Monthly Archives: May 2013

“Your Moms Can Get Married Now.”

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Dsc00218I imagine someone at school saying that to Antonio and Crystel and them responding, “Huh?”

As far as they are concerned, we are already married, and Crystel, much to her chagrin, wasn’t a part of the wedding that we had before she and Antonio came home from Guatemala. She can hardly believe that we had a life before them.

Our wedding was 11 years ago this August. Some folks would ask us, “Is it legal?”

It was to us. Still we had our personal wills drawn up. We weren’t leaving our children, our money, or our belongings to chance.

Jody and I aren’t political or activists. We live our life the best that we can and hope that people will figure out that we are pretty normal. I think we have the neighbors convinced. We hold the yearly Neighborhood Night Out gathering in our backyard. We have come to think of them as normal, too. That’s what sharing a pan of brownies will do.

DSC00234On May 13, 2013, I got a text from Jody saying, “It passed.” I was confused and sent a text back, saying, “What passed?”

A kidney stone, a car, a semi, what??? It took an hour before it came to me.

Since she was the one who asked me to marry her eleven years ago, I figured I better man up.

I sent her a text, “Will you marry me? August 10, 2014?”

Aunt Jo, Our Unity Minister.

Aunt Jo, Our Unity Minister.

I didn’t hear from her for a while and wondered if she was re-evaluating our relationship.

But then came the “Yes!”

Later with Antonio and Crystel around the dining room table, I said, “You know a law passed and your moms can get married now.”

Antonio said, “Yeah, I know what that is. It’s the … what’s that called … same …” He was stumbling on the word “sex” and I came to his rescue. “That’s right,” I said. “It means two moms and two dads can get married.”

“I asked Mama Jody to marry me and what do you think she said?”

Crystel laughed leaned conspiratorially over to Jody and said, “She said, “No.” If drama is to be had, Crystel is there.

married

married

“No, I did not,” Jody said, “I said “Yes.” Crystel you can be our flower girl. You always wanted to be a flower girl in a wedding.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “She and Antonio will have to give us away.”

In one year, twelve years from the date of our first wedding, we will be married again. This gives us plenty of time to work out the details. Save the date.

5 Things I’ve Learned About Writing Blogs (Reflections at the One-year Anniversary of WordSisters)

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May 31st marks the one-year anniversary of WordSisters. Yippee! We’re still going strong. All two of us. 

MP900341653Here are some discoveries I’ve made –

  1. Total strangers follow WordSisters. This still amazes and delights me. I figured 20 or so of our friends and family members might read the blog out of curiosity and loyalty. But we now have dozens of followers, many of whom came to us through the magic of the Interwebs and social media. How cool is that?!? Thanks for reading!
  2. Writing a blog is good discipline. Every other week when it’s my turn to blog, I have to write something. Sometimes I’m excited about it. Sometimes I’m lukewarm. But either way, I’m committed to doing this (and I can’t let Beth down), so I write. That’s a lot of blank screens. That’s a lot of words, thoughts, and stories. That’s 26 times per year that I have shared something I hoped would make you smile or think. Your comments and Likes tell us we’re succeeding.
  3. Writing a blog is different from writing a personal essay (beyond the obvious differences such as links, tags, and visuals). With the personal essays I hope to publish, I may revise 8-10 times during the course of a year or two as I refine what I’m trying to say. I think hard about meaning and style. But with blog posts, which are often meant to be timely reactions to current events, I don’t have the luxury of being so meticulous. I write more quickly and hope to get down the essence of what I want to say. I have to accept that good enough is good enough. As a former writing teacher who now writes for a living, it’s hard to let go of perfectionism. But I’ve learned that if I’m not completely satisfied with a post, well, better luck next time!
  4. I love the power of self-publishing! I love that if we think a topic or piece is worthy of your attention, we can simply put it out there.
  5. By blogging regularly, I’m creating a body of work. I hadn’t thought of this, but blogger Dan Blank had, and he wrote a guest post on Jane Friedman’s website about publishing. I think he’s right. Our blog style and content is still evolving, but looking back I can see how we each have distinctive voices and certain themes recur.

Going forward, we hope to invite other writers to post on WordSisters and we want to make it easier to find past posts.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!Beautiful Fireworks

The Importance of Friends

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Oliver and Antonio

Oliver and Antonio

Before Antonio’s soccer game, I told him that we wouldn’t be able to stay after the game. He groaned. Two days ago we stayed late giving him a chance to play with his friends on the field. They took turns shooting the soccer ball into the net with one of them guarding. I enjoyed watching his fun and he relished playing with his two friends.Every parent wants their child to have friends and I was delighted watching Antonio with his.

Today, after Antonio’s soccer game his friend Oliver asked if Antonio could stay and play. “My parents will bring him home,” he said. Antonio’s eyes shone when I said, “Yes”, and he quickly became so immersed in his soccer playing that he couldn’t hear Jody saying goodbye to him.

Nattie, Crystel, Ally

Nattie, Crystel, Ally

Antonio is interested in soccer this year because that is what his friends are doing during recess at school. I was shocked when both he and Crystel said they wanted to join the spring recreational league. For years, they had shown no interest.

His coach this year, remembered Antonio when he was four years old playing soccer at YMCA.

I sighed.

“Antonio was more interested in sitting on your lap then playing soccer,” I said to the coach.

The next time he played soccer he was six years old and he would come off the field during a play and say, “Crissy you go in for me.”

Crystel and Gabby

Crystel and Gabby

“Antonio she not only isn’t on your team,” I said. “She’s not even signed up for soccer.” Still, no one seemed to care when she bounded on the field taking his place.Children’s friendships are important to parents. Once in a while a parent will comment that they hope their children keep the same group of friends throughout all of their school years. “It’s a great group of kids,” they will say.

Jacob and Antonio

Jacob and Antonio

I must confess that I wasn’t prepared for the mother who wondered if Antonio would date her daughter-espeically since her daughter and Antonio were only in preschool. I’m sure she meant it as a compliment, but I hadn’t taken that leap in my mind yet.

Now that the kids are ten years old, I allow myself to wonder about that occasionally.

I am interested to see who they gravitate to in their friendships and in their ‘special’ relationships. They were both born in Guatemala and are being raised by two white women in an English speaking household. Are they drawn towards Hispanics or whites in their friendships? Who will they choose for a partner?

Tinsae and Antonio

Tinsae and Antonio

Both Antonio and Crystel are attending a Spanish dual language school. This helped them be comfortable around Hispanics. I used to have to remind them that they were brown and Hispanic which is why they needed to learn Spanish.

This past winter when the cold seemed like it would never end and they were whiny, I asked them if they would like to move to a warmer climate. They both immediately said, “No.” Their friendships have become that deep.

I have been happy to observe that they have friends who are of mixed races, white, Hispanic, and African American. They are friends with children from divorced families, families with only one parent, and children from families who have two parents.

In other words, they are perfectly normal.

Labor of Love

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Last September, my oldest son carried the last of his boxes to his car, hugged me goodbye and drove off to greet his future. He was moving across town, not across the country, but I was not fooled into thinking it was a minor move. He was launched and not likely to live with us again. I was proud, happy, and sad.

My husband, in a fit of cleaning and reorganizing our now-empty nest, brought a box of fabric down from the attic. Inside were remnants from the baby quilt I made our oldest along with the design I drew, and the calculations I made before cutting out the pieces. The pattern was simple: soft periwinkle blue and white cotton triangles joined to make rectangles with dark red grosgrain ribbon running diagonally along the seams where the triangles joined. The rectangles were set in a butter yellow border. I’d never made a quilt before and I didn’t know what I was doing—the top of the quilt turned out narrower than the bottom—but it didn’t matter. I did the best I could and learned as I went—like so much of mothering.

Three days before he was born, I was still stitching it. My back ached that dark winter morning, and every time I stood up and stretched over the dining room table to pin a piece, my water leaked a little but I didn’t recognize the signs of his impending arrival.Mike Quilt

Twenty-three years later, I’m well aware of the signs of his arrival at adulthood, and I see the symmetry in the beginning and ending of this phase of active motherhood.

Fabric scraps and design notes from our youngest son’s baby quilt were also in the box. He had recently returned to college, a less permanent departure. One side of his quilt has pink, blue, lavender and gold birds flying across a field of aqua. I was immediately drawn to the fabric I found in Victoria, British Columbia while I lumbered around seven months pregnant during our last family vacation before my youngest arrived. Greg Quilt

The other side of his quilt has a white center that’s bordered by strips of lavender and pink. I hand stitched the outlines of the imaginary birds and butterflies in colored threads against the white. I indulged in this artistic moment during a garage sale we held before moving to a house roomy enough for two boys—by then, I’d learned to enjoy the moments of grace that occasionally occur during the mundane—the essence of motherhood.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mommas out there.

Our Handyman, Tim

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Tim 004This is not a paid advertisement.

On April 28th, an article in the Star Tribune written by Paul Muschick stated that in 2012 the home repair industry was the most-inquired-about industry at the Better Business Bureau (BBB). It was also the second-most-complained about.

My family is lucky we found Tim.

When you have children you acquire (whether or not you want it) – a calendar – that posts events in your mind that are Before Kids or After Kids.  Tim belongs in the Before Kids category.

Our relationship started simply enough. Leaving the YWCA in Uptown, Jody lifted his business card off of the advertisement board. We were dating then. She had witnessed my attempt to block birds from nesting inside the air vents on the roof. Thank goodness a storm blew through Richfield breaking my windows and leaving me with hail damage. Insurance would pay for a new roof and I’d have to hire someone to do the work.

Tim, Antonio, Crystel

Tim, Antonio, Crystel

I had a history of floundering as a homeowner. An electrician I had asked to make a repair in the bathroom mangled an outlet and the wallpaper. It was never the same again. The contractor I hired to put on the new roof was unable, even after many attempts, to fix the leak on the porch roof.

Finally, I put a cake pan inside the ceiling to catch the dripping water.

Until Tim came.

Tim smiled, handed me my cake pan.

He fixed the leak and has been with us for over ten years. We’ve had him longer than we’ve had the children. I think of us as growing up together: Tim, Jody and me, Antonio and Crystel.

Our relationship has matured to the point where we keep a running list of any repairs we need done and schedule him in the spring and fall. Tim lets himself in and finds the list on the counter.

004I look around our home and there is little that he hasn’t touched. He’s painted and tiled, painted and tiled. Put in an egress, trimmed trees, planted trees, tilled our garden, put up fences, taken down fences, removed the window that kept slamming on Crystel’s hand and in its place put in a patio door. He’s taken apart and put together exercise equipment, desks, futons, and beds. He’s put in windows, taken out windows, the same with doors.  He’s tuned up what needs tuning in the spring and fall.

I have even had him change light bulbs.

Jody couldn’t believe that. She said she could do it. I told her, that I knew that she could but that it goes on the list and if it wasn’t done by the time Tim came then he’d do it. Now she’s a believer. The kids are too. When something needs repair, even a toy, they say, Tim can fix that and we put it on the list.

Tim working on our porch project

Tim working on our porch project

Tim is a person of few words. He never said anything when I had him make a jungle gym on the second floor for the kids. If I could imagine it, he could do it. They had a swing, a climbing rope, trapeze bars. He never said a word when I had him take apart Crystel’s bunk bed and move it to the finished basement letting her transform her closet into a cave. Hopefully, he’ll have few words when I have him bring the bunkbed back to her room.

Phone May 2013 344Our latest project has been changing our 3-season porch into a 4-season and taking down the wall between the kitchen and the porch. First, he added new windows and a door on the east side, then he added windows to the west side, and he just finished the mudroom – from conception to completion. The couch he built has storage underneath the cushions.

Next year the wall will come down.

In-between the large projects, Tim has lists.

This summer, if all goes as planned, he will be working with Antonio and Crystel to build a tree house in the backyard. We wanted someone to show the ten-year-olds how to use tools. Who do you call for that? Tim, of course.

The BBB advises homeowners to take the time to choose a trustworthy contractor.

What I like most of all is that at any given time, I have a home that I am proud of.

I have Jody and a handyman to thank for that.  Email timschwartz@wwt.net for an appointment.