The really wonderful thing about streets, we are discovering...

Is that there are sidewalks next to them.

~MB~

My two younger sons wake up in the morning, grab their blankets, and stumble sleepily into the living room where I'm sitting, working on my computer.  They see me through sleep-pinched eyes, and one face, and then the other, lights up with pure joy.  At moments like these I wish my eyes had a built-in camera, so that I could preserve this memory with a photograph, instead of only with my own, sometimes faulty, mind. 

Something that is endlessly amazing to me as I watch these children grow is their capacity, not just for joy, but for completely unalloyed emotion.  A new toy is given to one of them, and happiness is all he can feel.  She is told her cousins can't come today because they're sick, and her anguish consumes her.  Maybe this has to do with their lack of any real idea of the future, or possibly it's because they don't really have a whole lot of past.  There is only, quite literally, now.  My oldest son, dramatic like his mother and grandfather, is fond of using phrases like, "You never watch the little boys, and they always tear up my Lego ships!"  Superlatives reign supreme.

On Fridays I put the children in the car and we go to the grocery store.  We're there just long enough to get a rotisserie chicken, some bread, fruit, and a pack of cookies.  Then it's down to the beach where we meet Father Bird and eat lunch while we watch the waves and listen to the soothing roar of the surf.  (And get our fingers greasy and run like wild people across the sand.)  This last Friday, as we were leaving the grocery store with our lunch, the cashier had a bright idea. 

"You kids want balloons?"  she asked my cartful.  Wide-eyed, they all nodded.  I paused, waiting, while four red helium-filled balloons with the grocery store logo were doled out to chubby, waiting hands.  And again I saw that absolute joy.  After a gentle reminder to "Tell the lady thank you," we left the store.  

When we got outside, the wind was blowing briskly, and there was a little trouble hanging on to our new and buoyant treasures.  As I wrestled them (balloons and children) all into the car, I wondered about the difference between myself and these children.  The emotions of adults, I realized, are always tempered by past experience and future eventualities.  I ached a little as soon as my children had balloons, knowing that there would be an end to each one, either through sudden, shocking popping, or quiet floating away.  I almost wished that we hadn't gotten the balloons, since we would eventually have to lose them.  Was the inevitable hurt worth the momentary joy?  I looked into the faces of four people who don't know how to have "mixed feelings", faces that reflected the color of their new balloons, and wondered.  Have I, through long experience, gained this vantage point?  Or do they have something that I've lost? 

I drove to the beach, happy chattering and balloons bouncing around the inside of the car behind me, and forgot, really, about the whole thing.  It simply was, I'd determined.  Adults and children are not the same.  When they lost their balloons, I thought, they'd take another step toward becoming like me.  I couldn't tell whether that was good or bad, so I put the thought away.

Our front tires crunched on the sand, I put the car into park, and the doors flew open.  I watched from the car as four children barrelled out onto the beach, three balloons in tow.  I watched as, with no trace of sorrow, no regret or worry, they opened their little hands and, one by one, let their balloons go.  They jumped and danced and pointed as each one climbed higher and higher, and eventually disappeared.  When the third one was gone, they came back to the car for the last one.  Once more they rushed out on the sand in a group, and once more they set their treasure free. 

And I thought, as I watched their balloons float away into the blue distance, that maybe there is something that I've lost.  Maybe, though, it isn't something that has to stay lost.  I have four teachers, if I am a willing student.  I had to try very hard, but for just a moment, watching them dance on the sand, I forgot that they are no longer the babies I loved, forgot that someday they will grow up and leave me.  For just a moment there, I saw my children only as they were on Friday, and for that moment I did feel complete joy.

~MB~

After bugging my husband (a software engineer), my big sister (an information systems gal), my brother (a web designer) and my little sister (a graphic designer) nearly to tears, I have all-but-finished a complete overhaul and redesign of my other website, children's fashion workshop.  Mostly because it needed it so very badly, but also because, on a whim a couple of weeks ago I submitted an application for Google Adsense ads and they....(oh, it's painful to even say)...rejected me.

I have mixed feelings about Adsense, and about web advertising in general.  For one thing, there are a lot of websites out there that are built only to house the ads, and the content of the page is lame to nonexistent. So I hesitate to put any ads up on my site, lest it cast doubt on the reasons for my content's existense.  Also, Adsense ads are becoming so ubiquitous that I hardly see them anymore, let alone click on them.  And, finally, I admit that I am completely vain.  I like my site to be pretty, and those text ads just...aren't.

But, in an effort to increase CFW's exposure last month, I did take out my own little ad with Google Adwords.  (For those of you who don't know, like I didn't know, "AdSense" is the little list of links Google will give you to post on your site, and "AdWords" is when you advertise with Google.)  Before long, my traffic was up, but I was packing my bags for the poorhouse.  How would I make this fabulous heightened exposure pay for itself? 

Thus I found myself chewing my lip and submitting CFW to be reviewed for appropriateness to Google. See, I had bought what they had to sell only until I realized how much it was going to cost me, and in order to get a better deal on my stuff, I was being forced to become a pusher.  

I clicked send, packed the kids in the car and went to the library.  And the park, and the grocery store, and so on.  By the time I had finished all that, Google had written me back.  I was reminded of my little brother (the web designer), and his first day at kindergarten, when I read their reply.  He'd gone to school so very excited to learn new things, and his teacher had given him a matching worksheet.  You know the kind where you draw a line from one side of the page to the other?  It was a "What starts with A?" type of thing, and he already knew all that.  So he spent his time drawing a line from each letter, scrolling and looping around the margin of the page, swooping down around the bottom, and finally back up to end at the correct answer.  Proudly he turned his masterpiece in to the teacher.  She was going to love it. 

A day later, he got his paper back.  A big red "X" was written on the top of the paper, with the word "sloppy" next to it.  He never, as far as I know, drew looping lines again.  This is the way I felt when Google wrote me back saying, essentially, that my website was "sloppy".   Was it really?  Were they just being honest?  I (and about five other people) could fix it!

And I think I can say that although it may not be up to anybody else's standard, CFW is no longer sloppy, at least.  If you'd like, you can go take a look and make your own judgement.  I think now that I shall not reapply to put Adwords up on my site.  I think I like the loopy lines after all.

~MB~

I know that there are people who just love children.  I always wanted to be one of them.  As a teenager, I'd watch other girls coo over babies, and think, if I pick that baby up, I'll probably understand what she's going on about.  Then I'd finally get handed the baby.  And the baby would cry, and writhe, and I would feel completely helpless, and give the baby back to his mother, wondering what was wrong with me. 

I worried, then, as the birth of my first son approached.  When I held my own child, would I feel that complete disconnect again?  Would I have to pretend that I loved him until it (hopefully) became a fact?  I never mentioned this worry to anyone, lest I seem to be the child-hating monster I felt like inside.  And, whether I would love him or not, he was coming.

Those of you who are mothers are probably shaking your heads at me a this point.  I think it's a gross understatement to say that I was unprepared for how much I would love, could love, this child.  I expected to feel the same as I had with every baby I'd ever held, a vague disappointment, a desire to give it back.  Instead it was like the lights were turned on for the first time ever, and I knew that I wasn't completely broken. 

I worried again when my second child, a daughter, was on her way.  We were a happy threesome, Father Bird, our son, and I, and a new child seemed like an impostor.  Again, though, I found that I had worried for nothing.  She was one of us, and again I felt the strange sensation of wanting to hold a baby, of loving the grunting, wriggling child in my arms.  When my second son was born, I was an old pro, and the transition to loving a baby was seamless.

At this point, though, I think I went too far.  In the relative isolation of a life spent caring for three very little children, I remember making the sweeping statement that I was grateful for my oldest son, in part, because he had "taught me to love children".  No longer, I thought, was I the cold, stiff-armed girl handing you back this baby because it had started to cry.  I saw myself as changed, as now being a beatific mother-figure, going through the world caring for and loving the children of all mankind.  (It can be argued that I wasn't getting enough sleep at this time, I suppose.)

But I found, to my dismay, that while it held true for my own children, I still had difficulty with other people's kids.  Friends would bring their children for a playdate, and I'd pace the floor, looking out the windows until they returned to take their children home again.  Or we'd have friends over for dinner, and I'd find that the doubled noise of their children and mine would give me a headache.  I was still, like it or not, cold toward most children.  I began to wonder about the miracle that it was that I loved even my own.  What, I still wondered, was wrong with me?

One of the improvements of our new home over our last is that there are friends my children's ages here on our street.  I can say to the older two, "Come in when it starts to get dark," and they'll play away the long afternoon hours without my having to drive them anywhere.  Thus, all afternoon, I have other people's children trooping in and out my door.  Last week, I was watching all of them ride bikes in a cul-de-sac up the street, and the littlest one fell and hit her knee.  I was the only parent around, and I shocked myself by kneeling down and putting my arms around her.  (Is it even legal to hug other people's children anymore?)  She sagged against me for a minute, sobbing, then brightened up and skipped away. 

And I had done it.  I had soothed, for a moment, I had loved someone else's child.  This was huge!  All it took was using the skills, and the compassion, that I had learned from dealing with my own children, and applying it to another child.  Suddenly I looked back and realized that this thing had been happening for years before last week.  The children who came to dinner no longer gave me headaches.  When friends' children came to visit, it was reluctantly that I watched them go.  I was shocked.  Was it possible...could I finally say, truthfully, that "I love kids"? Can I, at last, be grateful to my children for teaching me to love children?

Maybe I won't make such a rash statement again.  But something is definitely going on.

~MB~

Last weekend, just after the earthquake in Chile, the Tsunami Warning Center sent out a warning: Two-foot waves would be crashing on the shore in San Diego County. 

So what does our family do when a Tsunami Warning has gone out?  We pack up and go to the beach. 

We stood on the sand, looking at the waves that were, indeed, coming in.

"Huh," Father Bird said.  "Those are tsunami waves." 

"Yeah," I said,  "they look more...menacing than normal waves.  Don't they look more menacing than usual?"

"Hm," he said.  "Not so much."  And then it began to rain, and our terrifying tsunami experience was abruptly closed as we rushed everyone to the car.

We wanted to be afraid, we really did.  It was just hard to feel it with two-foot tsunami waves. 

~MB~