An Invitation to Follow Me to My New Blog

I have been invited to join the ranks of bloggers over at Patheos, a web portal on religion and spirituality. It's a great time for me to renew my commitment to blogging regularly and reach out to some new audiences, with my book coming out in just a few weeks.

So, as of today, I am discontinuing my Five Dollars and Some Common Sense blog. However, I will continue to write about parenthood, faith, and disability over at Patheos. Please click on over to the new blog, and subscribe via e-mail or RSS feed. I will occasionally repost or rework popular posts from Five Dollars..., so some of the material on the new blog will be familiar to you. I will be writing plenty of new stuff as well.

I hope you'll follow me to my new blog, comment, and share what I write. Many thanks...and I'll see you over at Patheos!

The Cathedral is Shaken, and So Am I

When I lived and worked in Washington, D.C., the Washington National Cathedral was a spiritual home, a neighborhood landmark, and a symbol of how God is both intimately engaged in the world and also transcends it. Over at the Daily Episcopalian, I offer this meditation on how the Cathedral's earthquake damage has both shaken me and reminded me that God can never be shaken.

A Reminder of All I Have Forgotten

For the past two weeks, while the kids took swimming lessons at a local outdoor pool, a friend and I camped ourselves in a shady spot just next to the park's wading pool. I had a front-row seat to the parade of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers arriving with their parents to get relief from the record-breaking heat. I became captivated by watching these little ones, and a little heartbroken too, at how long ago and far away my own days with infants and toddlers seem now, with my youngest child heading to kindergarten and my oldest to middle school.

A little boy, I'd guess between 18 months and two years, came with his mom every day. This child's whole-body joy at being in the water was something to  savor. He careened around the pool, swinging his legs out to the side with each step. He looked constantly a little off-kilter and in danger of falling face first into the water—which he did often, only to bounce right back up and continue his drunken-man wading pool dance.

One day, I noticed a mother walking up the hill to the wading pool with a preschool-aged boy and a baby girl in tow. The girl was clearly in the earliest stages of confident walking. She managed to stay upright, but her chubby little legs were still markedly bowed, and she walked with the deliberate, exaggerated waddle of those still adjusting to life on two legs. As they neared the pool, the baby girl came upon a wide crack in the asphalt path filled with mud. She stopped and considered this obstacle, then carefully but deliberately put one Robeez-clad foot into the muddy dip and, seeing that the ground there was reliably solid, stepped forward. As she moved ahead, she stopped once to look back, eyes wide in appreciation for this surprising little bit of earth. 

I couldn't keep my eyes off these little ones. My children are still plenty young, interested in checking out the unexpected muddy dips in their well-worn daily paths. But they are no longer quite as capable of such singlemindedness, this giving of their full attention, brain and body, to the physical experiences of water and mud and the myriad ways that a human being can put one foot in front of the other. They are more socially aware than they were as toddlers and babies, focused on who is and isn't with them, what others are and are not doing. They calculate their actions partly in response to those factors. Their love of water goes beyond the tactile pleasures of splashing and bubbles and reflected light. Now it includes practicing swim strokes, making up games with their friends, and insisting on goggles because they don't like the way the water feels in their eyes. The muddy dip in the road is more and more often just something to be stepped over on the way to the next thing.

I kept wondering if the moms were paying attention, really paying attention, to their children. Did the little boy's mom notice his mouth shaped into an "O" of delight? Did the baby girl's mom take note of the gaping distance between her baby's sturdy legs—all curves and rolls—and my seven-year-old's lanky limbs with their sharply defined calf muscles, their bruised and knobby knees?

Really, my question was this: Did I pay attention when my children were that little? Because, while I know they did ecstatic drunken-man circuits in the wading pool or under the yard sprinkler, while I know they learned to walk on fat-rolled legs and marveled at tiny surprises—feathers and shells and grass, the sound that newly shod feet make on gravel—I can't easily conjure up images of how they looked and moved and sounded then. And I wonder, is this just the way it is? Is it impossible to really, in a palpable way, remember each stage of our children's lives, no matter how much attention we pay?

I know I paid attention. I know I looked at my children when they were babies and toddlers and said to myself, "Look at them. Really look. Because even right now, they are already changing and growing into something and someone else." Yet, I still can't really remember. Which is, I suppose, why we parents take so many photos and videos. I wonder how parents in pre-photographic times bore the grief of knowing that their children's babyhoods were utterly lost to them, knowing that while they might remember particular incidents—what room the baby took his first steps in, how their toddler daughter giggled at the dog's antics—they have nothing concrete to remind them of their babies' fuzzy heads, chubby cheeks, dimpled hands, square little feet, gurgling laughter, high-pitched voices.

Although perhaps it was easier to be a parent in the times before we were so compelled to capture our children's lives on film. Sometimes I don't want to even look at my kids' baby photos and videos, because all they do is remind me how much I've forgotten. And I realize that the children who are so here today, whose bodily presence is so familiar that I cannot imagine a Leah other than the one whose long suntanned limbs are so often stretched out on our den couch while she devours her latest read, a Meg other than the one whose gap-toothed grin expresses her sheer delight with the scooter-riding, game-playing, friend-loving opportunities that each day brings, or a Ben other than the one who is equally happy sucking his thumb with his head in my lap and belting out Hannah Montana songs from the "stage" he has created with our living room sofa—even these children, so incarnate, will one day become something and someone else. And I will struggle to remember, really remember them as they are today. No matter how much attention I pay.

But I pay attention anyway, as much as I can amid the necessary distractions of schedules and chores. This dynamic is just one more reminder of how foolish and full of paradox this endeavor is, this bearing and raising of children. We welcome them knowing that one day we will say goodbye. We shelter them so that eventually they can leave us. We create boundaries with the expectation that they will test them. We give them all that we have and are, so that they will be able to get along without us. We pay attention, though we cannot possibly remember all the sights and sounds, the scents and textures, the baby steps and joyful dances that mark our days as the parents of children.

My Cancer Playlist: Wallowing, F-Bombs, and How We Suffer

This winter, when I was being treated for breast cancer, I created a new iPod playlist titled simply “Cancer.” Cancer, as crises of various magnitudes tend to do, made me impatient with anything that felt like a waste of time, including listening to music that didn’t tap into something I was feeling, or wanted to feel, or didn’t want to feel but was unsure how not to feel.

My cancer was completely treatable. Knowing how hard even that sort of cancer was, I have a new appreciation for people whose cancer is terminal, requires chemo, or causes great pain. Mine was none of that. It was hard. But it could have been much, much harder.

That said, it was a bad winter. Two surgeries, one each in November and December. Seven weeks of daily radiation—the same weeks when there were not merely inches, but feet of snow on the ground. I understood for the first time what depression really feels like, because I felt it. I stopped enjoying things that usually provide reliable oases of pleasure during the mundane, repetitive routines of family life—coffee, food, books. Was my mood due to my cancer treatment, the gray and cold winter, being cooped up daily with a five-year-old who was completely ready for kindergarten a full year before he was eligible? All of the above.

Music, however, never completely lost its heartening power. So I made a playlist of exactly the songs I wanted to listen to. And I listened to them. A lot. In the kitchen when I was fixing lunches or cleaning up supper. When I’d force myself to take a walk on a relatively balmy 35-degree day. When I was cleaning a bathroom.

My cancer treatment ended in late February, and eventually, even this record-breaking winter ended. I undertook a reinvention of sorts. Cut and dyed my hair. Started exercising six days a week. Joined Weight Watchers. And I put away my cancer playlist.

Recently, I took a look at the playlist again. The thing about suffering is that we usually can’t make it go away. We just have to get through it. What helps us to do that, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to feel not so alone, to nourish that bright spot of hope that assures us it won’t always be this hard? My song choices, I think, say a lot about both what it feels like to dwell in the shadows of a painful period, and what helps us the most during those times.

We need to feel what we are feeling. I did some wallowing this winter, and chose songs that helped me wallow by putting words to my more unruly emotions. Mumford and Sons’ White Blank Page includes a line about “swelling rage,” in which the music actually swells and the lead singer’s voice takes on a menacing rasp. The line is not just about rage; it embodies rage. Whenever I heard that song, I became more aware of how angry I was that my winter was being stolen out from under me.

I hope my friends and family would attest that I did not go through this winter in a constant state of swelling rage. We need to feel what we are feeling—rage, grief, frustration, hopelessness—but we also need to live our lives without poisoning the very air we breathe. The angry and sad music I chose (Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Sarah McLachlan’s entire newest album, written in the wake of her divorce) helped me to wallow in sadness and anger now and then, and then set them aside so I could continue to work, prepare meals, and help my kids with their homework.

Profanity has a purpose. I chose several songs simply because of their most excellent use of profanity, such as It’s Been Awhile by Stain’d, and Little Lion Man, again by Mumford and Sons.

I have one foot in the evangelical world, where there is some disagreement over whether profanity has a place. When I wrote for Christianity Today about the adults-only picture book phenomenon, Go the F* to Sleep, many readers agreed that the author’s use of the f-bomb effectively gave voice to parents’ fatigue and frustration when their kids won’t settle down to bed. But a few were shocked that a Christian would even consider having such a book in her possession, and had trouble disentangling the f-word as used in the book from its sexual connotations. A Christian author whom I admire once wrote a blog post about how he wishes that Little Lion Man included the line, “I really messed it up this time,” instead of, “I really f-d it up this time,” because then he could allow his son to appreciate the song.

I disagree, with gusto. There is a world of difference in tone and intent between “messed it up,” and “f-d it up.” In the midst of my frigid and tedious winter, I needed some good profanity to adequately describe how much it all sucked. Sometimes an f-bomb is the exact right word.

Laughter helps. My favorite type of humor tends to be a little bit dark; I prefer biting satire to the latest Internet video of a cat (although this one is pretty funny). I also gravitate toward irreverence. Perhaps that’s an inevitable result of going through life as a Good Girl.

My cancer playlist included the Crash Test Dummies’ God Shuffled His Feet, in which God, hosting a picnic on the seventh day of creation, is stumped by his creatures’ questions (Will we get haircuts in heaven?). He responds with a story about a boy with blue hair, which leaves the people scratching their heads: “Is that a parable, or a very subtle joke?” I also included Sublime’s What I Got, which besides some good profanity, includes some black humor about just how bad life can get (“Life is too short so love the one you got, 'cause you might get run over or you might get shot") before asserting that “Love is what I got. Just remember this.”

This sort of humor suited those icy, dark winter days just perfectly.

The best kind of hope is the honest kind. My playlist did not include any bubbly pop songs about how lucky I am to be loved (though I am). But there were plenty of songs about real hope, the kind that acknowledges that life is hard and painful. Really, those kinds of songs made up the bulk of the list: the Indigo Girls’ All That We Let In (“You may not see it when it’s sticking to your skin, but we’re better off for all that we let in”); the Counting Crows’ Long December (“It’s been a long December, and there’s reason to believe that this year will be better than the last”); and Pearl Jam’s The End (“I just want to grow old”).

My favorite song on the whole list is, again, from Mumford and Sons (their debut album was essentially my soundtrack for the winter). From After the Storm: “Night has always pushed up day…There will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears, when love will not break your heart but dismiss your fears. Get over your hill and see what you find there…”

Christians are often really bad at dealing with suffering, resorting too readily to platitudes rather than just keeping each other company, side by side in the dark. Over on my other blog, Choices That Matter, guest writer Mary Caler reflects on Christian responses to suffering, particularly the suffering of infertility. I encourage you to pop over and read her essay, because it offers some valuable material for Christians (or anyone) who wants to be present to people in pain.

My cancer playlist echoes Mary’s main thesis: When we are in pain, we don’t need platitudes about how God is working for our good. We need space in which to name our pain, even wallow a little bit, the assurance that we are not the first people who have felt this way, a laugh or two, and hard-won hope that acknowledges how very painful life can be.

In Defense of Blogging: A Wordy Blogger's Manifesto

Like many bloggers, I have a love/hate relationship with blog comment sections. On the one hand, I crave comments. They are a concrete sign that people actually read what I write, and find my words engaging enough to respond. But comments can also leave me scratching my head in perplexity, banging my head against the wall in frustration, or shaking my head at the sorry state of public discourse.

Some of the most headache-inducing comments disparage bloggers outright and/or misunderstand the nature of blogging, either subtly or with a good dose of vitriol. Such comments show up on nearly every blog I’ve written for or regularly read, no matter the topic. So I’ve decided to list the most common types of blog-disparaging and blogger-insulting comments, and explain why they are so maddening.

I don’t expect this little rant to transform comment culture, which is a notoriously difficult corner of the blogosphere to manage. But perhaps I can convince just a few of the more thoughtful commenters out there to think twice before they resort to one of these worn and faulty arguments. And maybe I can give my poor head a break from all that scratching and banging and shaking.

Common Criticisms of Bloggers in General

“Bloggers just want attention.” — Well, duh. Yes, we want attention. Anyone who writes anything for public consumption wants people to read it. Blogging is a spectacularly bad thing to do if you don’t want attention.

Most bloggers spend much time, energy, and angst figuring out how to get more traffic. This is not just ego-stroking. Professional writers and aspiring authors are expected to have an Internet presence, which usually includes a dedicated web site and some kind of blog. Newspaper and magazine blogs bring traffic to media web sites, engage readers in conversation about published articles, and provide more content than can fit onto print pages. People who are (or aspire to be) recognized as experts in their field often blog to share expertise and get the attention of potential customers, clients, fans, supporters, or employers.

So yes, bloggers want attention. That’s the point of blogging.

“Bloggers are self-absorbed.” — This criticism is often lobbed at bloggers with memoir-type blogs, particularly women who write about the domestic sphere.  “Do these people really think that other people want to read about their unending piles of laundry, anxious kids, and food allergies?” ask the upstanding commenters.

Yes. Yes, bloggers do think that other people want to read about those things, which is why bloggers write about them.

Do people want to read all of that? If a blogger has become successful— he or she has a loyal reader following in the hundreds or thousands, and/or makes some money via blogging, and/or has secured paid writing gigs (magazine articles, book contracts) as a result of blogging—then the answer is an unequivocal “yes.”

Bloggers (and other writers) can get away with writing about themselves if in doing so, they are providing something of value to readers. Unless bloggers figure out a way to make their personal stuff compelling for readers, they’ll be blogging for a bit fat audience of none. Successful bloggers, even those who focus on their own day-to-day lives, offer something valuable to readers: they have a compelling voice, they reliably make people think hard or laugh out loud, they give good advice, they make readers feel not so alone, they share useful information, they inspire.

“Bloggers are lazy.” —To beat a not-quite-dead horse: Successful bloggers are good at what they do. They are often excellent writers. Or they may just be good-enough writers, but possess an irresistible voice, keen powers of observation, or stores of knowledge about some topic of interest to a niche audience. As is obvious from the dismal state of high school essays, grammatically bankrupt e-mail correspondence, and the tendency for competent adults to break into cold sweats when asked to write something for the boss, writing well is hard work. Many people not only can’t write well, they don’t even want to if they don’t have to.

Bloggers have to write both well and diligently. Conventional wisdom says that successful bloggers post a minimum of two or three times a week, every week. (By that measure, I am clearly not a successful blogger. I’m working on it.) Conventional wisdom also says that effective blog posts are between 500 and 800 words. Do you know how hard it is to write something worthy in so few words? It’s really, really hard. Which is why, on my personal blogs, I rarely come even close to those limits (this post is a case in point). When I write for other blogs, I usually spend much more time paring my posts down than writing them.

A blog disparager on Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode blog said of mom bloggers: “I’d much prefer mothers and women become successful because of actually achievements, not because of some amusing dribble they wrote on their blog.” I guess this commenter doesn’t know that writing well, and doing so week after week with enough originality for people to keep reading, is an “actually” [sic] achievement and not just “dribble.” [sic]

“Bloggers need to get a real job.” — This is one of several corollaries to the “Bloggers are lazy” criticism. Others are, “Bloggers clearly have too much time on their hands,” or, my favorite, “I could never blog because I’m too busy working my real job.”

News flash: For most of us, blogging is our job. And a real one too! Or at least, it’s part of our job. A journalist might blog as well as write for print media. A writer might blog in addition to publishing books and securing freelance work. A caterer might share recipes and party tips on a blog, and thus attract new customers. Even those much-maligned “mom bloggers” might earn a few (or many) dollars by selling ads on their blog, getting a book contract, writing for other media outlets, or securing speaking engagements.

“Bloggers are just in it for the money.” —  Snort.

OK, seriously. If we were just in it for the money, that indeed would be worth criticizing, because there’s not a whole heck of a lot of money to be made blogging in and of itself. There’s no great blogging empire out there doling out commissions based on how many page views or comments we get.

For many of us, blogging earns a very small bit of money. I get paid for some of the posts I write for other blogs. Some bloggers sell ad space. When blogging earns little or no income, we’re usually doing it for another reason, whether personal (conversing with like-minded folk about a topic of interest) or professional (to build an author platform, sell books, attract clients, etc.).

A relative few bloggers earn a substantial living via blogging. They work many hours a week to maintain a viable blog that will attract thousands of readers a day. Financially successful bloggers will tell you that the actual blog writing takes up a minority of their (substantial) working hours. The rest of the time, they are vetting ads, reviewing products, writing articles for other publications, or traveling to speaking engagements.

So yes, I suppose you could say that bloggers are in it for the money, seeing as most people are in their jobs for the money.

Common Criticisms of Specific Blog Posts

“It is inappropriate/bad form/not nice to publicly criticize or “use” another blogger’s arguments in your own post.” — This criticism comes up frequently when one of my colleagues at Christianity Today women’s blog writes something in response to some other blogger’s post. The criticism is more likely when we’re covering a personal topic. For example, we’ve recently had posts covering marriage and divorce that referred to other bloggers’ personal experiences, as they shared them on their own blogs. But the criticism is not limited to personal topics. This week, one of my colleagues responded to another blogger’s post that had to do with politics, and a commenter accused her of “using” the other blogger for her own purposes.

In every case, the other bloggers were public figures, for whom blogging is only one facet of their work. My fellow writers were not stumbling on the wee-hours ramblings of some unknown housewife, shining a spotlight on an unwilling and unprepared subject. They were responding to the (presumably) considered and polished writings of well-known people.

Blogs, except for those intended for a small private audience (such as a family blog for sharing news and photos, which should be protected by privacy settings), are part of our public discourse. And to go back to point #1: Bloggers want attention.

It is completely appropriate for a blogger to publicly respond, even critically, to material posted publicly on another blog. Most bloggers will actually welcome the attention, even if it is critical (so long as it’s thoughtful criticism, and not nutty). “There’s no bad publicity” often applies in the blogging world. When a blogger responds to another blogger’s post, it will likely drive more traffic back to the original post, and most bloggers will welcome the new page views.

“I wish you had said this, this, and this about your topic.” — No kidding. So do I. But in about 800 words, there’s a lot I can’t say. When you read a blog post, you have to trust the writer’s integrity and sources more than you do for longer articles. When I write that, "In my experience, such as such is true," you have to trust that I’ve actually had experiences to support my thesis, because I don’t have enough words to describe them in detail. When I write that, “Studies have shown that…” you have to trust that I’ve actually seen the studies; I might link to one or two, but blog posts generally don’t include footnotes or extensive explanation of sources.

By all means, use the comment section to ask the writer to clarify or elaborate. Most of us are all too happy to participate in the comment section, and would much rather engage in constructive conversation than defend ourselves against nastiness. But strive to comment on what the blogger actually managed to cram into 800 words, rather than pointing out all of the nuances he or she failed to cover. We are well aware of all that we left out, or had to cut out. All those precious words we lovingly caressed into life are in a heap on our virtual cutting room floor. Believe me when I say it’s more painful for us than it is for you.

There’s much more I could say in defense of bloggers and blogging. About how blogs covering domestic and traditionally female-oriented topics (cooking, household management, parenting, etc.) are more readily disparaged than those covering professional and traditionally male-oriented topics (politics, science, medicine, etc.). Or about how odd it is that all the people who think blogging is such a wasteful, pointless way to spend time so often visit blogs to render these opinions from their lofty perch above the bloggers’ muck.

But my word count long ago became unseemly, and I’ve already wasted too much time this afternoon engaging in my money-grubbing non-job.

Because He Cleans the Shower Drain: A Father's Day Tribute

Today is Father's Day, and honestly, it won't be that different from any other Sunday. Daniel and I are practical folk (and nearly always slightly overwhelmed by this here life), so we tend to not make a big deal out of Mother's Day or Father's Day. Or even our birthdays, for that matter. Mine was yesterday, and I asked Daniel to get me four yards of mulch and spread it around the gardens. Practical and boring, but just what I wanted.

For Father's Day today, we'll probably go out for pizza and that's about it. But pizza (particularly pizza in an actual restaurant with three wiggly children who don't always behave so perfectly in such confined spaces) seems inadequate. So in addition, I'm offering this too-small written tribute to my children's dad.

You know how we moms have that reputation for quietly, almost invisibly taking care of everyone and of all the little, mundane details that keep a household and family running—a reputation we like to regularly polish and sometimes shove in our partners' faces to ensure that they properly appreciate its gleam? I do that sort of caretaking in our family. But so does Daniel.

No, he doesn't have the pediatrician's phone number memorized or buy birthday gifts for the kids' friends or recite our weekend schedule down to the smallest detail without consulting a calendar. Sometimes I heave beleaguered sighs when he forgets that snacks sent to school have to be peanut-free, puts Leah's socks in Meg's drawer, or refers to a child's long-time friend with the completely wrong name. My sighs are weighted by that tired (tired as in exhausted, tired as in overused) mother's lament: Do I have to keep track of everything around here? Do I have to do everything around here?

No, actually, no I don't. Because Daniel keeps track of all sorts of details that I either don't think about or choose to ignore. Then I insist on believing that the things I keep track of are somehow more vital, more central, less dispensable than the things he keeps track of.

A few weeks ago, I was doing a more thorough than usual cleaning of our master bathroom. I even unscrewed the drain cover to clean out the accumulated gunk. I'd never done that before, despite owning this house for nearly five years. I'd never done it before because Daniel does it whenever he cleans the bathroom. Which is not often. Maybe three or four times a year. But when he does clean the bathroom, he always clears that nasty, stinking, gummy drain.

It got me thinking about all the little things he does every day, every week, every month that I don't even have to think about. He cleans the litter box, and he's not even a cat person. He changes the lightbulbs and knows off the top of his head which wattage bulbs we have and which we need. He disposes of the often-decapitated animal carcasses that the cat-he-doesn't-really-like regularly brings us. He vacuums out my car. He cleans and organizes the refrigerator.  He empties the dishwasher. He folds the laundry. He clears the dead limbs from our back woods. Yesterday, he decided the porch windows needed cleaning, so he cleaned them.

It's not just chores that Daniel does with quiet grace. He signs off on Meg's homework, after sitting with her at the kitchen table to help her through a tough assignment. He gives the kids piggy-back rides up to bed, plays a quick game of charades if they are cooperative with the whole pajama/toothbrushing routine, agrees to read just one more chapter of their bedtime story. He shows them planets through his telescope, adjusts the training wheels on their bikes, hikes with them up to Heublein tower, teaches them the proper way to wash dishes at a campsite. When confronted with fidgety, bored, complaining children, he breaks out the Slip 'N Slide, the paints and easel, the Play Doh, the Kapla blocks, the train set.

Did I mention that he is currently working essentially two full-time jobs and spends two hours a day commuting? My book group recently read the classic working-mother novel, I Don't Know How She Does It. I don't know how he does it.

If I had to be a single mom to these kids, I could do it. I would do it. Of course I would. Sometimes I fall into the trap of believing that I already do everything anyway, that the minutiae in my head and the chores that I do on auto-pilot and the ways I most naturally interact with my kids are clearly the only minutiae and chores and interactions that matter. But they're not.

Happy Father's Day to the man whose brain holds the minutiae mine cannot hold, whose hands do the chores that I cannot do (or often just don't want to do), and who loves our children in ways I cannot love them.

What God Has to Do with an R-Rated Picture Book

Do you ever want your kids to just go the f*@# to sleep? I do. So I appreciate the sentiment behind the new for-adults picture book of that name by Adam Mansbach, and wrote about it for Her.meneutics earlier this week. Then USA Today's "Faith and Reason" blog picked up my post. Not bad for a week in which I am doing little more productive than nursing a sick kid and attending a gajillion end-of-school-year activities!