A Time to Laugh

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

Mary Poppins was always my favorite record growing up. Yes, I said record. I wore grooves in it. I loved singing along with my Sister Suffragettes. It was actually my own personal spoonful of sugar (listening to the music) while I did my chores (cleaning my room). This was before VHS players, of course. And we didn’t go to the movies (good fundies that we were). So the record was all I had. I did read the original, however.

My boys were watching the DVD in the car this week. What I would have done to have TV on those long trips, let alone a recording of my fav movie I’d never even seen! When you listen to something behind your head, while you’re mindlessly driving around town, you hear it differently — deeper or something.

Disney produced the film in 1964. Julie Andrews, having just been rejected for the role of a cockney flower-girl, played the “practically perfect” witch/nanny in-between her roles of queen and nun (her role as a man would come much later). She beat out Audrey Hepburn for the Oscar for Best Actress that year too. Sweet revenge!

Mary Poppins ever-so-gently needles its audience to consider those who are most-often forgotten. Its story is really the same as The Sound of Music when you think about it. It’s talking to us parents more than entertaining our kids. Just like the show M*A*S*H was set in the Korean war so that it could really talk about Vietnam, Mary Poppins is set in 1910 so it could nudge parents about mid-century problems.

The second-wave of feminism hadn’t really begun yet, so Mrs. Banks’ tribute to her fellow suffragettes just seemed quaint back then. Norman Vincent Peale had not yet accused Dr. Spock of ruining America by his permissiveness, so that anxiety had not been named as such.

The stark class difference between Mrs. Banks and her hired help point up the fatal flaw of independence. The cook and maid endure their mistress’s middle-class eccentricities. They even dutifully harmonize along. But she ignores their working-class needs. Just like Mr. Banks ignores her.

And they all, for the most part, ignore the children. Katie Nanna can’t stand them. The cooks won’t tolerate them. And the rich bankers are nothing but irritated by them. The upper, middle, and working classes have no time for the children. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Banks can even fathom minding their own children.

For the most part, each adult member of the Banks household is independent — each is an island. They work separately, on their own interests and within their own spheres. When they do cross into another’s “path,” the interactions are hollow, rushed, or predictable.

And the children mess up that predictability. Yes, they are disorderly and chaotic. But more than that, they are dependent. They defy isolation. They mess up independence. And while the adults mistakenly think that minding the children ruins their economy, their success, and their political activism, nurturing a child is a pretty politically radical thing to do.

Now Admiral Boom does watch over the children as they pass by. But not until filled-with-magic Mary Poppins “pops in” do the children get included. She flies in (literally) with a bottomless carpetbag, order, routine, and even a parallel universe — a community — full of silly words and two-dimensional animals. She introduces them to Bert, Uncle Albert, the Bird Woman — the lowest class of jobless vagabonds who simply enjoy life and, so, enjoy children.

That’s what’s so practically perfect about Mary Poppins. She knows what’s important. Enjoying children and communing as a family is the most radical thing we can do. The whole movie is like a “Carpe Diem” for parents.

I think we’ve lost that spirit again. We need more of that Poppins woman in 2009. The show is on Broadway right now. Conservative Evangelicals, especially, have caught some kind of hideous idea that the solitary adult work is more important, more spiritual, more rewarding than our children. We think that being independent is more valuable that being together. We insist that the parents are the center of the home and that children should serve the parents. What is wrong with us?

We are no different from the Banks! . . . Or worse.

Spit-spot! Stop! Enjoy life. Our children are life. Take some tuppence for paper and strings and get your own set of wings. . . . go fly a kite!

Emotionally, Two seems much of the time to be comfortable and content. Life feels good to him. Emotions do not take over as they do at some other ages. Two can express his warm affections both by the sound of his voice and by his cozy, snuggling ways. There is an easy give-and-take between parent and child. He now seems comfortable with himself.

Ames & Ilg’s Your Two Year Old: Terrible or Tender?

Two is not terrible. I don’t know who started that idea, but he was wrong! How could anyone say such a thing?

What a delightful companion he can be in the home! He moves around the house with increasing ease. He goes on little errands. His favorite errand may be the fetching of Daddy’s slippers at the end of the day. He loves to go out for a walk and to walk on the tops of low walls. But he always loves to come “home again.”

The world around him is pouring in through his eyes, and he remembers much of what he sees. He knows where things go. He dotes on putting away the canned goods. He loves to watch all household activities.

My Two loves to help. No matter if they are clean or dirty, he will remove the dishes from the dishwasher. If there’s a bug to be squashed, he runs for the fly swatter. If he notices a loose nail, he gets his own hammer from the garage. He helps Brother eat his dinner and reminds him to use soap when he washes his hands. He bellows at the dog “Get DOWN!” He’s my little helper.

Two likes the feeling of having the same thing happen day after day. Routine suits him. “Again” is the oft-repeated demand. In the morning he likes having his bedroom slippers and bathrobe put on and then going in to watch his daddy shave. The sequences is important. . . . He wants everything to be the same. It is not just the order in which things are carried out, or the way they are done that must be the same. It is the place they occupy. He wants everything in the household to stay right where he put it or where he thinks it belongs. And, he wants everything to be appropriate–belonging to go with the people they belong to.

My Two wants his food hot, but not that hot. His jammies warm, but not that warm. His mother available, but not that available. My Two wants his ketchup puddle to be ever-present and ever-complete. It took me awhile to figure this one out. It’s that sameness and completeness that is important. Perfection is the goal.

My Two talks. Boy! does he talk. There’s nothing he can’t say, but that doesn’t mean anyone will understand. Brother usually interprets the most, and I’m a close second. It’s amazing to hear about everything that’s going on in that growing-up mind. Here are some often-repeated statements in our house:

• “I miss Daddy.”
• “No, I’m wecious” [precious].
• “‘Pooky baby? Where ahh ooo?” [Spooky Baby, where are you?]
• “I need ‘nuggles.”
• “I wike you, Mommy. I wike Daddy. I wike Grandpa. I wike Grandma. I wike Iky.”
• “I wanna show you teetum” [I want to show you something].
• “I want some chocolate rilk, cheeee.” [I want some chocolate milk, please.]

Ames & Ilg mention that this age loves to talk about shoes. But please, please do not ask my Two about his shoes. Please don’t. They are firetruck light-up shoes inherited from his brother. And he does so want to talk about them. And he can say “fire” and he can say “truck” separately. But when you put them together, my Two unintentionally talks like a sailor.

Life is also complicated by the fact that the child of this age finds it extremely difficult to take turns.

Turns are hard. They are easier than “sharing.” Sharing is really tough. Developmental experts say that a child really doesn’t understand “sharing” until they are five or so. To Two, sharing looks more like taking, leaving, or saying good-bye. But my Two’s turn-taking is improving. We’re all learning.

This tends to be an aggressive age, and play with children as well as with objects can be quite violent. Both verbal and physical aggression are conspicuous. Some is for the purpose of protecting possessions. Some seems quite unprovoked. There may be much hitting, slapping, pushing, screaming. Or a child may walk up and push another child over and then knock his (block) house down. Children may bump into each other intentionally.

My Two does love to knock over Brother’s big important block house. He loves to pretend to run into walls with his little poochy stomach. He loves to shoot bad guys. He yells a lot.

Now he has matured to the point where he sets up his own opposites. This is how he finds out about the world–by exploring both of any two opposite extremes in quick succession. Annoying as this kind of behavior may be to the adult, it is a very important part of growing up. Soon will come the time when he can make a choice and stick to it.

This is why I love Ames & Ilg. They are an old standard. My mom still sings the praises of their teacher, Arnold Gisell. She bought his book back in the day when my older brother was small. And she gleaned the same sort of information and found the same reassurance from him that I do from his protegés. Reading what’s developmentally normal stops me in my tracks. It’s not that my Two’s behavior is rebellious or willful. His quick vacillating between choices is testing language, not testing me. He’s not a “viper in diapers” — at least no more than I am. No, he’s a cut-up in pull-ups, I’d say.

And this Mommy needs to remember that “this, too, shall pass” all too quickly. He’s learning about life, just like we all are.

Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.”

What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

Martin Luther

A Lite-Brite Cube sits on the counter with a half-way-finished car outline on one of the four sides. Home-made glow-in-the-dark Valentine’s window clings are in view. I’ve become very good at gluing Yoshi shoes and twisting Blendy pens. I cleaned up a big pile of Chic-Fil-A puke yesterday without anyone even noticing since I brought my trusty anti-bacterial wipes with me in my carpetbag of a purse

My purse now looks like my mother’s. Right now, it has:

• My wallet (of course!).
• Spearmint gum (my fav).
• A checkbook.
• 3 sets of keys. Three? How’d I get three? What are they for?
• About-to-expire Wendy’s Frosty coupons from Halloween. I have about 12 of them left.
• A dried-up wipe.
• 11 restaurant crayons.
• Burt’s Bees lip gloss and hand salve
• A Mario, Fire Mario, Fire Luigi, Fire Flower, Kirby, and some turtle.
• A Santa Pez dispenser and 4 packages of Pez.
• 3 Hot wheels.
• A small bottle of Equate-brand Ibuprofen.
• A Real Simple brand magnetic to-do-and-to-buy list.
• 2 Magnetic Storybooks — Disney World and Spiderman.
• A pair of chopsticks.
• A half-eaten orange Pixy Stix.
• Bubble yum wrapper. An Extra gum wrapper.
• 3 Christmas Almond M&Ms.
• 3 pennies.
• A toothpick.
• An expired Mutts coupon.
• A handmade tissue holder from my dear friend with pads in it (perfect size!).
• 2 Bath and Body Works bottles of Anti-Bacterial Hand Gel.
• Zicam.
• Grant’s antihistamine.
• 7 lipsticks.
• A Burger King happy meal toy Wii remote.
• A Bionicle elbow joint.
• A Chic-Fil-A “20 Questions” game.
• A twist tie.
• 4 pens.
• A knitted iPhone.
• A Christian Mommy inspirational/encouragement book that I started yesterday after cleaning up the puke.

Motherhood is like an Extreme Makeover. Oh sure, sure — sometimes it seems like the opposite of an Extreme Makeover — the Extreme Letting-Go that allows you to step to the front of the line for Extreme Makeovers. You know, the antidote for cool. You’ve got more Goldfish crackers on the floor of your van than you ever imagined existed. You can sing all the words to Veggie Tales songs. You’ve cultivated a deep affection for Chowder. You dream in Legos.

But your insides are made-over. You just aren’t your old self anymore. And that’s jarring. Because you thought you liked your old self. She was always on-time everywhere and always read a book all the way through in one sitting and could host smart dinner parties and she dusted every week and she had a place for everything and everything was in that place. Or so you think you remember. You haven’t slept in awhile.

It makes you come face-to-face with that tidier and slimmer (in purse and in person) previous self and ask her, “Who are you? What is wrong with you? Why are you so . . . egocentric? How do you think that you can’t get by without that much sleep? And you only have a wallet and a lipstick in your purse? Who are you?”

And then you wonder if maybe the you you are now is the lame one. Sigh. . . .

I understand that the culture told my mother’s generation a big set of lies. “You have to X-ray your child’s feet to make sure they have the right shoes.” “They must be potty-trained by 12 months!” “Feed ‘em formula. Breastmilk is unsanitary.” “If you work or get too much schooling, your womb will wither.”

Our culture tells us lies too. Big ones. I’m somewhat impervious to the mainstream culture’s lies for whatever reason. Being a separatist for 39 years has its advantages. But instead of giving the truth about mothering, I’m finding that conservative Evangelicalism at large has its own Lie it sells to mothers.

And I’m sick of it. I wanna talk it out. This is ridiculous. It seems that while the Keswidispiecostal soteriology is being dismissed by the cool and heavily marketed charismatic Calvinist sorts, that identical rhetorical form is alive and well in their literature for women. Women are told to empty themselves of themselves in order to truly be saved, in order to show others that they are saved, and in order to get their kids saved. They’ve saved the lousiest theology for the ghetto of the women’s advice books just like the drug companies saved the mercury-laden vaccines for the Third World. This junk’s gotta sell somewhere. . . .

We’ve forgotten what Luther said. We don’t parent to demonstrate the Gospel — to show those around us how beautifully we can do it all. No, we parent because it is the Gospel — because God takes us in as foundlings, lifts us up as His own, loves us even when we stink, puke, and screach, and He dresses us, carries us, and loves us.

It’s not about showing. It’s about loving. It’s not about beauty. It’s about serving the smallest and the littlest in the darkest part of the night when there’s no one is up except us and that wee one and God.

But I need to go bring in the groceries. They are out in the car. The old-me used to love to grocery-shop. The new-me hates it now. It’s so boring and overstimulating and tiring. Besides . . .  the giant generic grape jelly tried to escape and splathered its guts on the driveway. And the pickled beets gave into the peer pressure and followed. Shame. . . . they were both so, so purple.

A — a couple of examples that I can give in the — that I cite there that I might mention. I don’t happen to have the book with me but I can remember that — a — a range of them in there. And that is — that — the — take Veblen’s concept of trained incapacity.

Now — now your natural tendency is training is in one category and incapacity is in another. You think of them as — as mutually exclusive. The whole — the whole trick here was to — was to jump those across. Especially where you could speak of incapacity, as — as training itself as a form of incapacity. And the — and another one I recall that Elliot used in one place where he spoke of decadent athleticism. Where usually you think of athletics in the healthy category and decadence in another category. But by putting those together, you see, across there it gives you what I would call a “perspective by incongruity.” And then you can get — and I think this is, oh the whole essence of the — the whole, surrealist line of — of breaking down your categories in that way.

I had a — among my list of a — of a — modes of lining up vocabulary, the remarkable thing is I completely forgot to put that in my list, but I tend to go back and do it on the basis of — of each statement. And you’ll see that it is — it worked out in quite some length in the — in this whole section on perspective by incongruity.

Kenneth Burke, Lecture at Drew University, 1969, Recently transcribed by Moi and Ed Appel

Can you tell that we and our friends were having a little too much fun with the Roland the other weekend? I should explain. . . . Years and years ago, this nerd’s idea of fun at a party was playing with all Grant’s pre-sets on his Casio keyboard. Having heard the BJU “University Hymn” over and over and over for sooooo many Commencements, the funniest thing I could think of was mangling that tune into a thousand variations — caricatures even. I mean, what would it look like if the regalia-laden BJU “family” bee-bopped into the FMA to scat singing? Or if we line-danced down the aisle to steel guitar? Or if we all slow danced to the same tune?

Burke would call it “perspective by incongruity” — taking two disparate “terms” (because what is music but another symbol system?) and shoving them together to make something completely new. It’s the “last place” of “freedom,” Burke even says in that 1969 2-hour lecture I just transcribed. It is, at the very least, a source of comedy that keeps us from being too hopelessly ourselves, as Burke would also say.

And so the obsession began way back in . . . oh, 1990, I guess. And now I share it with you this latest one, “Safe Sax at the Bob.”

Here’s another (Isaac Watts) song I’ve never sung in my previous life:

How sweet and awesome is the place
with Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
the choicest of her stores.

Here all the mercy of our God
with vast compassion rolls;
And peace and pardon through His blood,
is food for ransomed souls.

While all our hearts and all our songs
join to admire the feast,
Each of us cries with thankful tongues,
“Lord, why was I a guest?”

“Why was I made to hear Thy voice,
and enter while there’s room;
When thousands make a wretched choice,
and rather starve than come?”

’Twas the same love that spread the feast,
that sweetly forced us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
and perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God!
Constrain the earth to come;
Send Thy victorious Word abroad,
and bring lost sinners home.

We long to see Thy churches full,
that all thy chosen race
May with one voice and heart and soul
sing Thy redeeming grace.