“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” – Seth Godin
Nearly every afternoon I’m sitting on the sofa, recovering from the morning, while my kids have quiet time. Whenever we are at home, we have almost two hours where they do quiet activities in their rooms while I rest downstairs.
My big girls have taken to planning and implementing a curriculum for the littles during this time: they read poetry, art books, and stories, and the littles complete worksheets the girls have made for them with questions like, “What type of bird is this?” next to a drawing of a bird, or “What color comes after orange?” with a rainbow drawn next to it.
Sometimes quiet time is quiet, and other times I spend too much of it going up and down the stairs asking someone to stop screaming, or stop kicking the wall, or stop jumping off the furniture. Sometimes I’m so tired and it’s so quiet, I manage to fall asleep.
The golden hour of afternoon sunlight coincides with quiet time at this time of year. We often don’t start until close to two, and so the time stretches toward four, and the sunlight passes by the windows and makes everything glow.
I have had home births for my last 6 kids, so it’s fair to say I have some experience with the process. With those births, I had three different midwives, and gave birth in two different homes. I gave birth with Medicaid, MVP, CDPHP, and MVP again. I gave birth in bathrooms, a living room, and a bedroom. On a birthing stool. Labored in a tub. Cut the cord. Had my husband do it. With doulas and without. With other kids in the room and without. Gave birth with my husband by my side, and with him downstairs taking care of the other kids, thinking we still had some time before the baby came.
I have prepped my house and gone over the supply list. I have had home visits from my midwives, and I have gone to their offices. I have read birth books to prepare that left me feeling strong and ready. I’ve read birth books that terrified me, put me off, or annoyed me (and after searching for all those links, I’m sure Amazon is convinced I am pregnant again. False alarm.)
From time to time, folks who know about my experience will ask if they can give my info to a friend who is considering home birth. I always say yes. I have had overwhelmingly positive experiences with my births, and if I can encourage another person or give them the information they need to consider a home birth for themselves, I am all over it.
Recently, one such mama called me after getting my number from a mutual friend.
Dear Mark Z.,
We’ve had a love/hate relationship since our beginning.
But I couldn’t quit you.
I finally got sick of it. You played with FBMessenger functionality to try to force me to get the Messenger app. You made old notifications look like new ones. You made the mobile experience buggy and obnoxious in an attempt to get me to download the app.
I took a break, then decided to get rid of you altogether.
I decided to try Instagram instead. At that time, I didn’t realize you owned them, too.
I started posting pics. And you started pressuring me to use my deactivated FB account to find friends to follow.
I unlinked my FB account. But you know it’s still me, so you keep asking. Not every day, but several times a week. I have been using it for 2 months and already I am considering quitting it, too.
Here’s the thing. There’s the Big Four: Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. My email is through Google. I am typing this on a Mac. And right now, I am not willing to give up the convenience of Amazon. But I CAN quit you right now. I did it once already. It felt really, really good.
What is it they say about love? If you love it, set it free, and if it’s really love it will come back to you?
I turned off my Instagram notifications yesterday.
And you can keep pushing me to connect with my old FB friends through Instagram, and light up that little heart at the bottom of my screen like there is something new when there’s not, but it smacks of desperation, and if you want the truth, you are pushing me away.
Sincerely,
Laura.
I remember a time when I was very little, riding in the car on MLK day with tons of tiny braids in my hair, wondering if it was ok for me as a white kid to be wearing that hairstyle on that day.
Braids are the poor man’s method of crimping your hair, and so as a child of the ’80’s, I grew up having my hair braided and practicing on myself and my sister.
I remember having my mind blown at around age 11 when I learned how to French braid.
I’ve had short hair for most of my adult life, but once I started having curly haired kids, I started braiding again with a vengeance.
It took a while to get the hang of straight parts and pulling hair tight enough to get a nice clean braid, and I’ve still got plenty of room for improvement, but I have gained some confidence. I have three girls, so I’ve gotten a fair amount of practice.
I started feeling a little insecure again when my son grew his hair out and started asking me to braid it. He shows me a photo from the internet that he wants me to copy, then mansplains what I’m looking at, but stops himself when he realizes what he’s doing.
Last week, I posted about how I met my husband. I’m not a superstitious person, but it still sort of felt risky, in a way. When you talk about how good things are, that’s when it typically falls apart, right?
Just days later, shit hit the fan.
I do my cussing sparingly, but there is just no other way to put it.
It kind of amazes me that we could have been living together as teammates and life partners for more than 11 years and hadn’t been able to peel back the layers. Honestly, we hadn’t been forced to. It was easy to assume we could get away with not doing it.
But then we had to.
