Velveteen Mind

Learning to Let It Count on Mother's Day

Every year I entertain an internal debate as to whether or not I should remind my husband that Mother’s Day is coming up or wait and see if he remembers on his own.

I picture this conversation:

Maguire:  When is Mother’s Day this year?

Megan:  Yesterday.

It’s evil, yes, but I can’t help but be mindful of my store of “You owe me one” moments.  I’ve been cashing them in a lot lately, what with the month in front of the toilet and the periodic energy droughts that wrack my pregnant body.  I need there to be some substance behind the “Oh no you d’int” looks I throw my husband’s way when he mentions that this is his third day without clean underwear.

Maguire is an only child and came into our marriage with little to no experience in the “consideration” department.  He was the kind of guy to eat the last cookie every time.  The kind of guy to open the new bag of snacks you bought, you thinking they would last a couple of weeks, and eat them all in one sitting.  Maybe he would put the bag back in the cupboard with some crumbs.  You know, for you.

It is safe to say that the majority of our arguments begin with “What exactly did you think would happen?” or “What did you think I would say?”  All simply different versions of “Did you even think of me?”

Notice how all of those exclamations include a running theme?  The word “think.”

As an only child to a doting mother, Maguire functions as most men do, with his existence hovering single-mindedly somewhere near the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid.

This is human nature.  Base human instincts.  Men are nothing if not instinctual.

As it turns out, there is no Holiday Instinct.  No “I wonder if she needs a break instinct.”  At least not naturally, that is.  After more than eight years of marriage, the “I wonder if she needs a break” bit can certainly be a learned response.

A learned response in the face of a wife’s outstretched claw-like hands and deranged face as she whirls around to lurch at you when you ask “While you are hanging around today, do you think you could iron my shirts and take care of these dishes?”  Because, you know, I do a lot of just hanging around.

But husbands are not the only ones that could use a little work on their learned responses.  Maguire is teaching me that.

In response to the multitude of ways that I ask him “Did you even think of me?” we have finally boiled our understanding of his responses down to, “No, but I would if you asked me to.”

In reaction to my “Why can’t you be more considerate?!” Maguire tells me, “I would be if you reminded me to be.”

You can imagine how I take this.  Lots of “It doesn’t count as being considerate if you are told to be considerate!  That’s not being considerate, that’s just following orders.”

You know the logic.  Picture Jennifer Aniston’s “I want you to want to do the dishes.” to Vince Vaughn’s “Why would I want to do dishes?” in The Break-up.  Vince’s point is that, in the end, he’ll do the dishes if she asks him to.  And isn’t that what she wants?  Explaining what Jennifer actually wants is not only mind-melting but also something that most women understand and empathize with.

But yeah, there are clean dishes ultimately involved.  So what if we have to tell them the bottom line?  This is what I keep asking myself.

On Mother’s Day, what I ultimately want is a break.  And to be acknowledged.  And to be pampered.  And maybe half a dozen other things, all of which revolve around my not being asked to do any work around the house, pretty much.  What I don’t actually need is for my husband to suddenly become psychic (his frequent claim as to what I clearly must want because how else was he supposed to know it was our anniversary?!) and begin acting considerate.

Maguire, today I’m going to tell you what I want and I’m going to let it count when you do it.  Not because it was a surprise or because you thought of it all on your own.  Nah.  Because I’m the mom and moms know what really counts in the end.

Today is Mother’s Day.  Now, um, surprise me.  I’ll tell you how.

***

PS-  Hot red beans and rice!  I'm the Southern Mama Blogger of the Week for Mother's Day over at Southern Living Magazine.  Yes, that Southern Living.  The one on every southern mama's coffee table and in every well-equipped guest bath!  Now then, since a dream of mine is to write for them, ya'll please go over and tell them that they didn't drop the cheese ball when they chose me.  And Happy Mother's Day! 

Don't miss an update! Sign up for free delivery of new posts from Velveteen Mind via email (recommended) or feed reader.

Follow me on Twitter!

Subscribe to the free audioblog podcast of Velveteen Mind on

Perfec-she-yawn

Nothing like a slew of women in their twenties coming to peek in your life to make you feel, well, not in your twenties.

Welcome, vibrant new readers.  I am not Miss Musing.  I do not write about my beautiful piano room or my heroic boyfriend or my pink bicycle.  My life is not perfection.

Fortunately, for those of you that stick around, it appears that perfection can be wearing.

But it gets worse.

I don’t even post that often.  Period.  I own this baby, it doesn’t own me. 

So let’s just own it.  I’m a mom, at home, no longer living in a large city.  I live near the beach but no longer own a bikini.  I have stretch marks.  Because I have two toddlers.  And a new baby on the way. 

A new baby that I haven’t even written about because I am nauseous and tired.  Laissez les bon temp rouler!  No?

When I do post, it is rarely about controversy.  Instead, I’m usually pleading with women to stop worrying so much and to come out and play with us in real life, because seriously, it’s okay.  Reality bites but we don’t. 

For instance, are you going to BlogHer?  I see many of you have the BlogHer ad network on your much-updated blogs.  (Ahem, I did until they booted me for, um, poor update frequency.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)  Well, I’m co-hosting a party the night before BlogHer.  It’s called The People’s Party and this is our third year (which we’ve only teased so far, but more details to come).  The goal?  To make women feel at ease while out from under the cover of their blogs.  Imagine that.

But that’s about as glamorous as I get.  I do publish and serve as the Editor-in-Chief of a successful (aw, shucks) online magazine called Blog Nosh Magazine, but that thing is currently run without shoes on and, were I updating it this morning, without a bra on, too.  Ya deal?

I am not in my twenties.  Haven’t been for a few years.  And when I was?  I spent all but one year of it with my would-be husband, not exactly gallivanting around with a martini in hand.  Chick, I don’t even own stilettos.   The last time I wrote about shoes was to demonstrate my own dichotomous personality that seems to straddle between punk rock and Florida retiree.

We might not have a lot in common.  Other than the dichotomies that define us.

But I write to you from the heart because I don’t know any other way.  And I embrace all that is me.  And you might be surprised what bits of yourself you find in me.

I write this to you from my backyard because today is too gorgeous to not inhale deeply.   Our roses are blooming.  I’ve been so busy, I hadn’t even noticed.

When I ran inside to grab my camera just so I could show you our modest accomplishment (if by accomplishment, you will accept that we simply didn’t touch them and therefore did not kill them), my two year old decided a romp outside suited him, as well.  You haven’t lived until you’ve dated a two year old.

While chasing him around, I caught wind of a smell from my childhood in Illinois.  Wandering around old properties, gathering Queen Anne’s Lace to take home and dye with food-coloring-spiked water.  This smell, the one in my own backyard, was the smell of my mother, stopping at the side of a rural road to gather and assure us we could taste.

Honeysuckle.

I didn’t even know we had honeysuckle in this yard.  But this morning, it is blooming.  And filling our yard with the warm scent of simpler days, superseding the rich layers of the bayou, so close to our home.

I live in Mississippi.  On the Gulf Coast.  Not in New York.

Perfection here comes covered in powdered sugar and doused in sweet tea.  Our fingers hint at crawfish boils enjoyed with friends and the air wafts by with a hint of Zydeco.

Yes, there’s a hurricane party every time it blows.

My musing comes in very different flavors than you might be used to, but there is room for you here at my table, sugar.

Ya’ll come back now.

Don't miss an update! Sign up for free delivery of new posts from Velveteen Mind via email (recommended) or feed reader.

Follow me on Twitter!

Subscribe to the free audioblog podcast of Velveteen Mind on

A Wedding for Everyone {Part One}

Seven year ago today, we were married. 

Although neither of us had ever called it home, New Orleans called to us, so it was there that we chose to plant the roots of a life which we would forever call home.

Laced with the strength of chicory, echoing with the sounds of friends and family, bruised by adversity, warmed by tradition, spiced with variety, worn threadbare by the lives that dug their heels in deep to the rich swamp soil...  New Orleans was the perfect place to swear our souls to one another. 

And no, we didn't keep it simple.  But we certainly kept it real.

Real joy  ...hope  ...celebration  ...tradition  ...flair  ...fun  ...love  ... Real us.

 

Surrounded by love.  Friends and family and well-wishes wrapped in smiles.

A bride wrapped in the wedding gown worn by her mother.  Made by her great-aunt.  Hand-painted and fussed over and preserved with hope and anticipation.

The end of something solitary and the beginning of everything whole.

Everyone should have a beginning such as this.

 

An early afternoon ceremony in St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square in the French Quarter.  We arrived in carriages and hushed tourists' whispers of "who are they again?"

Strangers taking our pictures and generously offering to send us copies of our own. 

Everyone should have paparazzi on their wedding day. 

 

We are you.  You can have this, too, you know!  Just ask.  You don't have to be fancy, you just need to want to have more fun than a couple of dreamers should be allowed to have...  and then have it.

St. Louis Cathedral would be the only serious moment in a party to stretch eight hours

long.  It would be the last hushed or still anything.  A beautiful foundation to a spectacular day...  to spectacular hopes for our whole lives long. 

I smiled so much as I walked down the aisle, I thought my face would ache for years.  The beginning of laugh lines that would be nurtured by baby's giggles and toddlers' antics.  Laugh lines deepened by new lives to enter our own, to erase the melancholy of the father walking his baby girl down the

aisle only to be rewarded by hilarious miniature versions of himself. 

But first...

Can you hear the beads rolling into the square, bunches and bunches headed to eager hands?  Can you hear the crowd gathering?  Can you hear the Second Line Band assembling?

I do.

Everyone should have a parade through the streets after they say "I do."

 

We left in our wake screams of celebration, cries of surprise, and not fewer than a few bums with pearl-like beads around their necks, dangling medallions announcing our union.  This was a wedding celebration for everyone. 

 

And everyone should have the blessings of the street people on their wedding day.

~~~

...this is only the beginning, so be sure to stick around for Part Two...

~~~

New Here? Sign up for free delivery of new posts via email or feed reader.

Follow me on Twitter! and

Anticipation

Want to hear the whole story of our wedding day? Sign up for free delivery of new posts via email or feed reader and don't miss a moment.

Follow me on Twitter! and

 

Gravel Paves the Road to The White House

{Audioblog} Listen to or Download 'Gravel Paves the Road to the White House' read by the author

The sound of gravel crunching under slow-moving tires is the sound of the small town to me.  The sound of cicadas on a warm summer evening, while you wave at your neighbors honking as they drive past your home.  That is small town life.

I grew up in a small town of 5,000 in Southern Illinois.  Our town was the metropolis of our county, or so it seemed to me.  We were surrounded by towns whose populations made them more like villages, whose residents came to our town to shop at the Wal-Mart or go out to eat at the fancy new smorgasbord.

Separating those towns from ours were two-lane roads bordered by cornfields, soybean fields, cows, and hay bales.  The only traffic lights were the blinking kind.  You often had to pass tractors on the road or hold your tongue as you followed behind the Amish in their wagons.  It was that kind of small town.

The phrase "small town values" is being thrown around a lot lately.  On one side of the aisle, you hear the declaration "We believe in small town values."  On the other side, you hear the question "But what are small town values?"

Defining "small town values" is as easy as defining what "love" is to a toddler.  You know it when you feel it, but it is difficult to put into words, particularly when you find yourself on the spot facing a raised eyebrow and a smug smirk awaiting your sure-to-be fumbling explanation.

 

(feed readers, click through for video above)

The question of small town values and whether or not they are relevant or important is intriguing, regardless of your political leanings.  The majority of our country, if not our world, is small towns.  Much of the populations of our cities migrated from small towns.  Small-town-America is the root of this country, so what does that mean to us?

There is no one definition of what "small town values" is, but to me it means a greater ability to see the people around you.  Really see them.

Have you ever spent so much time online for weeks at a time that you find your head utterly filled with noise?  You didn't notice it happening, but then you step outside one evening, discover it quiet, and realize that you had cocooned yourself within a wall of static? 

Picture yourself working on your computer, appliances running in the kitchen, laundry running in the next room, kids watching TV, husband listening to his iPod...  and suddenly the power goes out.  After much rummaging around for flashlights and grumbling about how you have so much to get done, you finally submit to the fact that you'll probably be in the dark for at least a few more hours, which no amount of huffing and puffing will change.

And then it happens.  You realize that you've just had an eye-to-eye conversation with your kids that lasted longer than the time it takes to say, "In a minute..." or "As soon as I finish..." or "Tell me about that while I'm..." 

Notice how they cut their eyes the way your grandmother used to when they say, "I have a good idea..." and then that idea is revealed to revolve around candy.  The way they touch their hair when they are thinking of what to say next or tap their fingers together while anticipating your answer on that candy question still on the table.

It's easy to miss those details when you aren't even looking at them.

There is nothing to distract you from them and you find yourself able to see them.  See them clearly.  Hear them without the background hum of your modern life keeping you consistently 20% distracted.

That feeling is what small town life is to me.  It is a simplification, to be sure, but when compared to life in a large city, I think it is accurate.  For me, at least.

Now take it a step further and imagine turning off the TV news and radio talk programs and Internet for two weeks.  No newspapers, no magazines, nothing other than your personal world filling your attention.  You still listen to music and watch movies, go out to dinner and take your kids to the park.  But you aren't necessarily aware of what is going on a world away.  You don't know about every tropical depression forming in the ocean and cease fire being negotiated over some sandy terrain.

I have done that.  I can tell you first-hand how amazing it is to watch your priorities crystallize.  To feel the stress drain away that you never knew was there, held in the base of your neck, stemming from problems that may or may not ever have anything to do with you.

You find yourself living your life, not a million other people's.

That firmly planted grounding of self and family and immediate community is small town values to me.   

I am not advocating ignorance.  I'm not even advocating small town life.  Rather, I am trying to put my finger on what small town values are by submerging myself in the feeling of a small town and reaching down to the core of me, asking "What do you see?  How do you feel?"

I feel compassion on a personal level.  I see community at its root.  I am digging my hands into a foundation that is rich and firm, but that must be maintained in order to remain strong and fertile. 

Without that strong foundation, we can not build our tall towers that allow us to see those that were previously beyond our horizon and beyond our reach.  Beyond our help.

Ask yourself, "What are small town values?"  Tell me why they are important.  Tell me how we can ever help globally if we can not first live a fully realized life locally.

Gravel paves the road to The White House.  I struggle to articulate why that is important to remember, but my gut tells me that it is.

...........................

New Here? Sign up for free delivery of new posts via RSS or email.

Follow me on Twitter! and