On reading to your children

The Story of Ferdinand the Bull

by Matt Mason

Dad would come home after too long at work
and I'd sit on his lap to hear
the story of Ferdinand the Bull; every night,
me handing him the red book until I knew
every word, couldn't read,
just recite along with drawings
of a gentle bull, frustrated matadors,
the all-important bee, and flowers—
flowers in meadows and flowers
thrown by the Spanish ladies.
Its lesson, really,
about not being what you're born into
but what you're born to be,
even if that means
not caring about the capes they wave in your face
or the spears they cut into your shoulders.
And Dad, wonderful Dad, came home
after too long at work
and read to me
the same story every night
until I knew every word, couldn't read,
just recite.

Shedding Skin

I hung wallpaper for a short time, around 1985. I sucked at measuring and cutting. My boss complained that I was weak and needed too much direction. (He was not wrong.)

Next: I entered tax forms for the Internal Revenue Service. Was a whiz at the 10-key, but pregnancy nausea put the kabosh on that desk job. Keystrokes were counted; I spent a vast amount of time hovering over a toilet in a dimly lit government-issued bathroom stall. (I wasn't fired. I quit.)

Twenty-two years later, after three children, a Bachelor of Arts degree to teach secondary English (I preferred high school then), a community newspaper gig (I was assigned the education beat) , and a newly elected seat on the local school board (I wanted to serve my community), I scooped ice cream at a mom and pop business as a stop gap between reporting and returning to the classroom. Turns out that a person cannot write education news and serve on the school board at the same time. Something about a conflict of interest. (Also, and this is important, because I am proud: I created a chicken salad concoction that became a kind of legend on the Square in downtown Liberty while working at the quaint, brick-walled ice cream shop.)

Reporting and teaching: the bulk of my career. Two decadess. During those years, I was also raising kids, laundering thousands of socks, grocery shopping twice weekly and preparing meals twice daily. My husband traveled six months out of the year. He ate meals out and slept in nice hotel beds. I was left at home, trying to get myself and three children under the age of six up and out the door by 6:45 a.m. Needless to say, I was tired and bitch-cranky. My PMS was severe; at one point I (seriously) thought about running away from home (and work responsibilities), maybe head to New England. Chop off my hair and peroxide-dye it. Pierce my navel ~ hell, FIND my navel. Get into shape. Get a tattoo. Create a new identity that had nothing to do with motherhood or teaching or asking complete strangers prying questions.

For two decades, I was passionate and pissy about those two jobs. (There were some good days.) Now, I tell myself those feelings were valid, and not emotional fabrications to ease the psychic pain of withdrawal from the newsroom and the classroom. It's what I did. Was good at. Defined by. Paid for.

Look. At heart, I am an introvert, and as such, I am a person who not only adores solitude and quiet but needs it. As you can imagine, it was tough for me to go out into the world (read: my community) with a smile and a notebook and interview superintendents and lottery winners and city councilmen. I always felt artificially poised and posed, there in my pumps and business suit, as I asked questions and wrote furiously to record answers. Showtime! (Jazz hands.)

Teaching high school was one big show, too, only six chaotic times a day ~ in profoundly noisy fifty-five minute increments. The hooligans needed fun assignments or else they were bored, apathetic, and problematic. With the energy I expended day-in-day-out, I might've trained to swim from Cuba to Florida. (Bet Diana Nyad never taught high school English.)
Later, I found middle school and it fit me like a comfortable shoe. At heart, I am fourteen years old. I laugh at fart jokes; I like, truly like, the music of Justin Beiber and Selena Gomez; I purchase for myself fuzzy-fabric covered journals and when the Book Fair rolls around, I always buy bobble-head pens and erasers that look like chunks of cheese. Mostly, I think early teens are pretty dang funny; in fact, I feel most tender toward awkward adolescents. Why? I remember being thirteen, fourteen. I remember feeling out of control and painfully shy and oh-so-ready to grow up, even though it meant leaving the security of my childhood.
And then my mom died and I lost my mind. I left the classroom to devote my life to beating myself up with guilt and trying to work shit out in/through/around/ my writing. I got accepted to the MacDowell Colony and got to write, undisturbed, ten hours a day in a gingerbread-like stone cottage nestled among towering trees in southern New Hampshire. I was productive and loved every single minute of my twenty-four days.  I came home energized. I would finish my novel and send it off; I would enter contests and win; I would be published in bona fide literary journals, like Ploughshares and Glimmer Train.
None of the above happened. What happened was home and all the responsibilities that come with it. Furthermore, a lack of discipline and my damned ADD took over and I reverted to pre-MacDowell ways, which meant spending too much time on facebook, too much time watching Modern Family and Dr. Phil, and eating out with friends three times a week. Bad for the waistline; bad for publishing.

And now, here I am. Forty-eight years old. I am not reporting. I am not teaching. Without my income, vacations are a luxury of the past; I do my own nails now. Pedicures? What are those? I do, however, have money in my purse for a Starbucks latte anytime I want one. I am one lucky lady, thanks to a wonderful and supportive husband who goes to work each day loving what he does. He is the major bread-bringer-homer. Me? I freelance and pick up some money here and there. I am a (paid) morning and after-school childcare provider. (Love my pseudo-grandchildren!). And ~ and this is BIG ~ I am owner of a kick-ass writing room. 
Sometimes, I even go in there and I write.

Losing My Religion

I have not been going to church and for this I am feeling guilty. How long has it been, this absence? Months, which is shameful to admit. I like to think that God notices when I go to church and He is happy. It makes me feel very bad to think that God notices when I don't go to church and that makes him extremely pissed. Is this what being a God-fearing Christian is about?
That phrase, God-fearing, has always confused me. If God is so loving, then why should I be afraid of Him? I worry that I will die while in this No-Church-Phase of my life, and when I get to the gates you always hear about, St. Peter (or whomever is there) is going to tell me, "Nah, you can't come in. You should've gone to church. Bet you're wishing you'd thought about that more now, huh, Missy?"
But then I think about Emily Dickinson and how she said Nature was her Church, and I think about my favorite brother-in-law, and how when his boys were growing up, they didn't attend church either; instead, they sat around as a family and read the Bible, and I gotta say, this BIL is one of the most God-fearing (?) men I've ever met. He can quote Scripture like he's telling you the Wednesday night ABC line-up. I think about how God came to me in my little room in Ruskin Heights, how my mother and dad never once talked about Jesus or God or church and somehow Jesus talked with me as I played with my Barbies, back when I was four or five years old and just learning about being alive in the world ~ that eating too much cake gave me diarrhea, and that when my parents yelled at each other, that wasn't a right way to act around me because it scared me and made me cry.
I think about the Catholic Church and how it scares me, that if THEY knew how I feel about abortion (right to choose), they'd kick me out. I am a fraud: I don't go to confession, and never have. I worry about that, too, on those days when I DO go to Mass, when I'm walking up to receive communion (which I love: it thrills me, the body and blood of Christ), I think I am committing an act of dishonesty before the Lord, that I should not eat and drink of Him when I haven't the balls to confess my sins to a priest. That's what we Catholics are supposed to do: Tell a priest what we do that's wrong, what's unholy, what's displeasing to God. Only I've never done it, the confession part. Even when I was going through classes to become Catholic (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), which was to have culminated in making my First Holy Confession before my First Holy Communion, the line got too long and before I could get inside for quiet time, the opportunity closed. I meant to go the next Saturday, before Mass, but then that week got away from me, and the next, and before I knew it, I was Not Confessing for twenty-eight years.
Now, it seems too late. Doesn't it? Now, I feel that I should speak directly to God because that makes more sense to me. Doesn't it?
I have decided to confess here, to see if I feel better.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession, even though I have been a (sort-of)practicing Catholic for all of my married life. Lately, I have been doing all kinds of bad things, and I need to tell you that I am sorry for the choices I have made, for what I have done, and for what I have failed to do.
Yesterday, I sold a gold cross to a sketchy We-Buy-Gold place because I needed some quick cash.
I have had impure thoughts about other men, namely Bradley Cooper and that handsome man on the All-State car insurance commercials. Sometimes when I am with my husband, I think of Brad Pitt.
Throughout the years, I have occasionally regretted being a mother ~ because it's so damn hard, Lord, this parenting thing. Sometimes I really suck. I have wondered what my life would be had I never had children. Would I be a famous magazine editor? Would I have a closet filled with designer clothing? Would I be a size 6? Would my husband wear a suit and buy me expensive jewelry? Would I be happy or disturbed and suicidal?
This thought, the one about questioning motherhood, shames me the most, Lord, because I know children are one of your finest gifts to humanity, your most glorious gift to me, and I love my children, I would take bullets for my children (which is more likely to happen these days, considering the world is going crazy and a person can't see a movie without being shot), but sometimes I have thought, "I am not cut out for this parenting gig," and I feel that I have failed. (I frequently think of that sad, sad, SAD scene in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," where the lead character (Ashley Judd) puts on her fur coat and heads to confession, crying while she tells the priest that she just wanted to be famous, and that motherhood was killing her soul.)
I once thought of killing my husband for the insurance money, but that thought lasted only a few minutes. That was years ago, back when the children were small and I had to work from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. and my husband traveled six months out of the year (the hardest years of my life).
I feel resentment toward my husband, Lord, and I know this is wrong because he is a good, good man, and he is a hard worker, but why does he get to love his job and get paid well for it, and I ended up hating teaching and having panic attacks 'cause the undisciplined children in my class were such assholes.
Forgive me, Lord, for leaving teaching because it was too hard and I thought my principal was a supreme douchebag. I think often of the many students I loved, and how at times teaching was the best job in the world, but then I am reminded of the deranged seventh-grade boy who couldn't keep his hands off his winker and I had to give him Cheez-Its to distract him ~ how gross and stupid an idea that idiotic school psychologist had, and how unfair to the normal children in the room, who could keep their hands out of their pants but instead of being rewarded with little orange crackers had to wait until lunch to consume modified food products that gave them horrible gas.
Now that I am unemployed, I have become a lazy person, Lord, and have been known to watch television from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m., starting with "Good Morning, America," and ending with "The Chew." Meanwhile, dog hair and cat hair accumulate below the kitchen island and mold grows new mold in the shower and instead of taking care of household business, I am watching Carla Hall and Daphne Oz dish about chicken wings.
Lord, I have coveted my neighbor's goods. I would like to have a house on a lot that backed to the lake and have a screened-in porch like Celina and Paul's. Why does she get to have Pottery Barn furniture in her house and original artwork that isn't purchased from a direct salesperson?
I have failed to memorize Scripture like I promised. I know just a few passages by heart. I consistently pass over Bible posts while scrolling on Facebook. Apparently it is more important to my eternal soul that I look at first birthday pictures of my friend's grandchild, or note that parmesan cheese makes a great coating for chicken, if first soaked in Greek yogurt.

Mostly, it's the guilt that gets me. I know I SHOULD go to church; I SHOULD read my Bible; I SHOULD pray regularly and with great focus, but I don't, I don't, I don't.
To assuage my guilt, I tell myself it is my husband's fault, that he and I cannot agree on a church to attend, and that is why we don't go. I want the church close to our house, like 2.4 miles close, whereas he wants to go to some rural outfit that takes us thirty minutes on a roller-coaster hill to get to. I would be perfectly happy attending a non-denominational Christian church, but my husband insists our house of worship be a Catholic one.
There is the issue of sleep, and how I suck at getting up early in the morning. It has been a lifelong goal to become a Morning Person ~ I know I would get more done that way ~ but dragging my sleepy self out of flannel sheets in the a.m. has never been an easy task. I should do it for God, get up the first time the alarm signals. Get up! Stop being lazy! Realize that waking in the morning is a Gift and I should treasure it.
I feel pretty bad about writing this post, especially the part about not always being grateful for my children. For this I am deeply ashamed. I know, however, that God knows I am ashamed and He knows I feel bad. He knows that because I am human I am going to mess up. I am going to say and do stupid things. I am doing to think rotten thoughts.
Anne Lamott wrote about the Church of 80 Percent, how she had a friend who pastored such a place. For now, in the state that I am in mentally and emotionally, I gotta start going to that church. I can be good 80 percent of the time.
I think.