how many other MomQueenBees are scattered across the country. I guess Margaret Mead was right: 

I am absolutely unique, just like everybody else.

The Top Half of the Photo

 

So much ketchup in my refrigerator

This post is a follow-up to one I wrote almost two weeks ago, in which I promised the rest of the story in a post "tomorrow." HAHAHA! Isn't it nice to know that in this world of constantly shifting expectations and mores, some things never change? In my defense, time is rushing so much faster as I age that I'm not sure "two weeks" and "tomorrow" aren't the same thing.

Anyway, in my last post I bemoaned (albeit bravely, don't you think?) the way our much-anticipated gathering of all of the chickadees back into the House on the Corner turned out to have some empty chairs. That part of the celebration was completely stink-o.

But go back and look at the last post and move your focus to the top half. That's the part that symbolizes how much fun we had in spite of the gaping gap left by the Covid exposure of Boy#1, Lovely Girl#1, and Baby Wonderful#1. (Also, Husband would like me to correct the last post's identification of the flu-ridden and therefore late-to-the-party parties as Boy#4 and his Dear One rather than the Boy#2 clan. This continues a 35-year-old tradition of my calling the Boys by the wrong names. So sorry!)

Anyway, I had the most amazing realization midway through our holiday week: It turns out that there comes a time in your children's lives when you don't have to entertain them. They entertain you. 

This isn't only because the crew now includes an adorable toddler who is beginning to talk and calls me Meemaw and adores Beebaw. Husband and I should have paid closer attention when friends told us we aren't in charge of choosing grandparent names, that the budding babbler would do that. Certainly I wouldn't have chosen Meemaw, which brings up mental images of a snaggle-toothed hillbilly in a rocking chair. Hearing the original "Grandma" and "Grandpa" emerge in translation from this wee one's mouth, though, is absolutely precious and endlessly endearing.

Even after the wee one had gone to bed, the entertainment didn't stop. The three Boys and their beauties organized activities to keep us together, even though a wonky hip was hobbling me. One night, for example, we spent hours doing taste tests. 

Friends, I never would have imagined how much fun this would be--like wine tastings for tee-totaling parents, without the hangovers. For two hours we dipped mini-hash browns into different brands of catsup, licked peanut butters off spoons, sipped orange juice (from concentrate and not from concentrate), and nibbled onion-and-sour-cream potato chips.

We are a family of, shall we say, strong opinions. We are brand loyal, and know deep down that our preferences are undoubtedly correct. But what do you know? If we don't have the brand names in front of us, it's a lot harder to be persnickety. After years of arguing for their personally preferred peanut butters, Boy#4 and his Dear One discovered they had top-rated the other one's brands. The moment was fraught.

Noooooo!

We disagreed on much. Some of us have palates that preferred a vinegary ketchup; others preferred it sweet. Two of us are rabid fans of the store-brand peanut butter. But we also agreed on much. "Natural" peanut butter is a crime against sandwiches. Ruffles are the finest style of potato chips and Pringles are...not. Three containers of ketchup earned their way into the refrigerator but the Great Value did not. 

And when it was over the next generation cleaned up the dozens of little plates and put the tasting spoons in the dishwasher, and generally got the kitchen ready for the next meal. Which they would cook, and that right there is another level of wonderful. 

We also spent one evening in a rousing session of Monikers, which was the perfect intergenerational game, except for the answers that made Meemaw blush just a little. 

Being the Old Folks is not always ideal. I very much regretted that the cursed wonky hip kept me from playing on the floor or taking walks with the wee one. And the one meal I did cook was not so good, with the only reliable specialty I claim (dinner rolls) falling victim to expired yeast. I would have checked that when I was younger.

But, oh, young parents, just wait. There will come a day when you are not the one responsible for the logistics or the food or the entertainment. Then you will sit back and look at your children having fun without your orchestration, and it will be the best. 

There's no comparison..

Counting the Blessings; Rolling With the Rest

 

A scroll-down representation

Today's beauty shot is the most recent one on my camera roll, and it makes me laugh ruefully. In some ways it's a scroll-down representation of the Christmas goings-on in the House on the Corner. 

As you look at it, hold your hand up to your eyes so that your fingers only reveal the serene, well-ordered reading nook that is one of my favorite parts of our newly-remodeled kitchen (the process of which I completely neglected to blog, but the results of which I love soooooo much). The nook is the ideal place to snuggle up with an afghan and a book, and to glance up often at the pictures of loved ones I've packed onto the south wall. 

Now move your hand up so that the mission chair and reading lamp are covered and all you see are bags and bags of trash, half-filled cartons of pop, a deflated air mattress, and a roaster still greasy with the remains of our holiday ham dinner. 

That was Christmas around these parts. It was a combination of perfection and wow-that-stinks. Here's where I must once more tell you young moms to hang in there. A quarter century ago I would have let the wow-that-stinks parts completely erase the good moments. It was PERFECTION OR BUST! for me, and I'm here to tell you that Christmas perfection is a myth. 

So I'll tell you the wow-that-stinks parts before anything else, because these were not inconsequential. 

When the Boys began establishing homes of their own we began sharing holidays with the families that were now theirs by marriage. Every other non-pandemic year the Boys and families are here for Christmas; every other year they're here for Thanksgiving. This was our Thanksgiving year so Husband and I spent Dec. 25 by ourselves, watching movies and eating Chinese food. The festivities would really begin Dec. 27, when the ENTIRE CLAN would begin to pile in! I restrained myself from adding an additional dozen exclamation points to that last sentence, but just know that the last time we all were gathered in the old crappy kitchen it was to announce that Baby Wonderful #2 was on his way. Baby Wonderful #2 now is within spittin' distance of turning two years old, so you can do the math. And if it wasn't exciting enough to have all the Boys home, we would also have four girls, not even counting me, for the very first time ever! 

It was so much wonderful I couldn't bear it. 

If you look back to the middle of that last paragraph, though, you will begin to see a tiny little dark cloud developing on the horizon. Are you noticing that before they were to come to their mama and daddy's house, our kids were spend time with the extended clans of their families-in-law? Unfortunately, two of those tiny little dark clouds blossomed into the cumulonimbus variety.

Boy#1, Lovely Girl #1, and Baby Wonderful #1, spent Christmas Day sitting next to a relative with a cough, and sure enough, that relative spent Boxing Day morning swabbing her nose and watching two lines appear on the rapid Covid test. Boy#2 and his Dear One spent Christmas Day with a relative who had tested positive for flu, and sure enough, soon Two was coughing up a lung and shivering with chills. There was no possibility those in Covid quarantine would be able to attend, and the flu guy would need quick bounce-back.

It was beyond disappointing. This was going to be the first time Baby Wonderful cousins were to meet, and they're now old enough to interact. It was going to be a return to normalcy, a reward for the years we've endured missed holidays and postponed celebrations. 

But while I don't want to minimize the wow-that-stinks, and I do not at all minimize the hurt that scuttled holiday plans caused this year, for me (and I am only speaking for myself) age and the pandemic have softened my need for perfection. Half a loaf is better than none, after so many years of no loaf at all. In our case we got three-quarters of a loaf: The flu guy did bounce, and was here with his Dear One for the end of the week. The Covid-exposed sidestepped the infection at home.

There were many, many moments during the past week when I found my eyes unexpectedly filling with tears of gratitude. Sitting in the New Year's Day church service in a a pew completely filled with my family. "Playing" the piano with a toddler who giggled and imitated me. Opening gifts that were so heartfelt and thoughtful. Being with grown-up children, who have chosen to love each other. 

We talked and talked and laughed and laughed, and when we waved goodbye through the fog Tuesday morning we knew again how blessed we were, even though there hadn't been a moment when the underlying "If only..." wasn't being felt.

Tomorrow, if I don't get too lazy, I'll talk about the top half of the picture. That's the one that went mostly to plan, and was everything I had hoped it would be. 

Well, except for the holiday dinner rolls, which I made using yeast which I apparently bought before the pandemic. They did not rise at. all. and wow, that stunk. But everything else? 

Perfection.