Frontier Follies Page 8

  During one Sunday service when the kids were all young, our minister at the time, Pastor Judy, exhorted those of us in attendance to please consider jotting down our names on one of the sign-up sheets after church. There hadn’t been many joiners lately, she explained, and she just wanted to reiterate how much she’d love for others to jump in and help. Of course, “others,” to me, meant “everyone but me,” so after the blessing and benediction, I walked right past the sign-up sheets and straight out the white double doors of the church without even glancing in the direction of the bulletin board. There were no cookies that Sunday, and I needed to get home and make lunch (and cookies!). I couldn’t get on my way fast enough.

  Over our BLTs at home a little later, Ladd dropped a bomb on me. “Oh,” he said, as if it was just a frivolous afterthought, “I signed you up for children’s time.”

  Funny, Ladd. “Ha ha,” I responded. “Right.” Obviously, he was kidding, as he would never do that to someone he loved.

  “No, I really did,” he said. “You’re signed up for four Sundays in a row starting next week.” He took a big bite of his sandwich and grinned. He wasn’t kidding after all.

  “You . . . what?” I said. My cheeks immediately turned hot.

  I should take a moment to explain children’s time for those of you who have not attended a mainline Protestant church in the last seventy-five years. In many Methodist, Disciples of Christ, and Presbyterian church services, ministers will welcome the younger children to the front of the church for a few short minutes, where they will chat with the kids, ask them thought-provoking questions, and ultimately impart an easy-to-comprehend lesson about life and faith. It’s not a children’s sermon (it’s more interactive than that), and it’s certainly not a craft or activity (responsible ministers don’t allow glitter in the sanctuary)—it’s just, as the name suggests, time with the children, before the real meat of the service (prayer of confession, the sermon, and communion) happens. In recent years, the various pastors at our church had started inviting parishioners to assume the children’s time role, but there hadn’t been many takers. Seems children’s time was at the bottom of the list of things any adult in our church wanted to do.

  I, for one, had certainly never volunteered to do it. This was well before I’d started blogging, let alone published any books or done speaking engagements. I was terrified of public speaking to the point of it being a phobia, having had a couple of uncomfortable experiences in both junior high speech class (I said “a whole nother” and heard snickers in the back) and a friend’s wedding (I lost my place in the scripture, then said “amen” in a panic and quit), and if I never got up and spoke in front of a crowd the rest of my life, I would be so happy. And that’s what’s so daunting about doing children’s time in church: You’re speaking directly to a group of little kids, but you’re also doing it in front of the whole dang church. So you have two intimidating audiences to face.

  “Well, our kids make up most of the crowd, anyway,” Ladd continued. “And I thought you’d be really good at it.” Oh, nice try, honey. The ol’ flattery trick won’t work for you this time!

  But it did work. In the spirit of Martin Luther, I protested and protested again, but I could tell Ladd really wanted me to try it, and besides that, my name was already on the sign-up sheet. In order to renege, I would have had to call the church secretary the next morning and say, “Never mind, take my name off the list,” or worse, break into the church in the middle of the night and scrawl out my name with a black Sharpie. Back then, a local paper was regularly publishing mug shots from the town’s weekly arrests, and I really wanted to avoid making an appearance in that column if I could help it. I was trapped.

  The following Sunday, with my nervous system in high gear, I walked slowly to the front of the church, ten minutes after the church service began. It was time . . . for my first children’s time. At Pastor Judy’s invitation, the kids in the congregation—my four, plus three others—walked, crawled, skipped, stumbled, somersaulted, and/or sprinted to the front of the church. “Hey, kids!” I said nervously, as we all sat down on the steps that led up to the altar. As for my message, short of having anything brilliant to say myself, I had tracked down a lesson called the “Five Finger Prayer,” a commonly used, nifty tool designed to teach children how to remember the different kinds of people they can pray for.

  My heart pounded and my voice shook as I explained the concept of the prayer hand, pointing to each trembling finger as I explained: The thumb is closest to us, and reminds us to pray for our family and friends. The pointing finger tells us to pray for those who instruct and point us in the right direction: our teachers, coaches, and ministers. The middle finger is the tallest, I told them, and prompts us to pray for our president and other leaders. The ring finger is our weakest finger, I explained, and should remind us to pray for those who are sick, sad, hurting, or oppressed. And finally, our little finger represents ourselves, in the vein of “The least of these shall be the greatest among you.” If we routinely pray for others first, I told the kiddos, we are more equipped to pray for ourselves. The message was wrapping up and I was still a nervous wreck, but by some miracle, I’d gotten through it in one piece. I glanced at Ladd in his pew and he gave me a sexy wink, which he really shouldn’t do in church. But it did make me feel more at ease.

  My message drew to a close and I held hands with the kids and said a short prayer, which is customary. Then, just as I was about to make a clean getaway, five-year-old Alex raised her hand out of the blue.

  “Yes, Alex?” I said, just as a teacher would call on her pupil.

  “You should never, ever, ever do this!” she loudly announced, shooting her middle finger straight up in the air, basically giving me the bird in front of everyone. A couple of people in church laughed. A couple more chuckled in an “isn’t that cute” way. But most were dead silent. Please don’t ever be silent if a young child flips off her mother in front of everyone during children’s time. Please laugh, or start singing . . . or something. That poor mom needs your support.

  That kicked off what has now been about eighteen years of my doing children’s time in our little Presbyterian church, all because my husband signed me up one Sunday when the kids were small. There were some pretty rocky moments in that first year: One time I accidentally attached the clip-on microphone to my shirt with the tip facing in against my skin instead of out. So rather than amplify my voice, it amplified my nervous, pounding heartbeat. Ladd told me he was actually worried about me and almost called 911.

  Then there was the little girl who shouted “Jesus!” in answer to every question I asked:

  “So, kids . . . what do you think of when you think of God?”

  “Jesus!” the little girl replied. Okay, that worked.

  “Hey, kids . . . what’s more important: being right? Or being nice?”

  “Jesus!” Hmm. Well, if you believe Jesus is the answer, I guess she has a point.

  “Hey kids . . . who are you cheering for in the Super Bowl: Patriots or Giants?”

  “Jesus!” No, sweetie. You have to pick a team.

  “I have a question, kids: What’s your favorite dessert in the whole wide world?”

  “Jesus!” Um . . .

  Bless her. I guess she was working on probabilities. Jesus worked in about 40 percent of the questions I asked, so it was probably a great approach.

  There were restless boys, shrieking toddlers, kids who were too shy to speak, kids who wouldn’t stop talking, and lots of awkward moments that made me cringe. But overall, I’m so glad Ladd kicked me out of my comfort zone and shoved me into the world of children’s time. It’s kept me from being too lazy at church, and in a nice twist, I can see where it set the stage for my being able to survive the speaking engagements that lay in my future. (If I can survive an audience of little kids, I can survive an auditorium of women!) I usually try to come up with fun messages for children’s time, ones that wind up giving the congregation something to
think about as well, and they’re often peppered with pop culture references that appeal to both my and the older members’ generations. (I told the kids all about Elvis Presley once, and a couple of older ladies hooted and hollered in the back.)

  Best of all, my daughter Alex holds the record of being the only child who ever gave someone the finger inside our Presbyterian church.

  Amen.

  Scaring (and Scarring) the Kids

  When I was little, my two biggest fears were earthquakes and sharks. This was a bit of a head-scratcher considering I grew up in landlocked Oklahoma . . . but a child’s fears aren’t always based in logic. It’s also puzzling that given these fears, I wound up choosing to go to college in Southern California, where both sharks and (especially) earthquakes were more likely to be encountered. But I’m a mystery in that regard.

  When my children were little, however, one of my biggest fears was that they would be kidnapped. This was somewhat understandable given something that happened to me years earlier: In my senior year of high school, I was robbed at gunpoint while exiting my ballet studio late one night. The group of six men got away with my car after I (miraculously) managed to break loose and run to safety, and I was lucky to have been physically unharmed. The perpetrators were apprehended a few days later after tragically murdering a woman who was out walking her dog (my car had broken down on the dirt road where she was walking), and they were convicted and sent to prison. This trauma was obviously a life-changing experience, and it caused me to feel simultaneously grateful, guilty, grieved, and guarded. Add to this a habit of consuming true crime books in those formative years, and I hit my twenties convinced that danger lurked behind every bush, around every corner—and the only way to keep oneself from being a victim was to be hyperaware and vigilant.

  And so, once I had my daughters, I found I was largely unafraid of illness or disease; kidnapping was all I thought about. Most medical conditions had a treatment or a cure, I reasoned, and since I’d grown up with a physician father, I was confident that I’d be able to spot symptoms that might spell trouble and get my kids the assistance they needed. I wasn’t overly scared of accidents, either—I didn’t worry about the tiny girls riding huge horses or them going along with Ladd when he worked with (and sometimes wrestled) eight-hundred-pound animals. He’d grown up on the ranch, after all, and had come through in one piece—and besides that, I figured that most accidents that happen on a ranch were probably minor, and nothing a splint, a cast, or stitches couldn’t fix. I could wrap my head around microbes and medicine, around splints and stitches.

  But kidnapping? I simply couldn’t bear the thought, and given my brush with criminals during my formative years, I felt more vulnerable to this kind of scenario and wanted to make sure it never, ever happened. Also, living on an isolated cattle ranch, my kidnapping fears were allowed to deepen, fester, and mutate, because it was (in my mind, anyway) such a kidnap-free zone out there, which in contrast made town feel like a more dangerous place. Whenever the girls and I did go out to public places, I was glued to them, squeezing their hands too tightly and carrying them on my hip even if it made my shoulders hurt. I was utterly convinced that stranger danger existed all around us (never mind the fact that stranger abduction is statistically rare) and that I was the only thing keeping the bad element away. When the girls got big enough to go on outings with my mom or mother-in-law, I drilled them on never walking away from their grandmothers in a public place . . . and I used a Sharpie to scrawl my name and phone number on the bottom of their bare feet, just in case they became separated. I gave no thought as to whether this was normal behavior; I just knew it felt necessary. Lord knows where I had even learned that trick.

  When the girls got a little older and Alex started kindergarten, I began taking them to Miss Laura’s Day Care two days a week in order to have a few hours at home with baby Bryce and to hopefully get some dang housework done. Work and catching up was the plan, anyway—but to get to Miss Laura’s house after kindergarten, Alex rode the school bus, and when I realized the bus stop was three houses down, my mind went crazy over the possibilities of all that could go wrong. So I started driving to town early so I could secretly park across the street and make sure Alex made it from the bus to Miss Laura’s, then I’d just kill time in town for a couple of hours until it was time to pick them both up. Never mind that this completely negated the benefit of my sending the girls to day care in the first place. At least they never got kidnapped!

  My second fear during those years of motherhood was the enormous pond behind our house, which was actually more of a legitimate danger. Drowning, after all, is a serious threat to children, and our pond—which is about twenty-five yards behind our house—was a constant source of terror for me. It’s a large water source for cattle, and any kind of security fence or pool-type barrier isn’t possible—so it was just about keeping the kids away from it until they learned to swim. This was relatively simple when I just had my two girls: They loved to stay in the house, play with toys, and watch Teletubbies, and I could easily be outside and watch them anytime they wanted to go play. I cautioned them regularly about the dangers of the pond, and a simple “no” kept them far away. Ah, they were so cute and compliant.

  Then I had two boys, and the little hooligans never once sat down. They wouldn’t watch TV. They wanted to be outside all the time, especially Bryce, so just in case I might have my eye elsewhere or they slipped out the door without my knowing, I decided to start putting the fear of God in them regarding the pond. I’d pull up pictures of great white sharks on the internet, preferably ones with blood from a fresh kill all over their teeth. “Sharks! Pond!” I’d say, pointing behind our house. I’d find videos of a congregation of alligators attacking their prey, splashing and chomping in disorder and chaos. “Alligators! Pond!” I’d say, and I’d point out back again. But the most effective was our unit on piranhas. Images of their razor-sharp teeth made Bryce’s eyes grow enormous, and he would walk around the house saying, “Bad fish! Pond! Bad fish!” My (truly evil, based on nothing but lies) parenting plan was working.

  At this time, Todd was still basically a baby and on my hip twenty-four hours a day, so I didn’t worry much about him. The girls had received swimming lessons and were competent swimmers. And Bryce was now suddenly so terrified of the pond that he wouldn’t let himself get within fifty feet of it. He was actually scared of the word “pond.” And I was confident I’d laid an effective foundation with Todd as well. For the first time since I became a mother, I felt like I’d earned my keep. That dumb pond was no longer an albatross around my neck. My work here was done!

  I’d done such a good job, in fact, that Bryce became scared of the bathtub and switched to showers (a sharp contrast to my switching away from showers after watching Psycho in sixth grade, but that’s another story for another time). He refused to take swimming lessons when my mother-in-law took him to the swim school that summer—and by “refused,” I mean he screamed bloody murder when he saw the pool, and he almost committed murder when the swim instructor tried to lower him into the water. He thrashed and splashed about so wildly that they almost had to refill the pool when he and my mother-in-law left. Nan’s poor face was shell-shocked when she delivered him back to the house that day. Yes, I—mother of the year—had ensured that my sweet, happy firstborn son now suffered from a wicked fear of water, and he wouldn’t voluntarily get into a swimming pool until he was about ten. He still refuses to watch Jaws.

  Over the next several years, we had our share of mishaps and injuries where the kids were concerned. They also had some high fevers, flus, and infections. But thankfully, they came through unscathed . . . and never once fell into the pond or got kidnapped.

  As for Alex and Paige, they still have strong memories of how much it tickled when I wrote my phone number on their feet. “Mom, you had issues,” they like to say. (Pfft. They have no idea.) But they do concede that my crazy protectiveness taught them to be extra mindful when they left
for college, and they seem to think it served them well even though they still give me grief about it.

  As for Bryce, he’s still not a big water person. He chose the path of football, which takes place squarely on land, lucky for him. He’s never going to want to live at a lake, that’s for sure.

  As for my own childhood fears, I experienced a 6.8 earthquake my freshman year at USC and lived to tell about it. I’m never in the ocean, so I don’t see sharks showing up in my life anytime soon.

  Today, as a “normal” mother, I still fear for my kids’ safety, but I’m able to keep it reined in. I just wake up, say, “Jesus, take the wheel” (thank you, Carrie Underwood), and go on about my day.

  I still have a drawer full of Sharpies, though, for when my grandchildren come along.

  Wrong Mother

  Paige is one of my two middle children, and she and I have a strange but beautiful relationship. While my oldest, Alex, will always have the piece of my heart that can be occupied only by a mother’s firstborn child, Paige is a part of my soul in a way that’s hard to explain. And while it’s only natural for a mother whose kids are getting older to look back on the things she could have done better, I’m a little harder on myself when it comes to the job I did with Paige. She would deny and disagree with this: I can’t help but feel like she got the wrong mother in some ways.