I co-slept with One from the time he was the size of a football, curled up like a kitten on my chest. It was to maintain my sanity. As I got longer stretches of sleep, I transferred him into a bassinet, then a crib.
Because he was my first, as he got to be an older baby, then a toddler, he snuck his way into my bed some nights. Once he got there, he did what he had done since he was in my womb – he paced. He literally swam laps from the top of the bed to the bottom all night long. It was the pits.
But co-sleeping when he was a newborn was a total lifesaver. So was putting him to sleep on his belly.
I tried not to feel guilty about either of those things, but I didn’t tell a lot of people, either, because I knew I was breaking the rules.
How do you feel about death? Repulsed? Fascinated? A sense of longing? Fear?
I’ve always been fascinated by death, with a small side of fear and revulsion. My faith teaches me that death will be a relief from the longings and struggles of earth. The thought of leaving my earthly body behind while my spirit sails off to heaven to dwell in God’s presence makes me sigh just thinking about it. While life earthside has its pleasures, much of it is just hard.
Years ago in college, a friend who worked with the dying as part of her social work degree described her experience with those patients: “as the body becomes less, the spirit becomes more.”
I loved that description and it has rung true for me.
I haven’t encountered death in my family recently, but as a nurse, I come into contact with end of life with some regularity.
Recently, I was bra shopping with Two. As we walked up to the display, she exclaimed, “Mom, shopping for bras is so embarrassing!”
“Why?” I asked. “Half the world is made up of women and girls. They all have breasts or will grow breasts as they get bigger. How is that embarrassing?”
Her response was something along the lines of, “Well, when you put it like that…”
I remember being a preteen and teen and how Embarrassing so many things felt. It felt Embarrassing whenever I thought I said or did or wore the wrong thing. It felt Embarrassing just to exist in the same space as my parents, perhaps because I was more aware of my self-absorption when they were around.
In the photo at the top, I put some of the books I’ve been using as a jumping off point for our homeschool sex ed. They really are just a launchpad. I’ve actually used the books I’m reading for my own “continuing ed” when the books I have are lacking when it comes to anatomical accuracy.
Stan with Four and Five, in February 2015. Photo Credit Lindsay Crandall.
When I was growing up, we had an ugly brown hassock in our living room. Many of my happiest childhood memories involve that hassock. I remember the sensation of being breathlessly underneath it while another sibling balanced on top, or attempting to balance on it while we rolled it on its side, using it as a drum, leaning on a book against it while coloring or drawing, pretending it was a steep cliff for our toys, throwing it at one another, or sitting on it on top of the sofa cushions like royalty.
As an adult, I wanted a hassock for my own house because A. We need all the seating we can get in our modestly-sized living room and B. I want my own kids to have fun memories of playing with a hassock.
I picked out a lovely, colorful one on Overstock several years ago, and realized immediately that it broke the rule that says that with so many kids in the house, One Cannot Have Nice Things. As I waited for it to arrive in the mail, I wondered how in the world I could protect it from destruction.
